Failure to Rescue Mothers from Murder

Pregnancy is a risk factor for homicide against women. Maternal mortality is a serious problem in Texas but no one else in Texas is focusing on maternal deaths from homicide.

Our team of citizen scientists and academic researchers needs your help to pay the costs of obtaining data from Medical Examiners' office across Texas.  Official death certificates often do not include information about a woman's pregnancy within one year of her murder. Without that information we  are missing cases where health and social systems failed to rescue mothers from violence and homicide. Medical Examiners' reports will help us fill the information gap.

Medical Examiners' offices charge processing fees even when the data are requested through open records statutes.  Without data we cannot learn the full extent of the tragedy of women murdered while pregnant or within one year of the end of their pregnancy.  Once we know more we can better target interventions to save mothers from violence and death.

I have successfully completed NIH funded research on infant mortality and Robert Wood Johnson funded research on Missed Nursing Care at Night and On Weekends. Now that I am retired from the university I am no longer able to obtain funds for research through those channels. Others on our team also are seasoned researchers or committed citizen scientists.  We need your help to stop the murder of mothers in Texas.   Please give what you can!