Posted on 01/10/2005 10:20:40 AM PST by PercivalWalks
New Report on Maternal Homicide Crisis: Myth-Making and Manbashing
By Glenn Sacks
"Pregnant women murdered at an alarming rate." "Killings of new, expectant mothers mount." "Many new or expectant mothers die violent deaths." "Violence trails expectant mothers." "Pregnant mothers often die of murder."
These headlines top a highly-publicized new series of articles by Donna St. George of the Washington Post. The series, which appeared in many major newspapers and media outlets this week, details an alleged epidemic of maternal homicide by male intimates.
The series powerfully depicts the tragedies of murdered expectant or new mothers. The mother-to-be killed the day her mother ordered the cake for her baby shower. The pregnant 14 year-old murdered by her 14 year-old ex-boyfriend. The bank manager killed because she wouldn’t convert to her husband’s religion before their twins were born. However, despite the emotion, alarm bells and blaring headlines, the series fails to build the case that maternal homicide is an epidemic, is on the rise, or is even a significant social problem.
According to the Post’s numbers, there are about 100 documented murders of pregnant women in the United States each year. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly four million women give birth each year. One out of 40,000 is not an epidemic. The Post speculates that the true number could be significantly higher but also notes that 30% of these killings are not related to childbearing, but instead involve drug dealing, robberies, errant gunfire, or other causes. And some pregnant women are killed by other women, as in the recent Missouri murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett by a woman who cut her live baby from her womb.
St. George and others point to a Journal of the American Medical Association article which states that in Maryland a “pregnant or recently pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause." This sounds alarming until one considers that there are an average of eight murders of pregnant women each year in Maryland--alongside 75,000 live births.
St. George also cites a study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health which allegedly showed murder to be the biggest cause of death for pregnant women and new mothers. However, when public health specialist Ned Holstein of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine examined the report, he found that murder was well down the list of alleged causes of maternal death.
“The risk of murder by an intimate is extremely small, not an epidemic,“ says Holstein, a physician who also heads Fathers and Families of Massachusetts. “Although every death is tragic, murder of pregnant women simply does not rank as a significant public health problem.”
St. George’s article series expresses commendable concern about battery of pregnant women but errs in claiming a link between domestic violence and pregnancy. According to longtime domestic violence researcher Richard J. Gelles, co-author of Behind Closed Doors, “to be pregnant alone doesn't put a woman at risk.”
“Women between the ages of 20 and 34 suffer the highest rate of domestic violence, and that is also the most likely age to be pregnant,” he says. “Age is driving the risk, not pregnancy.”
Unfortunately, alarmist claims of pregnant women being victimized by male partners are not new. For example, in 1993 Time magazine and many major newspapers reported that, according to the March of Dimes, domestic violence was the leading cause of birth defects. This claim was later found to be completely fictional, and was retracted by Time and others.
Similarly, the claim that “22 to 35 percent of women who visit medical emergency rooms are there for injuries related to domestic violence” has been echoed countless times by major media outlets and in politicians’ sound bytes. However, according to Emergency Room data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and the Justice Department, only about 1% of women's injuries are inflicted by male intimates.
St. George uses anecdote and emotion in place of facts and research in order to find a mythical crisis of maternal homicide. It is another example of how legitimate concern for battered women often devolves into an alarmist and anti-male view of domestic violence and gender relations.
This column was first published in the Lexington Herald-Leader (1/3/05).
Glenn Sacks serves on the advisory board of Stop Abuse for Everyone, an international domestic violence organization. Glenn Sacks is a men's and fathers' issues columnist and a nationally-syndicated radio talk show host. His columns have appeared in dozens of America's largest newspapers.
Glenn can be reached via his website at www.GlennSacks.com or via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
bad judgement is the driving factor - she picked him in the first place.
Until divorce lawyers stop the practice of having women file "domestic abuse" charges solely for the purpose of gaining an advantage in litigation; and until the courts start prosecuting the women who make these false claims, I will not believe one word of these "statistics".
Actually, I was advised in my divorce to not bring up domestic violence, even though it was a huge factor in our marriage and subsequent break-up.
I call BS on this. My ex-husband, who was violent, barely touched me during my pregnancies. That's when I was the safest.
The fact that the most frequent cause of very, very rare maternal death is homicide bespeaks the high quality of medical care and other support that they receive.
One of the things I noticed in the articles (which were reprinted in our local paper) was how few of the women were married to the fathers of the children. In the cases where the father (or his proxy) was the attacker, the relationships were "boyfriend" or "ex-boyfriend" or "married lover" or "former live-in now married to somebody else" or "high-school classmate."
The original study said some situations are like yours, while in others, the man may begin abusing his wife when she becomes pregnant.
Shacking up is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do, either for herself or her children. This is an iron-clad truth that is pretty much unknown because pop culture would rather have battered and dead women than marriage.
Why is that ? Serious question by the way ?
I've noticed that.
It's hard to answer that without simply restating it another way. Statistically, married women are at the lowest risk for homicide and murder, and this holds true for the children of married women as well.
As to the actual why think about the life outlook of a guy who asks a woman to marry him vs one who just winds up living with a woman. The former is willing to commit his life to the woman; The latter just thinks she is a good enough screw to tolerate for a while. Which one is going to smack her around when she does something to really p!ss him off?
One of the things I noticed in the articles (which were reprinted in our local paper) was how few of the women were married to the fathers of the children. In the cases where the father (or his proxy) was the attacker, the relationships were "boyfriend" or "ex-boyfriend" or "married lover" or "former live-in now married to somebody else" or "high-school classmate."
Touche'! I forget who pointed this out (I think it was someone writing in American Spectator online) but nearly all of the cases listed in the article were pregnant women murdered by their ex-boyfriends or live-in lovers who did not want a kid. According to the author of the piece THIS should have been the headliner. We have all heard about the "boyfriend problem" that the brady bunch aside, many men do not feel any responsibility towards offspring not their own and indeed feel actively in competition for mommy 's affections [here's where the G-man likes to bring up the habits of male lions taking over a pride and killing the cubs of the previous Alpha male]. It also appears that certain men do not feel responsible to the unplanned offspring of unmarried, uncomitted partners [probably because they DON'T see them as their own--beyond a claim on their future earnings]. But of course, to openly discuss such unpleasant realities would be heresy against the sacred sacrament of unwed motherhood.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.