- If each of the 4,000,000 American women beaten by husbands or boyfriends in 1993 joined hands, the line
would reach from New York City to beyond Los Angeles. |
Nearly 40% of [violence] towards wives involves serious violence - punching with a fist, kicking, biting,
beating, or attack with guns or knives.In fact, women violently victimized by an intimate are more than twice as
likely to be injured (59%) than if the assailant were a stranger (27%), and are almost twice as likely to receive injuries requiring medical care. |
"Dr. Robert McAfee, president of the A.M.A., said that domestic abuse was now as critical a public health crisis as AIDS, smoking and illegal drug use."
A 1993 study of women seeking emergency room care reported that 54% had been threatened or physically injured by a husband or boyfriend at some time in their lives. |
Woman abuse results in more injuries that require medical treatment than rape, auto accidents and muggings combined. "A five year study at Yale-New Haven Hospital
concluded that 40% of all injury-related visits to the hospital by women were the result of battering." Approximately one in five battered women presenting to physicians
had sought medical attention for injuries from abuse eleven times previously. |
"[F]ewer than half the medical schools in the United States and Canada provide any training on domestic assault, and those that do typically cover the topic in one ninety-minute session."
A 1993 University of Colorado Medical School study of women who sought emergency medical care at five medical facilities reported that a "[r]eview of every available medical record (828) for the
diagnosis of DV showed that acute DV was documented in two records." |
"One study conducted at the Rush Medical Center in Chicago found the average charge for medical services to abused women, children and old people was $1,633 per person per year. (Meyer)
This would amount to a national annual cost of $857.3 million." |
Medical sources suggest that approximately 37% of obstetric patients, across class, race, and educational lines, are physically abused while pregnant. "Battered women are two to four times
more likely to have a low birth weight baby than nonbattered women." |
"Anecdotal reports of fetal injuries and death secondary to the abuse of the mother have appeared in the literature. Injuries include bruising and intraventricular hemorrhage, gastric ulceration
and hemorrhage, tibial deformity, hip dislocation, and scleral opacities. Abuse may also contribute to abruptio placentae, intrauterine death, fractures, and premature labor." |
"A five year study at Yale-New Haven Hospital ... disclosed that battering was a major precipitating factor in cases of female alcoholism and drug abuse, child abuse, attempted
suicide, and situational disorders." In one study, 80% of abuse victims reported symptoms of depression. "Battering accounts for half of all cases of alcoholism in women." |
So many battered women have been infected with HIV by batterers forcing them into unprotected sex, in some cases deliberately to prevent their having sex with other men,
that the National CDC have identified a direct link between battering and the spread of HIV and AIDS among women.
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