Fetal deaths and infant homicides were stable during the early COVID-19 pandemic as live births increased nationwide, a pair of government reports has found.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the reports early Wednesday. One found that 1,067 babies were murdered 2017 through 2020, averaging 267 a year as their number and rate declined annually.
Meanwhile, the other report counted 21,105 fetal deaths at 20 weeks of gestation or more in 2021 — a 1% increase from the 20,854 it tallied in 2020 but a slight drop in the overall rate, owing to an increase in the number of live births.
In the infant homicide report, the CDC noted that more than half of all murdered babies in 2017-2020 were under 4 months old. Rates were highest among babies born premature, those with a low birth weight and those admitted to neonatal intensive care.
Rates were also highest among infants born to Black, native-born teenage mothers with lower levels of education in rural areas who delivered babies outside a hospital and without prenatal care.
The number of infant homicides fell steadily from 2017 to 2020 before rising again in preliminary figures for 2021 that researchers are finalizing, said Isabelle Horon, a CDC statistician and co-author of the report.
“Homicides among infants is a preventable cause of death, and the number of infant homicides identified in this report is likely to be an undercount of the actual number of deaths,” Ms. Horon told The Washington Times.
The CDC counted 301 infant homicides, or 7.81 per 100,000 live births in 2017; 264 homicides, or 6.96 homicides per 100,000 births in 2018; 261 homicides, or 6.96 per 100,000 in 2019; and 241 homicides, or 6.67 per 100,000 in 2020.
Ms. Horon noted in an email that the CDC has, to date, counted 267 infant homicides in 2021 — a number that will likely climb higher when the final tally is released.
The CDC did not say why infant homicides dropped from 2017 through the first year of pandemic restrictions and Ms. Horon did not explain why preliminary counts show they started rising again in 2021.
“Since the number of infant homicides is relatively small, counts and rates fluctuate from year to year,” she noted.
Although the other report found that fetal deaths at about five months of pregnancy or later rose by 1% from 2020 to 2021, the CDC said the rate did not change significantly.
The CDC found that the U.S. fetal mortality rate for 2021 was 5.73 deaths at 20 weeks of gestation or more per 1,000 live births and fetal deaths. That was essentially unchanged from the rate of 5.74 in 2020, the agency noted.
“Early and late fetal mortality rates did not change significantly between 2020 and 2021,” Elizabeth Gregory, a CDC statistician and co-author of that report, told The Times. “Although the number of fetal deaths increased slightly between 2020 and 2021, so did the number of births, which make up the vast majority of the denominator for the rate.”
Fetal deaths affect 1% of all pregnancies in the nation.
From 2020 to 2021, the fetal mortality rate dropped by 4% for Black women but remained twice the national average, the CDC found.
The rate for Black women in 2021 was 9.89 fetal deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to 5.74 deaths per 1,000 births nationally.
In 2021, fetal mortality rates were highest for women under 15 and aged 40 and over, for those who smoked during pregnancy, and for those with multiple gestation pregnancies.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
