In Maine, 49% of the homicides that took place between 2000 and 2023 involved women who were victims of domestic violence.

As this statistic reaches the public, we know it is received with transitory astonishment – just as when the numbers of children dying from abuse or neglect surface from the Kids Count Data Center become available. Each of these murders, and those identified as consequent to domestic violence, all too quickly fade from the public view and consciousness, if not from our consciences.

Find me a media article or judicial discussion which describes suicide as an outcome for women denied reproductive choice. Find me one that points to the risk of murder of a woman or a child by domestic violence as a risk of being denied reproductive choice.

The risk of suicide, or the very real risk that a mother and a child born out of an unwanted pregnancy will be targets of ongoing or emerging domestic violence, are rarely if ever identified. An abusive relationship history does not tend to evolve into non-abusive parenting. Parenting is complex. Some traverse the complexity. Some do not.

Consumers of local news, in some cases, do not have access to reports of domestic violence beyond the first few lines of the police report. This is tantamount to our making this domestic violence victim a statistic; it has the effect of shutting down public awareness. Numbers and news headlines don’t convey the compelling detail of people’s lives or bring home the realization that anyone can become one of those numbers.

Women and men become helpless in violent and abusive relationships. Women in particular can feel utter hopelessness if impregnated by a partner whose tendencies and history suggest a future as a negligent, absent or emotionally, if not physically, abusive parent. They can themselves then unwillingly become complicit in society’s failure to prevent violence to children.

Maine’s homicide statistics, analyzed another way, reveal the number of children who have died because of abuse or neglect either before or after Child Protective Service involvement.

In 2021, 34 children died from abuse or neglect. The number was 31 in 2022 and 25 in 2023. Between 2021 and 2023, the rate of foster care placement per thousand minor-aged children ranged from 9.0 to 9.6 children. There were 2,020 children in foster care in Maine in 2021; 2,320 in 2022; and 2,401 in 2023. These numbers, from the Kids Count Data Center, are the result of deep suffering that has by then already led to removal of children from their high-risk homes, a move which sometimes succeeds and sometimes does not succeed in preventing more suffering.

These numbers are never mentioned. Despite the fawning of Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito or any number of other public figures claiming to value human beings, this society, Maine included, fails to protect children and women of child-bearing-age far more often than we ever know. We only get some indication of that failure, months and months later, amid a pile of numbers. The numbers may include women denied reproductive choice who are in deep, irreversible despair. That too we never know.

Correction (July 27, 2024): Due to an editor’s error, the word “not” was missing from the fourth paragraph. “An abusive relationship history does not tend to evolve into non-abusive parenting.”