Washington, DC — For years, the killing of teenagers made the headlines. Yet, research shows babies under one year are being murdered just as often.
There's a troubling new trend developing in infant deaths: Infants are being murdered at a rate nearly equal to teenagers. A new study shows that in 2000, for every 100,000 babies born in the United States, roughly nine of them were murdered — up from 8.4 per 100,000 in 1990 and 4.3 in 1970.
Rosemary Chalk, a child abuse researcher for Child Trends — the nonprofit group that produced the study — said the infant death numbers have surprised many people.
“The infant homicide rate was, in our view … something that people had not been paying attention to,” Chalk said. “The fact that the high rates have persisted is troubling.”
There are no easy answers as to why this is happening, but Chalk said the numbers tell an important part of the story.
“All we know is that the risk factors … are very young teen mothers,” she said. “They have a low education status and in some cases a history of mental disorders as well.”
Those young unwed moms often are giving birth in isolation, feeling desperate, with no support group around them.
Debbie Velie, who heads up the ministry New Beginnings — a place where unwed moms can turn to so their baby will be adopted into a loving family — lamented the infant death statistics.
“There are just wonderful couples that are not able to have children, and I know that they'd be glad to love and raise these children that are not being given a chance in life,” Velie said.
Yet, all too often that is not happening, and it's a trend that's getting worse.
The report also indicates that half of all infant murders happen by the fourth month of life, and the risk is highest on the day the child is born. What may be most troubling is many experts believe the number of infant homicides is probably underestimated. They claim several deaths that are known to be homicides are not recorded that way in the coroner's records.
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
