Petit writes: "Over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members. That is nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The child maltreatment death rate in the US is triple Canada's and 11 times that of Italy. Millions of children are reported as abused and neglected every year."
Every five hours a child dies from abuse or neglect in the US. (photo: file)
FOCUS: America's Child Death Shame
18 October 11
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The BBC's full investigative series - America's Child Death Shame - is available online here. -- JPS/RSN
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Why is the problem of violence against children so much more acute in the US than anywhere else in the industrialized world, asks Michael Petit, President of Every Child Matters.
ver the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members. That is nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The child maltreatment death rate in the US is triple Canada's and 11 times that of Italy. Millions of children are reported as abused and neglected every year. Why is that?
Downward Spiral
Part of the answer is that teen pregnancy, high-school dropout, violent crime, imprisonment, and poverty - factors associated with abuse and neglect - are generally much higher in the US.
Further, other rich nations have social policies that provide child care, universal health insurance, pre-school, parental leave and visiting nurses to virtually all in need.
In the US, when children are born into young families not prepared to receive them, local social safety nets may be frayed, or non-existent. As a result, they are unable to compensate for the household stress the child must endure.
In the most severe situations, there is a predictable downward spiral and a child dies. Some 75% of these children are under four, while nearly half are under one.
Geography matters a lot in determining child well-being. Take the examples of Texas and Vermont.
Texas prides itself in being a low tax, low service state. Its per capita income places it in the middle of the states, while its total tax burden - its willingness to tax itself - is near the bottom.
Vermont, in contrast, is at the other extreme. It is a high-tax, high-service state.
Mix of Risks
In looking at key indicators of well-being, children from Texas are twice as likely to drop out of high school as children from Vermont. They are four times more likely to be uninsured, four times more likely to be incarcerated, and nearly twice as likely to die from abuse and neglect.
In Texas, a combination of elements add to the mix of risks that a child faces. These include a higher poverty rate in Texas, higher proportions of minority children, lower levels of educational attainment, and a political culture which holds a narrower view of the role of government in addressing social issues.
Texas, like many other traditionally conservative states, is likely to have a weaker response to families that need help in the first place, and be less efficient in protecting children after abuse occurs.
The sharp differences between the states raises the question of an expanded federal role.
Are children Texas children first? Or are they first American children with equal opportunity and protection?
Blame Parents?
A national strategy, led by our national government, needs to be developed and implemented. For a start, the Congress should adopt legislation that would create a National Commission to End Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities.
And no children's programmes should be on the chopping block, federal or state. Children did not crash the US economy. It is both shortsighted economic policy and morally wrong to make them pay the price for fixing it.
But instead as the US economy lags, child poverty soars, and states cut billions in children's services, we are further straining America's already weak safety net.
Inevitably, it means more children will die. The easy answer is to blame parents and already burdened child protection workers. But easy answers don't solve complex problems.
And with millions of children injured and thousands killed, this problem is large indeed, and it deserves a large response.
Michael Petit is the president of Every Child Matters. He served as the state of Maine's human services commissioner, and as deputy of the Child Welfare League of America.
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Do you really think that pregnant teenagers don't think of the child as well?
How comes the Greedy Old Pharts always stand up for freedom but in that case?
Get a life, not a "partial life survival".
What I find so obscene is that those who are against abortion and the right for individual women to choose for themselves, do not provide any solution for raising the fetus once it is born and becomes a person. No longer do organizations such as Planned Parenthood have a right to help, but where is the right wing/religious people when these fetuses who are growing up? NOWHERE!!
I am 65 and was raised when abortion was illegal - it was horrific what girls and young women had to resort to. I cannot believe how this country has gone back 50 years due to a vocal minority!!!
You and I are of the same generation. We've seen that the "Moral" Christian right are the first ones to vote to end Aid to the poor and social programs that help children survive. They worship the fetus and loathe the child. That's the way they operate.
The sad truth is that there is no reasoning with them. They will NOT change their belief that it is their duty to dictate and legislate their idea of morality for every woman. The only way we protected women before was to unite, march, put on the pressure and demand.
The only politician who will help is the politician who is afraid of losing votes and money. My biggest fear is that younger women won't stand up to defend themselves until things get much worse and they begin to see and experience the crimes that we saw and experienced.
I, too, was raised in a Catholic home before abortion rights. I had a child and gave it up for adoption because I couldn't afford to raise it. Hardest thing I ever did. Regrets beyond belief. Memories I will never forget. If I could have had an abortion without my parents knowing I was pregnant, I would have done it, but I had no money, I was afraid, and I had been told it was "a sin." Thankfully, I did not resort to the horrendous "options" that were available. But I live with loss and regret for not having the choice to go to a physician and get a safe abortion.
Mississippi, and any state who throws women's right to choose what to do safely with their bodies, should check their bogus "morality" at the door and work to help the poorest among us who cannot help themselves: children born into poverty. The number is rising, and these moronic public "servants" continue to decimate "after-birth" programs, as peace2012 and many others have pointed out. Antiquated thinking by a very sick minority.
Watch out, Bubba, we women who KNOW the truth of that horrendous scenario (thank you, Dr. Gunter for your amazing article) will NOT go lightly into that all-too-familia r dark night at any voting booths. Say, bye bye!
N.
What I find so obscene is the "moral" Right to Life group is fanatically obsessed with the potential life of an embryo and want it to have the legal rights of a citizen. Yet the life of full grown women, who are already citizens, many of whom are already mothers with other children depending on them, is meaningless to them. And they have no qualms about stripping women of their rights, health and even their lives. Where is the morality in that? There is no compassion, no Christian love, no ability to walk in another's shoes in that group. Their senseless cruelty is an abomination
That anyone would deny a woman a medically safe abortion is patently uncivilized.
That males, who never have to deal with the reality of being pregnant, should have any say in this "issue" is absurd. Hear that Bubba? When was the last time ol' Bubba was pregnant?
That all the sanctity of life folks care so much for the lives of the unborn, but seem so unconcerned about the sanctity of the lives of the young whose lives are wasted in warfare. Warfare is very, very late term abortion.
But, really, unwanted pregnancies are the result of ill-advised heterosexual sex (except in cases of rape/coerced sex). No woman I've ever known is thrilled about having an abortion, safe or otherwise. Ergo, the key is self-control and conscious, aware reproduction by both genders involved. A tall order when what you want is "just" to have sex, but it is the only way to make abortion (almost)unneces sary.
Really 'we all'? Where did 'you all' get that statistic or did you just make it up? Do you support planned parenthood's work in contraception and as noted by another commenter are you onboard for supporting a child? You can't have it both ways. What about rape? You say 'when she decides to have sex' so if she doesn't decide? Really, stop tossing your values at us. Stop trying to control women. We are so tired of people like you.
I would also ask what makes you think the "unborn child" has a point of view?
RIP
And why do they not have a campaign against condoms? Because makes it is a males right to contraception and makes his wife or female partner subordinate to him.
What a crock!!!
I suspect these clowns would like to end sex inside of marriage unless it is for procreation. Makes you wonder what they are doing wrong.
Multiple barriers are in place to access family planning. Rape is a common weapon of persecution and war. All the religions are anti-abortion. The every day reality is children dying of starvation as their fathers are killed or used for forced labor. Illegal, i.e. unsafe, abortions, are widespread, deadly and performed and sought by people that are murderous thugs but people who care to prevent suffering and death later on.
But what, in the name of G-d can we do to rid ourselves of them?
Any ideas?
I also had to have an illegal abortion and I thank God I did not go through what others in my era did. It was not only heartless, but traumitized the girl for years - I still can't forget it to this day over 47 years later. That is what is soooo disgusting when certain politicians and "groups" make us look at the abortion procedure, vaginal examinations and looking at the screen to see an abortion. It's barbaric. Don't these people realize NO ONE wants an abortion, but when a WOMAN does it is desperate circumstances.
MD46 - Comforting in some respects to know that there are still women out there that remember what it was like when abortions where self done or in a secret location! STOP THIS INSANE WAR AGAINST WOMEN11111
I'm happy for you and I'm glad that your granddaughter has a loving grandfather and, I assume, loving adoptive parents. And I hope that your granddaughters birth mother is comfortable with her decision and not sometimes haunted by it.
However, not all unwanted pregnancies have happy endings. Many end up with battered children in ERs or abused in other ways, unadoptable children bounced from foster home to foster home or warehoused by social services till they are 18 and many, many children living in poverty with fewer and fewer social services.
One size does not fit all. Just because You are happy to have your granddaughter (and I'm glad that you do) doesn't mean that all women should be "morally" or legally forced to have children they know they can not support and raise.
And desperate women WILL get abortions no matter what the law says. Women will succumb to the most terrible of actions in order to avoid having a child they know they can not care for. Try to think about what that says .... women will suffer dreadful pain, maim, even kill themselves.
Illegal abortion often results in the loss of two lives rather than the loss of one. Is that what "Pro-Life" stands for?
1.The decision to have an abortion is not up to you or any legislature, it is a decision to be made between a woman and her doctor. If you don't want an abortion, don't have one.
2. Until you are capable of becoming pregnant it is non of your business what decisions a woman makes regarding her reproductive health.
3. Pro choice is just that..the ability to make a decision about your own health without intereference from outsiders.
4. I'm frankly tired of you know nothings trying to legislate your pseudo morality on the rest of us. If you argued as passionately for educating people on how not to get pregnant you might have a valid point.
5. Until you are willing to step up and do something about the number of people in this country living at or below poverty please refrain from judging others.
6. Passing laws outlawing abortion isn't going to stop it from occuring, it will just cause more women to suffer and/or die needlessly.
As someone once said..."If men were able to get pregnant, birth control and abortion would be sacraments."
I know you love your granddaughter. Do you want her to live in a world where her rights to safe medical care can be taken away from her based on the "moral" judgement of "some".
Whether she would or would not ever want an abortion isn't the actual point, wouldn't you want her and her friends to at least have access to safe medical care? Or would you want her and her friends to be consigned to a pile of newspapers in an abandoned building with a "practitioner"? It's not about approving of abortion it's about medical safety for all girls and women no matter what their decision might be.
You and I will NEVER be able to control other peoples decision as to whether or not they have an abortion but we can keep the government out of it and see to it that it is not criminalized thus becoming a death sentence for young girls and women. It's the Pro-Life thing to do.
I'm glad that you have a wonderful granddaughter, but your reasoning is weak. Keeping abortion safe and legal will not eliminate the availability of children to adopt. There have always been MANY children in need of safe and loving homes.
And I speak from experience when I say it's not six short months a woman gives up to bring the "child" to term. When I had my planned and wanted child, it involved many months of poor sleep, back pain, and severe joint swelling BEFORE the birth, and a couple more months of recovery after my (unplanned) C-section. Thankfully I have excellent health care and paid sick leave through my job, but I know how blessed I am. (And yes, I'm a practicing Christian ,too.)
A woman's body and brain are permanently changed by the hormones and physical trauma of bringing a child into the world, and if you haven' been through it yourself, you shouldn't lecture others about what a small price it is to pay.
I do not see abortion as pro-death, it is pro-choice, whatever that choice may be. Choice=Freedom= Responsibility for your own actions.
Poor women will die.