From a guest column in the Washington Times on the leading cause of death in pregnant women.

In 2001, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study of maternal homicides in Maryland. It concluded murder was the state's No. 1 cause of death among new and expectant mothers. "In 2002," reports Miss St. George, "Massachusetts weighed in with a study that also showed homicide as the top cause of maternal death, followed by cancer."

But the prevalence of maternal homicide is itself a type of cancer — a cancer on the American soul.

Why would anyone murder a pregnant woman? Apparently, it is often an extreme form of abortion.

Miss St. George noted many cases involve husbands or boyfriends. Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University, told her: "It seems to me that these guys hope against hope for a miscarriage or an abortion. But when everything else fails, they take the life of the woman to avoid having the baby."

When you think about how many boyfriends/husbands end up actually killing the pregnant mother of their child, spare a thought for how many more boyfriends/husbands exert enormous and successful pressure for an abortion.

I don't believe that abortion clinics adequately screen for whether a woman has been emotionally manipulated, physically threatened or is otherwise being pushed into an unwanted abortion.

Although a number of states now have mandatory pre-abortion counseling, a requirement that abortion clinics offer to show a sonogram to the pregnant woman, and 24-hour-waiting periods between mandatory counseling and receiving an abortion, I don't believe that these measures provide adequate direction or oversight to abortion clinics in terms of insisting that abortion clinics provide adequate screening and assessment relative to the problem of unwanted and coerced abortions.

This should be a legislative priority of the prolife movement. There's an article making its way around the AP circuit today about abortion clinic regulation in Mississippi. A pro-life leader in Mississippi is quoted as saying that they no longer have a list of desired legislation for regulating abortion clinics since the pro-life legislature has enacted into law everything on their wish list.

I'd encourage them to start a new list, which at a minimum would focus on better regulation of abortion clinics to ensure that clinics appropriately screen for cases of unwanted abortion.