A study conducted recently found that one in four women said a partner pressured them to become pregnant or sabotaged their birth control. An interesting read, but this study won’t be found in any academic journal.
San Francisco director of health at the Family Violence Prevention Fund Lisa James was part of a team conducting an over-the-phone study on violent partners and pregnancy pressure.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline conducted a study where they say one in four women who called in for advice agreed to answer their study questions. Of those who did respond, about a quarter said yes to one or more of these three questions:
“Has your partner or ex ever told you not to use any birth control?”
“Has your partner or ex-partner ever tried to force or pressure you to become pregnant?”
“Has your partner or ex ever made you have sex without a condom so that you would get pregnant?”
One in six answered yes to the question “Has your partner or ex-partner ever taken off the condom during sex so that you would get pregnant?”
The hotline’s report is anything but methodologically sound and hence, why it is not to be published in any academic journal as a stand-alone study. Background information was not gathered on the participants and answers were provided anonymously. There is no comparison group, either.
Instead, it was based on answers to four questions posed to 3,169 women around the country who contacted the domestic violence hot line between Aug. 16 and Sept. 26, 2010, who were not in immediate danger and who agreed to participate. About 6,800 callers refused to answer the questions.
In and of itself, not a research study, but the information gathered from the exercise lends itself to delving deeper into the topic of men who abuse women physically and emotionally who may also sabotage their partners’ birth control, ultimately trying to impregnate the women against their will.
Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis assisted with the study. She says while the motivations for the specific men and situations in this study are unknown, she can shed some explanation from her former studies.
“Some have an intense desire for a nuclear family, and many who had experiences of a dysfunctional family home want something better,” Miller said. Some young men, she said, “want to leave a legacy, and say, ‘I’m not sure how long I’m going to be around.’ Gang-affiliated young men want the status that comes with having babies from multiple women.”
Miller also points out that younger women typically date older men. If an older man tells you he wants to have children, it may be difficult for younger women to stand up for themselves.
“There were stories about men refusing to wear a condom, forcing sex without a condom, poking holes in condoms, flushing birth control pills down the toilet,” said Ms. James of the Family Violence Prevention Fund.
Despite the recent attention to reproductive coercion, James said she doubts it is a new phenomenon.
Report Cites Link Between Abuse and Birth Control Sabotage
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/health/research/15pregnant.html?_r=1&ref=health
Pregnancy coercion, intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20227548
Family Violence Prevention Fund
http://endabuse.org/