Violence From Male Partners Associated With Serious Health Threats to Pregnant Women and Newborns

From the Harvard School of Public Health today, this News Release:
In the first national study of the effects of intimate partner violence on the health of women during pregnancy and the health of newborn children, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) demonstrated that violence from male partners, both in the year prior to and during a woman’s pregnancy, increases her risk of serious health complications during pregnancy. Such abuse also increases a woman’s risk of delivering prematurely and that her child will be born clinically underweight and in need of intensive care. The paper appears in the July 2006 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. How many of he underweight children we see in public health clinics result from such abuse?