Postpartum Mountains and Molehills
December 30, 2004
Watergate step aside...the newshounds over at the Washington Post dug deep for a rapidly breaking story...”Man Bites Dog!” In a special three-part series, Pregnancy and Homicide/The Unknown Toll, the Post reported the results of its one year investigation into the murder rate of pregnant women. As reported, “A year-long examination by The Washington Post of death-record data in states across the country documents the killings of 1,367 pregnant women and new mothers since 1990.” That comes to a grand total of 97.64 murdered pregnant women and new mothers per year.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2001 alone, a total of 15,019 people died from unintentional falls. There is no data breaking out the number who were “pregnant women and new mothers” when they fell.
Undoubtedly spawned by the Laci Peterson and Lori Hacking murders, the Post’s three-part series hints at a new category of victimization...murdered pregnant women and new mothers. According to Jacquelyn Campbell of Johns Hopkins University, “I thought it was a tragedy. I didn't think it was a trend...It's a phenomenon. It probably was always there, but we just didn't know.”
In the same 14 year period that the Post compiled its mind numbing total of 1,367 deaths, the F.B.I. reports that a total of 292,003 Americans were murdered (the number for 2004 was estimated). Out of the total number of Americans murdered in a 14 year period, 0.47% of the victims were “pregnant women and new mothers” (that’s less than half of one percent). This is really shaping up to be an epidemic.
From a total of about 4,000,000 pregnancies in America last year, according to the Post’s reporting, 0.00243% of the mothers were murdered. From an estimated total U.S. population of 295,000,000 -- 0.000033% of that population were murdered “pregnant women and new mothers”. 0.0051% of the total U.S. population died from unintentional falls. Big warning to anyone about to step off a curb...you are about 153 times more likely to die from a fall than a pregnant woman is of being murdered.
Yet, somehow the Post found this newsworthy enough for a three-part front-page series. Either elite print journalists are very under-worked and overpaid or...I’m missing the point of this series.
Digging deeply into the “why” behind the “what”, the Post made more obvious some of the possibly already obvious causations for this epidemic. Again, according to the Post’s reporting, “Louis R. Mizell, who heads a firm that tracks incidents of crime and terrorism, observed that ‘when husbands or boyfriends attack pregnant partners, it usually has to do with an unwillingness to deal with fatherhood, marriage, child support or public scandal.’"
Criminal profiler Pat Brown observed that “If the woman doesn't want the baby, she can get an abortion. If the guy doesn't want it, he can't do a damn thing about it. He is stuck with a child for the rest of his life, he is stuck with child support for the rest of his life, and he's stuck with that woman for the rest of his life. If she goes away, the problem goes away.” Now we are getting somewhere.
There seems to be some inequities in the system that pushed already-affected psychopaths over the edge. Although, I suspect that, for such ripe melons as Mark Hacking and Scott Peterson, murder was more a question of “when” than “if”. Crazy people enjoy being “victims” as much as liberals do. But, who besides Clarice Starling can get inside the head of a nut job.
There are, however, a few chinks in the system that might drastically disturb the already disturbed. As Pat Brown earlier observed, a woman has complete control over the fate of her pregnancy while her male co-conspirator is left legally whistling into the wind.
Men have no reproductive rights. Roe v. Wade perpetuates a woman’s reproductive rights past the initial point of conception. A woman can circumvent parenthood through abortion without regard to the objection of the biological father. Yet, biological fathers are not able to circumvent parenthood through the waiving of parental rights. In the absence of guaranteed child support payments and/or welfare payments, how many women would still choose to have the child?
If the woman chooses to waive her parental rights through abortion, would it be unfair for the biological father to retain rights to the fertilized egg? If the father technologically enables the fertilized egg to become a life, would it not be fair for the biological mother to be responsible for child support payments...even if she preferred an abortion?
And speaking of child support payments. The argument is made that child support is for the benefit of the child. If this is true, why doesn’t the law require that the non-custodial parent pay support to a supervised account? This would mandate statutory requirements on the custodial parent to spend that money solely for the benefit of the child. At present, child support is often nothing more than tax-free ex-spousal support. It swells the custodial parent's household income with no legal requirement to spend it on the child.
Child support formulas are based upon the incomes of both parents and have no direct correlation to the basic living expenses or needs of the child. Local economies determine the basic living costs associated with raising a child adequately. Why can’t this amount be determined on a state-by-state basis with the courts requiring this amount to be paid proportionately by both parents based on custodial timeshare? Constitutionally this would afford all American children of single parents equal protection under the law.
Capping child support at a locally adequate amount leaves the lifestyle decisions to a mutually negotiated outcome between the two biological parents. Parental income is a guarantee to an adequate life, not a passport to a lifestyle. A child’s lifestyle has always been a discretionary decision negotiated between parents. It is not a right. And neither should income levels be used as a screen for increasing custodial parental income in the name of child support.
Is it possible that heavily female biased inequities in the system pushed crazy males to even crazier deeds? Perhaps someday the Post will publish a part four to their series and give the reader the real story behind the story.
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