Murder is leading cause of death among pregnant woman

[shereads]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10785-2004Dec18.html


This was in the Washington Post as a side story associated with the Scott Petersen verdict. Apparently a lot of eager daddies-to-be aren't quite.

 

[cantdog]

But Jack Levin of Northeastern University stressed the counterpoint. "This should not have to become an epidemic to get the public's attention," he said.

Determining the precise risk of homicide for new and expectant mothers is not easy, said researcher Isabelle Horon, because the number of pregnancies in a year is unclear.

It still doesn't have the public's attention, even though it is an epidemic. Nor the demographers' attention, since there are no figures.

Great. I thought they mostly just left them.

 

[minsue]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10785-2004Dec18.html


This was in the Washington Post as a side story associated with the Scott Petersen verdict. Apparently a lot of eager daddies-to-be aren't quite.

And, as shown again tragically, some wishing to be mommies are frighteningly eager.

*shudder* either way

 

[BlackShanglan]

Terrifying. It's hard to imagine a person, in the normal run of things, more unusually vulnerable than a pregnant woman. One would think every humane impulse in us would be to protect this person.

*shudder*

Hyenas on a kill.

Shanglan

 

[SeaCat]

Terrifying. It's hard to imagine a person, in the normal run of things, more unusually vulnerable than a pregnant woman. One would think every humane impulse in us would be to protect this person.

*shudder*

Hyenas on a kill.

Shanglan

Nah dude, don't be running down Hyenas by comparing them to these cretins. Animals at least have an excuse.

Cat

 

[BlackShanglan]

Nah dude, don't be running down Hyenas by comparing them to these cretins. Animals at least have an excuse.

Cat

You took the thought from me. Even as I typed, I was thinking of:

"The Hyenas"

AFTER the burial-parties leave
And the baffled kites have fled;
The wise hyænas come out at eve
To take account of our dead.
How he died and why he died
Troubles them not a whit.
They snout the bushes and stones aside
And dig till they come to it.

They are only resolute they shall eat
That they and their mates may thrive,
And they know that the dead are safer meat
Than the weakest thing alive.

(For a goat may butt, and a worm may sting,
And a child will sometimes stand;
But a poor dead soldier of the King
Can never lift a hand.)

They whoop and halloo and scatter the dirt
Until their tushes white
Take good hold in the army shirt,
And tug the corpse to light,

And the pitiful face is shewn again
For an instant ere they close;
But it is not discovered to living men—
Only to God and to those

Who, being soulless, are free from shame,
Whatever meat they may find.
Nor do they defile the dead man’s name—
That is reserved for his kind.

-- Rudyard Kipling

 

[cantdog]

Faces from a Bestiary

suggested by the 12th century Livre des Créatures of Philip de Thaun

1
The Lion sleeps with open eyes
That none may take him by surprise.
The Son of God he signifies

For when a Lion stillborn lies
His mother circles him and cries
And on the third day he will rise.

2
Hyena is a beast to hate.
No man hath seen him copulate.
He is unto himself a mate.

You who this creature emulate
And with your mirrors fornicate
Do not repent. It is too late.

--X.J. Kennedy

 

[cantdog]

Hyenas always used to get bad press.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Hyenas always used to get bad press.

Like Lawyers and dentists.

 

[Guest]

Sher, that was news to me (and not that much is these days). Didn't take long for it to sink in though. And yet too many people still wonder what feminism is about. What a fucking cruel history our sex has had.

Perdita

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

This highlights an interesting reflection on a recent change in public attitudes.

If a pregnant woman died of illness or of complications during childbirth that was a public health problem, and worthy of study to improve performance. If her husband killed her, it was crime, evil, or sin. Only the cops, judges, and clergymen need notice.

Now, those murders are being considered a societal issue, and so become a “social” cause of death, qualifying to be noticed and studied as a public health issue.

Someone is bound to decide that this “trend” is caused by porn, drugs, or inexpensive imported Canadian medicine, but the truth is more likely that this has been going on for some length of time in the past.

These statistics are news only because no one bothered measuring this before.

 

[Guest]

These statistics are news only because no one bothered measuring this before.

Yes, I think that's the point of the article. Similarly, women's health and medical issues have just barely begun to be studied (financed by the feds). And the 'new wave' of feminism began 30+ years ago. P.

 

[cantdog]

Murder is reported as murder rates, and as crime rates. It is not considered a medical problem, so it doesn't figure in medical statistics. It's simply a method of categorizing in advance of the compiling of the figures.

Categories are another thing which is personal. I hate sites and books and library search systems which go by category, because the categories only really make total sense to the one mind which thought them up in the first place. Other minds, other categories.

Categories in anything create platypuses, too. There's nothing weird or strange about a platypus. Its unique-seeming place in the scheme of things is purely the result of the category system being used to pigeonhole animal life.

In this cae, the category division between "crime" and "medical" was pernicious. I do not see the problem as a deliberate sweeping of murder in pregnancy under the metaphorical rug.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Faces from a Bestiary

suggested by the 12th century Livre des Créatures of Philip de Thaun

1
The Lion sleeps with open eyes
That none may take him by surprise.
The Son of God he signifies

For when a Lion stillborn lies
His mother circles him and cries
And on the third day he will rise.

2
Hyena is a beast to hate.
No man hath seen him copulate.
He is unto himself a mate.

You who this creature emulate
And with your mirrors fornicate
Do not repent. It is too late.

--X.J. Kennedy

I love those lines. I will have to look for more from that.

Shanglan

 

[Liar]

For some reason, the article doesn't load for me. What I wanted to know from it was: Has the murder rate of pregnant women gone up to make it the no 1 death cause, or has the other causes like illness and such gone down? Is this a case of a good thing shedding light on a bad thing?

#L

 

[cantdog]

It's just that a researcher was looking through the death lists. Complications of pregnancy causing death are 'way down, it says here, from x decades ago. The researcher was checking. Murder kept cropping up. Is it just this one town?

Nope, says the article, citing at least two others. The relative trend of the proportion of murders to other death causes is unknown because no one took the figures in this way before, as far as we know.

No data over time, but the absolute figures are staggering. The article throws me off now, too.

cantdog

 

[cantdog]

I love those lines. I will have to look for more from that.

Shanglan

I love X.J. Kennedy. He came in to my only English class, Eh5, to read. At the time, this was all there was to the Bestiary thing, and it was as yet uncollected.

Solitary Confinement

She might have stolen from his arms
Except that there was nothing left
To steal. There was the crucifix
Of silver good enough to hock
But how far could she go on it
And what had he left her to pack
And steal away with and lay down
By someone new in a new town?

And so she put the notion back
And turned her look up to the clock
Green ghost, swept round its tethered hand
That had made off with so many nights
But no more could break from its shelf
Than she could quit this bed where breath
By breath these years he'd nailed her fast
Between two thieves, him and herself.

--X.J. Kennedy

 

[Kassiana]

Determining the precise risk of homicide for new and expectant mothers is not easy,

Then forgive me if I take this article with a bit of skepticism. If you don't know the "precise risk," then you can't really say if it's the leading cause of death or not, can you?

I remember the "Super Bowl Sunday" supposed abuse link from years ago, too, that was shown to be a sham and a lie. I'm all for ending real violence against women, but not for fearmongering and frightening people with stories that are about fake violence against women.

 

[cantdog]

Who would know better if the husband was the sort of guy who needed killing than the wife?

Who is better placed to determine that the wife needs to be killed than the husband?

In every homicide, the spouse is a cardinal suspect unless ruled out somehow. Marriage is proven dangerous!

cantdog

 

[cantdog]

But I looked him up. He did not die after all. Dear me. I have some catching up to do!

 

[Gary Chambers]

It’s the Puritans again. They need people they can condemn; people they can suppress and dismiss; people they can leave suffering in hardship. The inadequate and antisocial nature of Puritans makes them need victims the way normal people need friends or lovers. Puritans urgently need to believe that their procreation is God's work, done out of necessity alone and in a way that is wholesome, while other people's procreation is just filth aimed at self gratification. That's why in North America, the great bastion of puritanism, the line between erotica and porn has grown blurry. Erotica is all about loving, but only Puritans are allowed to love, so any sexuality not endorsed by the brethren must be relegated to the porn pile, where it can be dismissed or banned in bulk.

In a society so completely dominated by puritanical ideals, a pregnant woman can easily become a symbol of how wretched and inadequate we all are.

"Look at her. She was probably a crack whore before the pregnancy, and the child will be born an addict. Killing them both now would almost be forgivable."

The good Puritan is not devoted to principles of human dignity, but to a separate paradigm that began as independent religious colonialism, and has progressed some four centuries later into imperial religious corporatism. It's okay for Donald Trump to have groupies, because he's living proof that puritanism results in greatness in the end. Modern denizens of corporatism like Trump are the puritanical equivalent of the Muslim prophets, fawned over by harems of obedient sex slaves in their lifetimes, and rewarded in the afterlife with yet nineteen more fresh virgins.

Real human sexuality is of no use to Puritans. A woman who gets pregnant outside the closed boundaries of a puritanical relationship, community and lifestyle, must be rejected. She's trash; a sore on the face of the community. Her pregnancy will trap her, and her man and ultimately their child too, into a life of service to the prince of darkness. Even if they were married in a church, unless they truly live the ideals of puritanism their marriage is just a sham.

"Look what she's done to him. She has him trapped and shackled. He should kill her now, for she is obviously a witch."

Her man will be cleansed by the spilling of her blood, and the community will later be cleansed by the spilling of his. Condemnation all around. It’s good for the soul.

Am I reaching? Am I stretching? You bet I am, but I am also reminded of the law I was told about the other day. I'm told that in Texas strippers must now wear identification tags, setting them apart from other women, branding their sexuality dangerous and unclean. God save the Texas stripper who gets pregnant and sets up house with some good ole’boy whose ancestors sailed on the Mayflower. Those tags make her worthless. She’s his to do with as he pleases. To maintain an appearance of propriety they will later hang him too if he kills her, but when they’re both gone Texas will once again be a better place to live. Go ahead, tell me it isn’t so. I want to see you stretch and reach too.

 

[cantdog]

There's the yellow "Jude" tag

First of the new season. They've decided to use the regular cops for brownshirts, I guess. They don't rally and hail victory so good, but the wear the black armor and face the populace down into their "free speech zones" just fine.

Stripper tags. Mother fuck.

Hey Lisa! You heard about that one? I thought all you did to be a stripper was be the one on the pillion of the bouncer's Harley. Should have been tag enough for anyone.

 

[Pure]

It's worth noting that much of the source of these murders is pre-existing domestic abuse situations.

As the Post article says, "for more than 70% of abused women, pregnancy does little to change the status quo...."

A not-small number of women have mates or boyfriends who are dangerous at certain times (e.g., esp. when the woman wants to leave). Domestic violence against women (including violence against 'girl friends') is a major problem.

 

[rgraham666]

There's something very strange about human nature if it can allow anhedonia (the inability to enjoy pleasure) to become a cultural norm.

And stripper tags? Jesus H. Christ. It's amazing how far people can fall.

Myself? A guy starts beating a woman around me and I'll stop him. Did it once. I'll do it again.

I think one of the main problems is that English only has one 'my'.

There's the 'my' of property. I can take a baseball bat to my computer. It would be stupid, but not evil.

There is the 'my' of a relationship of responsibility. It's not allowed for me to take a baseball bat to an employee. They aren't property. To do so would be evil.

And there is the 'my' of emotional ties. Taking a baseball bat to a spouse or SO is really evil. Unforgivable in my ethical spectrum.

But because we have only one 'my' people get very confused over which of these relationships is the one they make decisions on.

To reiterate, people are not property.