Prenatal Domestic Violence Hurts Children

Violence from male partners, prior to and during a woman’s pregnancy, increases her risk of serious health complications during pregnancy, says a U.S. study.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health say domestic violence also increases a woman’s risk of delivering prematurely and that her child will be born clinically underweight and in need of intensive care.

Women experiencing abuse in the year prior to and/or during a recent pregnancy were 40 percent to 60 percent more likely than non-abused women to report high blood pressure, vaginal bleeding, severe nausea, kidney or urinary tract infections and hospitalization during this pregnancy, according to study authors Jay Silverman and Anita Raj.

Abused women were also 37 percent more likely to deliver preterm, and children of abused women were 17 percent more likely to be born underweight. Both conditions pose grave health risks to newborns.

The study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, examined data on more than 118,000 women who gave birth to live infants from 2000 to 2003.