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Media outlets like The Nation and National Public Radio are covering a little-recognized form of abuse in which men use violence and coercion to control their partners’ reproductive decisions. According to several recent studies, reproductive coercion is especially common in relationships in which women experience physical or sexual partner violence. 

 

Writer Lynn Harris notes in the new story that, despite stereotypes about women tricking men into getting them pregnant, there is another form of reproductive coercion that has long been overlooked: Men sabotaging women’s birth control and using violence to get them pregnant against their wishes. “We must expand not only our assumptions about who’s forcing whom to get pregnant, but also our understanding of the meaning and causes of ‘unwanted’ pregnancy,” she writes. Read Harris’ entire article here. 

 

Futures Without Violence, formerly Family Violence Prevention Fund has been leading efforts to raise awareness about this issue, working with researcher Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the UC Davis School of Medicine and a practitioner at UC Davis Children's Hospital. Futures Without Violence's KnowMoreSayMore initiative is creating a dialogue about birth control sabotage and reproductive coercion, which can result in unintended pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, miscarriage, infertility, coerced abortion, poor birth outcomes including preterm birth and low birth-weight babies, and other serious health problems. Read stories of women who share their experiences with birth control sabotage and reproductive coercion at www.KnowMoreSayMore.org. 

 

“We make a mistake by putting these issues in silos and promoting solutions that ignore the connection,” said Futures Without Violence President Esta Soler. “If we are serious about stopping unplanned pregnancy in this country, we simply must address the sexual violence and reproductive control that often cause it. If we are serious about stopping dating and domestic violence, we must recognize that many victims grapple daily with sexual violence and reproductive coercion. And if we are serious about improving women’s health, we must address the violence that too many young women experience.”

 

Last month, the Guttmacher Institute released “Male Reproductive Control of Women Who Have Experienced Intimate Partner Violence in the United States,” that found three in four respondents (74 percent) in the study – of 71 domestic violence victims seeking services at a family planning clinic, an abortion clinic and a domestic violence shelter – reported that their partners had threatened to get them pregnant, forced them to have unprotected sex, sabotaged or interfered with their contraception, threatened them with sexual intercourse, tried to control the outcome of their pregnancies if they became pregnant, or in other ways tried to coerce their reproductive outcomes.  Read more about the study here. 

 

In January, Contraception published another study, “Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy.” It was the first quantitative examination of the relationship between intimate partner violence, reproductive coercion and unintended pregnancy. It found that young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage their birth control or coerce or pressure them to become pregnant – including by damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives. Approximately one in five young women said they experienced pregnancy coercion and 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage. More than half (53 percent) of respondents said they had experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner. Read more about that study here.

 

Harris’ new story is also available on National Public Radio’s website.