Citation

Subbaraman N. Nature 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/d41586-021-03392-8

PMID

34773117

Abstract

Pregnant women in the United States die by homicide more often than they die of pregnancy-related causes -- and they're frequently killed by a partner, according to a study published last month in Obstetrics & Gynecology1. Researchers revealed this grim statistic by using death certificates to compare homicides and pregnancy-related deaths across the entire country for the first time.

Although smaller studies have tracked homicides during pregnancy at the state and local level, confirming the scope of the phenomenon on a national scale is valuable, says Vijay Singh, a physician at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, who studies how health-care workers can monitor abuse by current and former romantic partners. "You can't understand a problem unless you can measure it."

The study results, he adds, are "stunning".

The researchers found that US women who are pregnant or were pregnant in the past 42 days (the post-partum period) die by homicide at more than twice the rate that they die of bleeding or placental disorders -- the leading causes of what are usually classified as pregnancy-related deaths. Also, becoming pregnant increases the risk of death by homicide: between the ages of 10 and 44 years, women who are pregnant or had their pregnancy end in the past year are killed at a rate 16% higher than are women who are not pregnant...

Language: en

Keywords

Public health; Databases; Health care