Clinical Scorecard: Homicide Deaths in Female Adolescents and Women Aged 15–44 Years in Relation to US State Abortion Policies
At a Glance
Category
Detail
Condition
Clinical topic addressed by the source article: Homicide Deaths in Female Adolescents and Women Aged 15–44 Years in Relation to US State Abortion Policies
Key Mechanisms
Mechanisms or clinical associations described in the source article.
Target Population
Female homicide decedents aged 15–44 years in the 50 US states and the District of Columbia; women aged 45–59 years served as a negative-control population.
Care Setting
Care setting described in the source article.
Key Highlights
The quasi-experimental study analyzed monthly homicide mortality from January 2016 through December 2024.
Homicide deaths were identified using underlying-cause codes X85–Y09 in CDC WONDER mortality records.
The primary policy comparison contrasted 11 states with sustained total or near-total abortion bans in 2023 and 2024 against other eligible states and the District of Columbia.
Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and South Carolina were excluded from policy-stratified analyses because their policy environments involved partial restrictions or legal fluidity.
The analysis used interrupted time series and comparative interrupted time series methods, with population-adjusted Poisson regression for the primary policy-stratified analysis.
Guideline-Based Recommendations
Diagnosis
Homicide mortality was defined using ICD-10 underlying-cause codes X85–Y09 in death-certificate data.
Management
Monitoring & Follow-up
Risks
The source states that homicide is consistently among the five leading causes of death among US women of reproductive age.
The source cites prior research associating abortion restrictions with violence risk, including lethal violence; these are background findings, not results established by this analysis.
Patient & Prescribing Data
No individual patients or prescribing data were studied. The primary analytic population comprised female homicide decedents aged 15–44 years in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Not applicable; this was a population-level mortality and policy analysis, not a treatment study.
