A string of recent studies and reports show that maternity health care in the US is in a bad place.
According to an analysis published this month, one third of the nation's counties do not have access to a hospital that provides maternity care.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 4 out of 5 women who died during their pregnancies could have been saved with proper health care.
The CDC reported earlier this year that Black people are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy related cause than White people, with variation in the quality of healthcare they receive, structural racism, implicit bias, and underlying chronic conditions contributing to the stark disparity.
The cause of maternal death that is overlooked in the US is being highlighted by epidemiologists from Harvard University.
According to an editorial published in the British Medical Journal, pregnant people and new mothers are more likely to be murdered than they are to die of pregnancy-related causes.
Given the recent attention to the US maternal health system, Lawn and Koenen think the statistics should be emphasized again.
A group of researchers found that most of the homicides that happened during pregnancies were linked to intimate partner violence and firearms.
In the US between 2008 and the present, firearms were used in almost 70% of the homicides.
Hundreds of women and their unborn children could be saved every year if men's violence towards women were prevented.
The availability of firearms seems to have made the problem of violence against women worse in the US. They say it's a health emergency for pregnant women.
More restrictions on firearms and better regulation of firearms are needed in order to protect pregnant women. Violence against these groups occurs at staggering rates, even though the editorial doesn't acknowledge it.
The recent unraveling of abortion care in many states of the US is predicted to make pregnancy-related homicide worse.
Unwanted pregnancies can increase the risk of homicides in abusive relationships.
Black women are three times more likely to be killed by a partner when they are pregnant than White or Hispanic women, and they are also more likely to suffer from restrictions on abortion services. The risk factors could prove dangerous together.
There are a number of social, financial, and systemic factors that make it difficult for trans people in the US to end a pregnancies.
The editorial argues that research to identify risk factors for homicide in pregnant women is important.
Recent studies have been limited by the lack of data on the pregnant women who have been killed. In large datasets, there is very little detail on relationships and patterns of abuse that lead to homicides during and after a baby's birth.
Maternal death is one of the most preventable causes in the US. It needs to be taken seriously.
There was an editorial in the journal.
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