Study links abortion restrictions and intimate partner homicide

  (Raw Story) : A new study links abortion restrictions to an increased risk that pregnant people will be murdered by their intimate partners—and since researchers examined laws that were in place before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and cleared the way for statewide abortion bans, the authors warn that the threat may be even greater than the analysis shows. In the study released Monday, researchers at Tulane University looked at five separate abortion restrictions and compared them to the intimate partner homicide rates reported by the National Violent Death Reporting System at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For each of the abortion restrictions, all of which were in place from 2014-22, the rate of intimate partner homicide among women and girls of reproductive age rose 3.4%. The researchers found that extrapolated across the United States, an additional 24 women were killed by their intimate partners over the time period. The study controlled for domestic violence risk factors including income inequality and gun ownership. Intimate partner homicide is "consistently among the leading causes of death in pregnant and postpartum people," lead author Maeve Wallace, an associate professor at Tulane, toldThe Guardian. Because it is still relatively rare, however, the research team used girls and women of reproductive age as a proxy for victims of violence who were likely pregnant or postpartum. "In thinking about pregnancy itself as a risk factor for homicide, it follows that the ability to prevent or end a pregnancy" could have ..