Seven states in Appalachia and the Southwest, for example, had unintentional firearms deaths roughly two to four times the national rate. Those states have high gun ownership rates and lack safe-storage laws.

Three states – Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska – had as their most distinctive injury motor vehicle crashes involving passengers. Four safety provisions – primary seatbelt laws, mandatory key ignition locks for drunk drivers, booster seats, and nighttime driving restrictions for teens – are absent in Montana, while South Dakota and Nebraska have only one each.

iStock Photo.

For safe sleep, babies should be placed on their backs.

Connecticut had as its most distinctive cause of injury death “unintentional suffocation” – the only state with that outlier cause. The state’s rate was 1.3 times, or 30 percent higher than, the national average, according to the report in the journal Injury Prevention, led by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The report analyzed data from 2004-2013 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to identify one type of injury death for each state that was “disproportionately popular” — with a rate that was the largest multiple of the U.S. rate.

While the report does not point to factors responsible for Connecticut’s relatively high suffocation rate, child health advocates say they suspect that unsafe sleeping conditions among infants, which led to a public health “alert” by the state’s Office of the Child Advocate in 2014 and other action, may be one factor.

Between 2002 and 2010, there were 211 infant deaths in Connecticut classified as due to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) or other undetermined causes, with at least 140 of those cases associated with unsafe sleep environments, such as infants in bed with adults, older children, or adult pillows and other large items, according to a report by the Child Advocate. In 2013 alone, 18 infants who died of SIDS or undetermined causes were found to have risk factors associated with their sleep environments.

Child Advocate Sarah Eagan said accidental asphyxiation from unsafe sleep practices remains a concern, with the state continuing to see 17 to 23 deaths per year of infants. “It remains definitely a high priority issue,” she said. “It’s still the leading cause of death of healthy infants in Connecticut” – higher than child abuse.

Eagan said the state has made strides to better educate parents about safe sleeping – passing legislation in 2015 that requires hospitals to disseminate materials to new parents about safe sleep practices. Also, the state Department of Children and Families for the past several years has instructed workers to counsel parents about safe sleep and distributes “Pack N’ Play” cribs to households lacking adequate sleeping arrangements.

Eagan said state agencies have been working recently to more broadly disseminate information on the issue through a variety of organizations.

A 2015 Fact Sheet by the Children’s Safety Network National Injury and Violence Prevention Resource Center lists suffocation as the leading cause of injury deaths of children ages 1-4 in Connecticut from 2008-2012. Suffocation also is listed as the fourth-highest cause of death among Connecticut children ages 5 to 9.

Sara Heins, lead author of the national injury study, said the suffocation rates cited in the report represent not just infants, but people of all ages. She noted that not all suffocation deaths are caused by unsafe sleeping, and that not all infant sleep deaths are classified as suffocation.

Heins said that most states have laws designed to reduce the risk of sudden unexpected infant deaths, through training, raising public awareness, and reporting. Many are more stringent than Connecticut’s 2015 law.

The injury study also calculates the “most frequent” injury death for each state, based on CDC data counts. In Connecticut and 28 other states, the most frequent cause is unintentional drug poisoning, or overdose. In four states – Alaska, Arkansas, Utah and Wyoming – suicide by firearm is the most frequent cause.

Heins and colleagues noted that while the distinctive injury rates are, by definition, high compared to the national average, they might actually account for a small number of fatalities.

The most frequent distinctive cause of injury death among all states was unintentional death by firearm. Five states clustered in the West – California, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah — had rates of “legal intervention” deaths – when police kill someone, or officers are killed in the line of duty – up to 3.5 times higher than the U.S. average.

For Maine, Rhode Island and eight other states, suicide – by falls, drowning and other means – was the category with the largest multiple of the national rate.

Rural states in the Midwest and West tended to have higher rates of vehicle, machinery and natural/environmental injury deaths.

Heins said she hoped the findings would help policymakers identify injuries that, while not the most burdensome, may warrant special prevention efforts.

“In states where injuries are distinctive due to differences in policy or culture, the results could be a useful tool for advocates who could assert, ‘Not only is this injury a problem, it is a problem that we as a state are distinctively bad at addressing,’” she said.

That was 1994, and in the interim, people who would colonize the U.S. womb –maybe make it the 51^st state — have been busy. And people who disagree with that colonization have seemed strangely quiet. Some relief greets the news that Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal and others have introduced S. 1696, the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2013.

If the legislation passes the Senate, which has no shot of being called for a House vote while Speaker John Boehner holds sway, it is an acknowledgement (finally) that women have the right to decide their reproductive destiny, and closing health clinics restricts that right. It’s a start, though a very, very late one.

In fact, in the last two years alone, more than 70 abortion clinics have closed across the nation as (mostly) Republicans have led a concerted effort to restrict or deny a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices. Legislators from some 30 states have embraced hundreds of different restrictions – from a 72-hour waiting period in South Dakota — to Texas, where the governor called a series of special legislative sessions so that elected officials there could help shutter a third of the state’s abortion clinics. Couple this with some draconian cuts to Texas’s family planning programs, and you have a recipe for disaster.

In fact, legislators across the land have moved to restrict access to abortions at record speed, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights. States’ newly-embraced restrictions ran from banning abortion after six weeks (North Dakota) to requiring an abortion provider to have hospital privileges (North Dakota again, as well as Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin). The noble 11-hour filibuster in June by state Sen. (and now gubernatorial candidate) Wendy Davis was great for rallying the troops – and for selling those pink Mizuno Wave Rider sneakers she wore during all that speaking. But the bill passed, anyway. You can’t stop stupid, though you may forestall it a bit.

In some states, new legislation has narrowed the choices to just one clinic in the entire state – and that creates more than a little hardship, especially to patients in the larger states out west.

These restrictions are by no means nationwide. In Connecticut, Planned Parenthood alone lists 16 different centers that offer abortion services.

You could say that we’re safe here in Connecticut, but you’d be wrong. More than any other body of legislation, a woman’s right to choose is on the shakiest ground.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, legislators approved a law – which needs no governor’s signature – that would restrict a woman from using her private insurance for abortion services – even if the pregnancy was the result of a rape or incest. Women who think they may be raped – or victims of incest – can purchase a special insurance rider. Essentially, the law says that if you expect to be raped, you really should buy insurance.

None of this makes sense, legal or otherwise. A 1992 Supreme Court case involving Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania said that laws cannot place an “undue burden” on a woman seeking an abortion – nor can they “place substantial obstacles in the path of a woman seeking an abortion.” Wouldn’t shuttering so many clinics qualify as an undue burden?

And seriously: Isn’t it about time for some pro-choice legislation?