There is a “modern fable” of the femme fertile female partner “who conspires to get pregnant, perhaps by ‘forgetting’ to take her birth control pills, as a way to ‘trap a man.’” However, with “striking frequency” it is young men who trying to force their partners to get pregnant” wrote Lynn Harris writes in The Nation.
Reproductive coercion can include damaging condoms, and destroying or hiding contraceptives and is frequently associated with physical or sexual violence. This “long-known, but under-addressed, phenomenon” subjects young women already at risk of violence to the additional health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
Women who have experienced intimate partner violence are consistently found to have poor sexual and reproductive health when compared to non-abused women.
The “goal” is “not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control,” writes Harris. This “control’ may also include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship.”
The January 2010 study “Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy,” found women who experienced both reproductive coercion and partner violence, the risk of unintended pregnancy doubled.
The study of 1300 women found approximately 20% experienced pregnancy coercion and 15% experienced birth control sabotage.
Sadly, 53% reported physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner. 35% of the women who reported partner violence also reported either pregnancy coercion or birth control sabotage.
Another study, Male reproductive control of women who have experienced intimate partner violence in the United States, of 71 women ages 18 through 49 with a history of intimate partner violence, 74% reported experiencing some form of reproductive coercion, including forced unprotected sex or sabotage of condoms.
Once pregnant, women were “coerced to proceed in accordance with the wishes of their partners, who in some cases threatened to kill them if they had an abortion,” wrote Harris.
Professor Elizabeth Miller who led this University of California-Davis School of Medicine study and a co-author of the other said it is “likely that there are women who try to get pregnant on purpose in order to maintain or change a relationship.”
However, “now we can also say that there is another part of this story that we have not paid enough attention to: men’s direct control in promoting pregnancy against women’s wishes,” she said.
This data “could begin, for one thing, to shine some light on recent upticks in rates of teen pregnancy and abortion,” said Harris.
“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.’”
Teen pregnancy rate between 2005 and 2006 increased for the first time since 1990, by 3%. And Miller suggests reproductive coercion nay be one of the multiple reasons.
Recent research demonstrates that there’s a clear need for relationship violence prevention to be integrated into pregnancy prevention and sexual health curricula, she said.
“If we are serious about stopping unplanned pregnancy in this country, we simply must address the sexual violence and reproductive control that often cause I,” said Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund.
