The 1992 Surgeon General’s statement on domestic violence prompted proliferation of grotesquely false claims of the type that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women. High-quality data on causes of injury, publicly available since 1994, make clear that such claims are false.

Age specifications are relevant to considering causes of injury. But domestic violence is not the leading cause of injury to women across any of the different age specifications associated with that claim.

Domestic violence policies have been central to the rise of mass incarceration in the U.S. since 1980. Publicly prevalent, grotesquely false claims about domestic violence against women and anti-men gender-biased domestic violence policies have drawn upon deeply root gender animus: criminal suspicion of men. Public reason has provided little constraint on criminal suspicion of men.

Injury-Related Visits to U.S. Hospital Emergency Departments
by Cause of Injury, 1992, Ages 15 to 44