Prometheus 6

Not only does this story NEED to get out, they linked Black and Missing but not Forgotten, whose mission I totally support.

Cases of maternal homicide involving minority women are underreported and underpublicized.

According to the CDC, black women have a maternal homicide risk about seven times that of white women. Black women ages 25-29 are about 11 times more likely as white women in that age group to be murdered while pregnant or in the year after childbirth.

Murdered Pregnant Women: The Racial Divide
April 11, 2008
(CBS) By CBSNews.com's Lindsay Goldwert

When Laci Peterson became the symbol of maternal homicide in the mass media and in the law books (the Violence Against Unborn Children Act is also known as the Laci and Connor's Law), it put a white face on the horrendous crime of maternal homicide. In reality, that face is actually young, and often, black.

Reality has been further complicated lately with two more high-profile cases of white pregnant women being killed by their boyfriends: Maria Lauterbach, a pregnant Marine whose body was found alongside her fetus' charred remains; and the guilty verdict against Bobby Cutts, a former Ohio police officer convicted of killing his pregnant girlfriend and disposing of her body in the woods. Both stories dominated the airwaves earlier this year.

Lauterbach's accused killer, also a Marine, was captured Thursday in Mexico after a three-month manhunt.

Left behind in much of the media attention is a slew of similar cases involving black women.

• On June 13, 2007 Dawna Denise Wright was at her job, managing the office of a San Diego neurologist. At 2 p.m., a man came to her office bearing a bouquet of roses. "Are these for me?" she reportedly said, surprised. The man took out a gun and shot her.

  Her killer was her on-and-off boyfriend, Roger McDowell, who was also the father of her 8-year-old daughter. An hour later, he confessed to the police but plead not guilty to murder charges.

  Wright was three months pregnant with McDowell's child.

• On Sept. 8, 2007 in Louisa, Va., Irwin Fountain, 28, was found guilty of shooting his 18-year-old girlfriend, Shantay Latrice Wheeler, 18, to death and dumping her body. Fountain, who was married at the time of the murder, had given Wheeler money for an abortion and became infuriated when he discovered that she was 8 ½-months pregnant. Her body was found in a field five months later with multiple gunshot wounds.
• On February 7, 2007, Adrian Estrada, a 23-year-old San Antonio youth pastor received the death penalty for choking and stabbing 17-year-old Stephanie Sanchez to death and leaving her to bleed to death on her kitchen floor. Prosecutors said he was angry because the teenager, who told him she had been in love with him, had become pregnant with his child.

Cases of maternal homicide involving minority women are underreported and underpublicized.

According to the CDC, black women have a maternal homicide risk about seven times that of white women. Black women ages 25-29 are about 11 times more likely as white women in that age group to be murdered while pregnant or in the year after childbirth.

Experts say that a fear and mistrust of the police may lead to black women keeping silent about their suffering.

These women may be afraid that by calling the police, they may be endangering their partner.

"An abused wife or girlfriend may be hesitant to call 911 for fear that he'll be treated violently or even killed by the police," says Theryn Kigvamasud'Vashti, co-director of Communities Against Rape and Abuse in Seattle.