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Extraordinary People: She Stole My Foetus (five)

MICHAELA Newton-Wright has a hole in her life. She has a high-flying job she loves, socialises in London's Soho - as opposed to Redcar's - and has a lovely flat, but she still feels something is missing.

A man is the obvious answer, but Jonathan Edwards, former triple jumper and Olympic gold medallist, knows better. He thinks religion can provide the answer, even though the only thing Michaela does religiously is straighten her hair.

So Edwards takes Michaela on a tour of some of the world's great faiths in Spirituality Shopper, a kind of Supermarket Sweep where you dash around a different sort of aisle, picking up whichever religion is on special offer. Michaela tries Buddhist meditation - from a monk whose name is so unpronounceable they just call him The Venerable - giving up hair-straighteners for Lent, a spot of Sufi dancing, and a Jewish sabbath meal.

Somewhat bizarrely, it is potentially the most embarrassing practice of the lot that Michaela finds least awkward: the Sufi dancing. Sufi is a branch of Islam where the followers try to get closer to God by whirling around to music to induce an ecstatic fervour, and Michaela swiftly loses her inhibitions, whirling in front of 50 people at a Sufi workshop in Brighton, and then teaching a colleague to whirl in the middle of the office.

Searching for a meaning to life has become a preoccupation in these Godless times, but it still seems to be taking a slightly gimmicky approach, and, despite being a Christian himself, Edwards looks as uncomfortable with all this religion talk as Michaela at times. But at the end of her four week, money back guarantee trial, she does report feeling calmer and happier. Giving it a whirl obviously helped, and only a cynic would say getting a man would have saved her the bother.

If plucking the best bits of different religions off a shelf is merely the next logical step in our consumer-driven society, then foetal theft must be its most horrific manifestation. For why else would women who want a baby believe they have a right to take someone else's, before it has even been born?

Elijah Evans was the victim of the first recorded foetal theft, cut out of his mother's womb a few days before he was due to be born. His mother was left to die, and his brother and sister murdered, although the killers spared his 19-month-old brother Jordan, who witnessed the whole thing and spent six hours by his dead mother's side before help arrived.

Within 48 hours, the baby had been found in the arms of Jacqueline Annette Williams, who had pretended she was pregnant but was reported by suspicious neighbours. Incredibly, she had recruited her cousin, the biological father of both Jordan and Elijah, to help her.

Since then, there have been three other known foetal thefts in the United States, and one in Colombia. At the scene of one attack, police found a leaflet on giving birth which they believe had been used as an instruction manual on how to carry out a Caesarean.

But what linked the women responsible was not that they had no children of their own. They were all mothers, although Williams had been sterilised after having three children. The common thread was that they were all in fragile relationships, and saw having a baby as the only way of hanging onto their man. But even this does not explain the desperation which drove them to do something so horrific. It was hard to argue with the US attorney who said: "It is about as bad as the human condition gets."