The statement is false.

These were the leading causes of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States in 1996:

	Number	Per Cent
Motor Vehicle Accidents	1,504,119	21.2%
Accidental Falls	1,243,538	17.5%
Other and unspecified environmental and accidental causes	1,162,272	16.4%
Accidents caused by cutting and piercing instruments or objects	515,986	7.3%
Sports injuries	483,223	6.8%
Injuries purposefully inflicted by other than spouse or intimate	399,240	5.6%
Overexertion and strenuous movements	339,014	4.8%
Drugs, medicinal and biological substances, in therapeutic use	166,687	2.3%
Injuries purposefully inflicted by spouse or other intimate	153,555	2.2%
Injuries caused by animals	137,639	1.9%
Accidental poisoning by drugs	131,928	1.9%
Misadventures during surgical and medical care	124,230	1.7%
Suicide and self-inflicted injuries	102,392	1.4%
Struck accidentally by falling object	87,485	1.2%
Caught accidentally in or between objects	74,995	1.1%
Foreign body accidentally entering orifice other than eye	69,590	1.0%
Accidental poisoning by other solid and liquid substances, gases, and vapors	57,846	0.8%
Non-transport machinery accidents	56,455	0.8%
Venomous animals and plants	50,111	0.7%
Accident caused by hot substance or object	49,766	0.7%
Foreign body accidentally entering eye and adnexa	47,788	0.7%
Other	147,889	2.0%

This data is taken from the 1996 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey Data File, which can be downloaded via ftp from the National Center for Health Statistics. Domestic violence, referred to in the table as "Injury purposefully inflicted by spouse or other intimate", accounts for 2.2% of injuries to women in this age group. Rather than being a larger cause of injury than "car accidents and other things combined", domestic violence causes only one-tenth as many injuries as motor vehicle accidents alone. And as any thoughtful person might expect, as a source of injuries domestic violence is well behind such everyday occurences as accidental falls and cuts.

Domestic violence is a problem. It is not, however, the leading cause of injury to women. It is not even remotely close to it. In the long run we will all be better off if discussion of this subject has some relationship to the real world.

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