Unexpected Cause of Death

When I was pregnant with my children, I lived in a happy bubble. Friends and family were unusually kind and helpful. Strangers held doors for me, asked me when I was due, smiled, etc. In my somewhat naive and isolated state, I assumed the world was a good place and that kindness was always extended to the "expectant ones".

Jenny McMechen, 24, was shot in a friend's home in Plainfield, Conn., and Kerry Repp, 29, was shot in her Oregon bedroom, and Tasha Winters, 16, was shot in Indiana. Ardena Carter, 24, was found dead in the Georgia woods, and Kathleen Terry, 22, was run over in Idaho, and Melesha Francis, 26, was strangled in New York, and Thelma Jones, 21, was shot sitting on her back steps in Louisiana. What did all these murdered women have in common? They were all pregnant.

When I posted yesterday, I was torn between doing a story on the prevalence of murder of pregnant women or writing about other cases of women being killed for the harvesting of their unborn child. I chose the latter.

Today, the Washington Post has a story on murder statistics for pregnant women in general. 5 years ago a study in Maryland was done on the death rate in pregnancy. The two health care workers performing this study using sophisticated data to spot previously overlooked maternal deaths, expected to find more deaths from medical complications than previously reported. What they found was astounding. Their study, published in 2001 in the Journal of the American Medical Association states "a pregnant or recently pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause."


Do I still feel people overall are kind and helpful to the pregnant? I do. Do I still feel for the most part the world is a good place? I do. However, there is evil out there and sometimes it has a most unexpected face.