Comments on: Violent Deaths of New or Expectant Mothers

By: Attila Girl

Attila Girl — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 18:11:35 +0000

It really sounds like a made-up trend, especially since some of the cases cited sound like random murders of women who just happen to be pregnant.

The only causality other than the obvious "domestic"/family situations I can think of would be that women who are under the influence of hormones might be less careful about their personal safety, and could be easier prey in terms of murder by strangers. And in that context, studying the rates of post-partum victimization/suicide would be interesting.

But 100 cases a year in a country of 260 million or whatever doesn't sound like a trend at all.

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 01:14:24 +0000

Betcha Mark Geragos is trying to find out if Lisa Montgomery was anywhere near Modesto when the Laci murder occured.

By: bryan

bryan — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 00:59:40 +0000

Having just read two books, "Lies, damned lies and statistics," and "More lies damned lies and statistics" that deal with this very issue, I have to agree with you, Teri. The author of those two books dissects a similar statistic that caused a lot of stir about african american teens and suicide, how the rate had risen dramatically over the last 20 years. But when you factored in the changes in coding, population size, etc. the rate hadn't really increased at all. I suspect much the same way with this. And let's be honest, 1,367 in 14 years is less than 100 a year. How many women are pregnant during that time period? How many were murdered during that time period?

By: Teri

Teri — Sun, 19 Dec 2004 14:33:57 +0000

"Lumping suicides in with homicides, though, clouds the issue, conflating two entirely unrelatated problems."

I agree. If you are trying to find out or figure out why people kill pregnant women, there is no point adding in suicides, especially post-partum suicides. There is a stark difference between voluntarily ending your own life and having your life violently taken from you.

Also, a noteworthy thing in the death of a pregnant woman is that usually two lives are ended; once the baby is born there is a completely different dynamic going on. (If the people conducting these studies don't understand the difference between pre- and post-partum, send them over to my house; I'll explain it in little teeny words that even childless academics will be able to grasp.)

I would imagine that somewhere, someone has an agenda to once again prove that fathers/husbands are the evildoers, since they are throwing around the domestic violence words. If I had my druthers, I'd want to see the percentage of deaths caused by family members or boyfriends (for lack of a better word) and those that are not caused by domestic situations.

It would also be interesting, in the domestic subset, to see if there is a significant percentage of these murders that are committed by non-baby-fathers, for instance by the pregnant woman's parents (for reason of shame) or by non-father boyfriens (jealousy).

This seems like the sort of study that is guaranteed to create lots and lots of sensationalism and very little actual information.