1,367 maternal homicides over 14 years.

[MA-Caver]

This story is something out of a Dean Koonz novel. What's scary is that it's not a novel. The headline caught my eye while browsing the Yahoo main page and click and read the story. Link
Couldn't believe what I was seeing but the possibility is there.
My first thought was that it is Satanists doing their "work" slowly and quietly. I mean the best cover is not to look like one. We get this idea of who/what consitutes as a devil worshipper from images of Charlie Manson and Squeeky Frome and Anton Le'Vey and so forth.
A popular line in several movies says: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist". This would go for those who worshipped him.
I can't think of anything else that it can be. The results are alarming enough, but the cause is a mystery.
Scott Peterson, Mark Hacking and a couple of others drew media attention but as the article states these others gotten a few lines and then faded to obscurity.
What are your thoughts... read the article, share your thoughts and insights.
I'm willing to say I was being Chicken Little on this... if someone has a better idea of what it might be.

 

[Whitebelt]

Wow

 

[Feisty Mouse]

While it is horrific, perhaps I am jaded enough not to be so so shocked, although I am horrified.

I believe raedyn mentioned it on the thread about Peterson - why is everyone so fixated on his case? This is something that, very sadly, occurs.

Domestic violence and spousal (or "significant other") assault and murder have been a problem for quite a while now. If a man is so ****ed up that he wants to strangle or shoot or whatever his wife, or ex-wife, or girlfriend, etc. - why would her being pregnant stop him? This is already someone who treats the person he "loves" with cruelty - why should the idea of a baby magically change him from a monster to a kind, soft-hearted person?

Some of the cases mentioned sounded like that *because* the male S.O. found out she was pregnant, that's maybe why he killed her.

Such as:

Three weeks after Peterson disappeared in Modesto, Quinnisha Thomas lost her life in Sacramento, 80 miles away. Eight months pregnant, Thomas, 18, was walking home from a grocery store when her ex-boyfriend shot her in the head execution-style because, prosecutors said, he believed fatherhood would get in the way of his music career. "This was a big, major inconvenience for him," prosecutor Mark Curry said.

For someone who wants a particular goal ... NO MATTER WHAT ... shooting your "baby mama" may be thought to be some sort of sick option.

It is horrible. It's a good article - I'm glad you posted it.

But I'm not stunned. Men who will torture and kill their loved ones when not pregnant will have no problem doing it when they *are* pregnant, I guess.

We do seem to see motherhood and pregnancy as this protected time - and I'm sure that would be great, if pregnant women would be treated nicely, left alone, etc. But some may see it as a time that the woman is weak - or threatening their own selfish life with the life of another.

 

[Lisa]

Disgusted? Yes
Surprised? No

Anyone who puts no value on human life wouldn't think twice about doing someone in regardless of being pregnant or not.

 

[Cryozombie]

Please note... I am NOT condoning anything here... nor trying to misplace the blame for what these people do... Im trying to think like them... and see if I can "get into" their heads a bit... its all speculation, based on how I could feel IF i suddenly found out someone was preganant with my child AND I was totaly messed up in the head... That said, here goes...

I think that with society squarley on the womans side in issues of Child Custody, Abuse/domestic violence, Child Support, right to choose (how many times have I heard "if you arent a woman you have no say in wether she keeps the baby its her body") etc...

So if I found out one day that my GF was pregnant, and I didnt want her to have the child, because I wasnt mature enough to handle it, couldnt afford it, etc etc... I would DESPAIR at the options and resources availible to help ME in my situation, should she not consider giving it up... The courts wont take pity on ME, they will on her... etc... and of course, a normal, rational person would deal with the situation and plod thru as best as they can... but then add the element of being messed in the head... these guys are taking the chance at getting away with what they see as the only way out.

Again, the fact that they have no recourse but to pay for 18 years because they had a child is not an excuse to do that, there is no excuse to do that... but I wonder if there were "safety features" built into the system to help FATHERS of unwanted pregnancys if that might keep their "switch" from getting flipped...

I dunno...

And I could be way off base, but thats what I think.

 

[kenpo tiger]

Please note... I am NOT condoning anything here... nor trying to misplace the blame for what these people do... Im trying to think like them... and see if I can "get into" their heads a bit... its all speculation, based on how I could feel IF i suddenly found out someone was preganant with my child AND I was totaly messed up in the head... That said, here goes...

I think that with society squarley on the womans side in issues of Child Custody, Abuse/domestic violence, Child Support, right to choose (how many times have I heard "if you arent a woman you have no say in wether she keeps the baby its her body") etc...

So if I found out one day that my GF was pregnant, and I didnt want her to have the child, because I wasnt mature enough to handle it, couldnt afford it, etc etc... I would DESPAIR at the options and resources availible to help ME in my situation, should she not consider giving it up... The courts wont take pity on ME, they will on her... etc... and of course, a normal, rational person would deal with the situation and plod thru as best as they can... but then add the element of being messed in the head... these guys are taking the chance at getting away with what they see as the only way out.

Again, the fact that they have no recourse but to pay for 18 years because they had a child is not an excuse to do that, there is no excuse to do that... but I wonder if there were "safety features" built into the system to help FATHERS of unwanted pregnancys if that might keep their "switch" from getting flipped...

I dunno...

And I could be way off base, but thats what I think.

These guys need to realize that keeping oneself to oneself, so to speak, or, put differently:

abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.

How about - it takes two to tango.

Point here is that, regardless of trying to 'get into' their heads, these guys need to exercise a little self-control so they don't get themselves into a "bad" situation.

Or is forethought too much to ask?

 

[PeachMonkey]

I'm willing to say I was being Chicken Little on this... if someone has a better idea of what it might be.

You are being Chicken Little on this, and so are the media. Just remember: if it bleeds, it leads.

It's terrible that pregnant women are murdered, but it's not new... the media are fixated on it right now because of the Peterson case.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Wow...if anything ever testified to what Neil Hertz called, "male hysteria under political pressure," it has gotta be this thread.

Yep--it's them wimmens' fault, what with, "society squarley {sic} on the womans side," and the connections to the devil, who always talked to them wimmens first of all.

If you think this is something, one strongly advises reading, say, Adrienne Rich and Klaus Thelwielt and others on the topic of male fantasy and violence--or look up some of the UN and associated NGO stats on rape in wartime.

We currently have a swaggering, back-to trad values President, desperately overcompensating for having ducked when it came his time to serve. Our society has completely wrapped itself around patriarchy and exploitation; screw the poor and the desperate, gimme something big to hold on to. Boneheads across the country sweat to get a bigger n' bigger--SUV--and bank account, and to stick it to the next guy.
No wonder one suspects that violence against women has a distict homosexual component to it. And always had; these events aren't new, or even surprising.

 

[Melissa426]

Rae Carruth ring a bell? How about Steve Muhammad of the Colts?

It's not a rich/poor issue.
It's not a highly educated/poor education issue.
It's not a black/white/hispanic/asian issue.
It's not an teenager/older woman issue, either.

It's absolutely NOT a new issue.

The article linked to points out the deaths. What about injuries that did not lead to death?

It is largely an ignored issue, until for whatever reason, a "media-appealling" victim , like Laci or Jon-Benet ( absolutely no disrespect intended to these two tragically short lives) Why?

I think too many people still blame the victim, especially if she is a young, unwed minority member. Unfortunately we (the generic "we") will probably forget about this issue too once the media decides to shove something else in our face . Next month it will all be about child porn and child molestion once the Michael Jackson trial starts and once again people will be shocked and appalled about what's going on in every neighborhood and town and state and country.

OK, getting off my soap box.

Melissa

 

[kenpo tiger]

Rae Carruth ring a bell? How about Steve Muhammad of the Colts?

It's not a rich/poor issue.
It's not a highly educated/poor education issue.
It's not a black/white/hispanic/asian issue.
It's not an teenager/older woman issue, either.

It's absolutely NOT a new issue.

The article linked to points out the deaths. What about injuries that did not lead to death?

It is largely an ignored issue, until for whatever reason, a "media-appealling" victim , like Laci or Jon-Benet ( absolutely no disrespect intended to these two tragically short lives) Why?

I think too many people still blame the victim, especially if she is a young, unwed minority member. Unfortunately we (the generic "we") will probably forget about this issue too once the media decides to shove something else in our face . Next month it will all be about child porn and child molestion once the Michael Jackson trial starts and once again people will be shocked and appalled about what's going on in every neighborhood and town and state and country.

OK, getting off my soap box.

Melissa

What about that poor woman in Texas who drowned her four children? She didn't have visible injuries, but she was obviously a victim (in my opinion) of her husband being Mr. Macho, I need lots of male issue to carry on my name, blah, blah, blah. What about the warning signs - her depression? Outside of Medea and one or two other fictional women, a mother doesn't harm her children unless there's something very very wrong with her life. We just don't do that.

Child porn and Michael Jackson? What about the church? These topics seem to cycle in and out of the media. What's wrong with this country that people find these things titillating - along with Dr. Phil and all the other trash programs offered during the day featuring cat fights and incest?

Ok, off my soapbox, too.

 

[raedyn]

Well if the Peterson case can bring to light this problem, then good. I appreciate this article because it talks about the bigger picture a bit. Laci Peterson wasn't the first. Or the last. I do think it's probably a part of the larger domestic violence issue, as Feisty said, if you think it's okay to beat yr wife/girlfriend why would her being pregnant change anything?

 

[Cryozombie]

Point here is that, regardless of trying to 'get into' their heads, these guys need to exercise a little self-control so they don't get themselves into a "bad" situation.

Or is forethought too much to ask?

Do you mean as far as getting the woman pregnant?

Cuz, as you said, it takes 2 to tango.

 

[rmcrobertson]

W.J.T. Mitchell:

"Medusa is the perfect prototype for the image as a dangerous female other who threatens to silence the poet's voice and fixate his observing eye. Both the utopian desire of ekphrasis (that the beautiful image be present to the observer) and its counterdesire or resistance (the fear of paralysis and muteness in the face of the powerful image) are expressed here. All of the distinctions between the sublime and the beautiful, the aesthetics of pain and pleasure, or of the masculine and the feminine, that might allow ekphrasis to confine itself to the contemplation of beauty are subverted by the image of Medusa. Beauty, the very thing which aestheticians like Edmund Burke thought could be viewed from a safe position of superior strength, turns out to be itself the dangerous force: "it is less the horror than the grace" that paralyzes the observer. Medusa fully epitomizes the ambivalence that Keats hints at: instead of "teasing us out of thought" with a paralyzing eternity of perfect desolation, she paralyzes thought itself, first, by turning "the gazer's spirit into stone," and then by engraving the lineaments of the Gorgon onto the beholder's petrified spirit, "till the characters be grown / Into itself, and thought no more can trace."If ekphrasis, as a verbal representation of a visual representation, is an attempt to repress or "take dominion" over language's graphic Other, then Shelley's Medusa is the return of that repressed image, teasing us out of thought with a vengeance."