Lowering violence against women in the UK

As part of an effort to lower intimate partner violence in the UK, doctors and midwives now must ask pregnant women if they are being abused by their partners during check-ups.
Understanding that violence increases (or begins) during pregnancy, the Department of Health is hoping to implement the policy by next year.
Public Health Minister Melanie Johnson said, “The fact that domestic violence often starts or escalates during pregnancy and is associated with increases in rates of miscarriage, low birth weight, premature birth, fetal injury and fetal death makes for stark reading.”
What Johnson doesn’t say, however, is that there is also a significant increase of risk for the pregnant woman, not just the fetus.
In the United States, pregnant women are more likely to be victims of homicide than to die of any other cause.
Perhaps we should take a policy cue from our British friends…