Guns, Misogyny, and Maternal Mortality: State Sanctioned Violence Against Women

Reproductive Coercion and Systemic Violence Against  Women

In this week’s Politics of Childbirth installment, we’ll be looking at reproductive coercion and how it is part of structural violence against women. Content warning: what follows will include discussion of intimate partner/domestic violence, rape, maternal death, murder, and violence against women.

Editorial warning: I’m using my backup laptop and neither the space bar nor the c key reliably work, so this should be fun.

Attitudes about women matter

In recent weeks, the comments of a certain guy who has the VeryImportant™ job of kicking a ball, threw back into the public sphere conversations about women’s roles in society. In general, I could not care less about football bro’s comments, but it presents an opportunity to focus on some real problems with systemic, legally allowable violence against women (because I’m spending these few weeks bringing rays of sunshine to your inbox).

The problem with the “rely completely on a man” narrative is that for many women that is incredibly risky behavior (which is how we got all of the women’s rights movements throughout history). We want to trust y’all, but there’s a significant amount of statistical data that suggests we shouldn’t.

NFL Bro’s comments are frustrating because he can’t be bothered to consider that his wife is lucky enough to have a husband who “earns” a massive salary so that she can stay home and who (presumably) doesn’t abuse her financially, emotionally, physically, or otherwise. There is  nothing wrong with wanting these  traditional family roles, but there’s something  very wrong about social movements mandating this lifestyle for everyone.

Once again, I’ll say that you don’t see many women over 35 supporting this Trad Wives nonsense. Women who know what it is like to be entirely dependent on a man, also know the fear of losing that man (and his salary) to disability, death, or divorce. Even if that husband is great, there is still incredible risk in not being able to financially support yourself should the worst happen. Women have repeatedly learned what it means to be powerless and leave your children vulnerable (and then get blamed for  it).

Ultimately, internet Bros will say “women should choose better” if they don’t want to be abused or abandoned. But women did choose better. They looked at all the Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson watching dudes and said, “no thanks.” Then those same guys got all up in arms because women aren’t getting married anymore. (This is really why we need to teach Demand Side economics...Bro, get yourself in demand by treating women like humans!). It seems to be beyond their comprehension that influencers who make millions telling men to treat women like shit are selling a bad product.

If I was investing years into a product (the man-o-sphere) and repeatedly not getting what I was being told the product was for (domestic bliss with a hot wife), at some point I’d have to start thinking the product was faulty. Instead, these guys double-down and blame women because not enough of them want to be Trad Wives. The men are not ok.

But what do they say about women who expect to be financially supported in a decent house with good schools (e.g. Trad Wives)? Oh yeah, they’re gold diggers. There’s no winning for women here, but what these attitudes show is a core social value in the US: a dangerous misogyny.

Misogyny is killing women

In my research into the politics of childbirth misogyny kept coming up as the underlying cause of every problem I looked at. Misogyny, the hatred of women, is literally killing women. It kills women because  not enough doctors believe their health concerns, it kills women because everyday items are designed with men in mind, it kills women when policies to prevent domestic violence are not taken seriously and laws are not enforced, and it kills women in the traditional sense of murder and violence.

 The leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide. Usually, intimate partner homicide. The most frequent victims of these murders are Black women, particularly young women and adolescents. These numbers rose in the post-Dobbs America. Turns out when women cannot get rid of an unwanted pregnancy, men who don’t want them to be pregnant get rid of the whole woman.

Domestic Violence continues to be a serious problem in the United States. “Around 1 in 3 women report being the victim of physical violence,” and 1 in 6 say the first experience with violence was during pregnancy.  

Firearms are the leading cause  of death for pregnant women. Yet, many states allow even those convicted of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to retain access to firearms. Guns make domestic violence more likely and more deadly.  Literally the people who have shown they cannot be trusted with weapons are allowed to have them and states refuse to enact so-called red flag laws (which is probably why one of the most common elements of mass shooters is a history of domestic violence). Even when  there are red flag laws, “Constitutional sheriffs” (an extremist group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center) and other local law enforcement agencies refuse to enforce them. This is a nightmare for women who want to leave abusive situations.

Abortion Bans are violence against women

Reproductive coercion is a part of domestic violence. From sabotaging birth control to forced pregnancy or abortion, abusers will use reproduction to harm their victims. Abortion laws are a state-sanctioned type of reproductive abuse, especially given that the most dangerous time for an abuse victim is when he or she is trying to leave (the first 18-months after leaving is the red zone; this period and when deciding to leave are a common time for forced pregnancy and/or murder).

According to a study in the JAMA, a leading health journal, between July 2022 and January 2024, there were 64,000 rape-related pregnancies in states that banned abortion. The state is making it almost impossible for women* to leave abusive partners and not protecting them when they do.

*Women are not the only partners abused. Trans and nonbinary partners face difficulty in getting support, and men who are abused risk social shaming as well as a higher likelihood of losing their children to an abusive partner.

Abortion bans have lead to a 12-year old in Mississippi having to bear a child, relentless targeting of a doctor who performed an abortion for a 10-year old rape victim who had to flee the state for help, and a mother leaving the state for an abortion when she was told by the Texas Supreme Court that she did not have an exception.

Texas mother Katie Cox is a great example, actually. She was not very involved in abortion politics because she “just assumed there would be an exception for health.” And here we’re zeroing in on the problem. Too many women are willing to imperil their own lives because they think the system will protect them; it will only target those other people over there. If you’re having an abortion for the “right” reasons, you’ll be fine (the underlying misogyny assumes “bad” women are not having abortions for the right reasons). I don’t blame Katie Cox for thinking this (well, I do a little because people need to grow-up and pay attention to policies); I really blame schools for not teaching about every hard-fought victory of feminism.

Structural Violence is Violence

At the end of the day, internet comments about who gets to say what about family life matter because they reveal the social attitudes about women which underpin what becomes law. How we feel about women informs our willingness to legally and politically curtail women’s rights. This both represents and reinforces the view of women as lesser than non-women people: because women literally have fewer rights.

The kinds of violence that allow women to be murdered, the sheriffs offices that refuse to enforce red flag laws, the laws that control women’s bodies, the police who ask “why doesn’t she just leave” are all part of a larger pattern of violence against women that leads to rape and murder.

Women and children both suffer from this misogyny. No matter what advances we make in maternal health, if we do not create a world in which women are truly free and equal partners (regardless of who does what work in a relationship), then we will not stop the maternal mortality crisis at any  level. Achieving health equity means breaking down the systems that put the inequity in there: racism, classism, misogyny, and many others.