ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: High-tech baby-napping on soaps

Last week, on Days of Our Lives, Theresa was finally reunited with the baby boy Kristen had stolen from Theresa and Brady.

And how did Kristen steal him exactly? Did she lay in wait for a moment when his parents were distracted and snatched the bald-headed little guy out of his stroller? Did she break into his bedroom in the middle of the night and take him right out of his crib? Did she lurk around the maternity ward dressed as a doctor and intercept him on his way to the nursery?

Nah, all of the above would be way, way too prosaic for our Kristen.

Instead, she drugged Theresa, had the embryo excavated from her uterus and implanted into herself, carried the fetus to term, and gave birth to a bouncing baby kidnap victim.

‘Cause that’s how Kristen rolls.

As Ashley on The Young & the Restless, Kristen’s portrayer, Eileen Davidson, played another baby-napper, only this time, Ashley only stole Victor’s stored sperm (not the whole baby) and used it to impregnate herself. Her rationalization was that Diane, Victor’s hated ex-wife, had actually been the one to steal the sperm in the first place. Ashley was just stealing it from Diane to protect Victor. Besides, Ashley had aborted Victor’s baby years ago, so he owed her one. Right? Discuss.

Embryo-snatching is a pretty popular activity on soaps. On General Hospital, Britt needed a baby to hold onto Patrick. And when he didn’t get her pregnant the old-fashioned way, the crafty OBGYN and her mother (Dr. Obrecht, whose evil makes Britt seem downright sympathetic in comparison) simply borrowed one of patient Lulu and Dante’s frozen specimens. Britt gave birth to Ben, whom she genuinely loved, but was ultimately forced to return to his biological parents. Because the only time a secret stays a secret on a soap is when the writers forget about it. Lulu and Dante renamed the baby Rocco. Which is a different kind of crime against humanity. (Don’t worry, though, little Ben/Rocco took the change of identity and family in stride. If there is one thing soaps have taught us, it’s that children have absolutely no attachment to the people who raised them for months, sometimes years, and are always ready to switch loyalties at the drop of a DNA test.)

Over on The Bold & the Beautiful, it was an egg mix-up, not an outright theft, that led to Taylor giving birth to her nemesis, Brooke’s, child. Unlike roll-with-the-punches Rocco, Taylor couldn’t accept little Jack’s relationship to Brooke, and ultimately surrendered the child to Brooke and his father, Nick. Since then, the show seems to have misplaced the tot, and no one is exactly sure where he is at the moment.

Oh, if only Taylor, like Kristen, had been aware of the high-tech reproductive technology that’s available in soap-land – and nowhere else.

Read all about it (it's been around since the 1970s!) at Entertainment Weekly: http://community.ew.com/2015/05/05/soap-opera-baby-kidnapping/