When Teen Pregnancy Is No Accident June 1, 2010 Jill A great piece by Lynn Harris about how abusive men and teenage boys will coerce or even trick their female partners into getting pregnant.
Why did I read the comments, I should know better. It’s like Misogyny Bingo in there, “Men knock but girls answer”, “What about the poor menz?”, “ABSTINENCE!!!!!111” Ugh. Then there’s the whole “Men should wear condoms!” schtick, er hello? The article was about MEN who purposely mess with hormonal and barrier methods in order to control their partners. Funny how it always comes down to some ‘evil, scheming woman oopsing a poor boy!” Regarding pregnancy ambivalence – on a women’s health website I frequent, a 17 year old had a blood test to find out why she was missing her periods, and it was positive for pregnancy, she was 22 weeks. After her abortion she posted again, “I don’t want to make my boyfriend use condoms because we haven’t for the last five months, and nothing happened because of that!” (yes, that’s because you can’t get pregnant twice) She felt it was ‘unfair’ to make him start using them after so long and that she wouldn’t get pregnant again because “lightning don’t strike twice lol!”. Another poster posts roughly once every two weeks panic-stricken because she’s had unprotected, barrier-free sex, and thinks she’s pregnant, but refuses to use contraception or buy an HPT to find out if she is or not. I feel so sad for them. The whole thing comes down to the misinformation these young women are being given about their bodies and contraception, and the attitude to sex that they’re given. They’re told that condoms don’t work, that the pill is an abortifacient, and that only abstinence can keep them ‘pure and safe’. I think the ambivalence to the real facts of what could happen is due to ignorance, misinformation and frankly – depression and a fatalistic attitude. We need to imbue young people with a sense of choice and hope, to educate them so that they can choose their path in life instead of falling one way or another, and to allow them to live out their full potential. That any young person would regard themselves as ambivalent over something so serious is deeply disturbing to me.
Yeah, I was about to ask f anyone read the comments at the end. The first one is the good ol’ “women’s responsibility” comment. I’m sorry, victim blaming say what?
Yeah, I was about to ask if anyone read the comments at the end. The first one is the good ol’ “women’s responsibility” comment. I’m sorry, victim blaming say what?
Perhaps the foulest, most depraved form of this “reproductive control” was practiced recently by the Sicilian Mafia. They not only forced women into prostitution, but forced them to have unprotected sex so they would get pregnant and the Mafia could sell the babies. (Things like this are why I’ve never cared much for shows like The Sopranos or Goodfellas.)
Is anyone else unable to visit the site? I can call up every other site I’ve been to but I can’t get to The Nation website at all. I’m really interested in reading this as I know a young woman who recently went through it–her boyfriend intentionally sabotaged their condoms–and very few people believed her even though her boyfriend even admitted it. I was really appalled at her supposed friends’ treatment of her, especially when she decided to terminate the pregnancy. She described one instance when one of her friends called her out for trying to trap her boyfriend (again, this is after he admitted to doing the sabotaging) and then “murdering her baby” when it didn’t work (despite the fact that she dumped him, not the other way around). It was so absurd it might have been funny if it hadn’t been so real.
Yeah, I haven’t been able to access it for a couple of hours now. I was able to read the article earlier, but then people were talking about the comments and I wanted to torture myself. But no go. That sounds like the kind of situation the article deals with though, AK.
OK I was able to read it finally, although I stayed out of the comments because I know they’d just make me angry. Anyway, one thing that struck me was the short paragraph on what they called “pregnancy ambivalence”–“a term those in the field use to describe sexually active women who say they don’t want to get pregnant, yet who don’t try consistently to prevent it.” It’s interesting because the one relationship where I didn’t always practice safe sex (either not insisting on it at all or tolerating the “pull out” method even though thanks to my awesome feminist parents who believed in complete sex ed I knew damn well that wasn’t effective) was the one where the man was definitely abusive, even being convicted several times of domestic violence with later partners (this was some 15 years ago). I never even thought about it until now and just chalked it up to being young and stupid even though I’d insisted on safe sex in previous relationships and went right back to it in my next relationship, but looking back I wonder if a lot was due to subtle pressure on his part. I don’t know many women in relationships that seem abusive to an outsider, but I wonder how often this form of sexual coercion happens. Hopefully this isn’t TMI, but this article really hit home for me. I’m glad to see the issue getting attention.
V: The comments on that site are listed in reverse order. The one you’re referring to was actually the very first one posted.
While this certainly wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever read, a trigger warning might be helpful. (I mean I guess “abusive” is right there in the link… but still.) That said, I was really struck by the descriptions of the first relationship in the article. That level of control and manipulation, particularly as it manifests itself in contradictory ways–removing access to birth control, then seriously jeopardizing the pregnancy–is downright chilling.
“That level of control and manipulation, particularly as it manifests itself in contradictory ways–removing access to birth control, then seriously jeopardizing the pregnancy–is downright chilling.” But that’s pretty much part and parcel of domestic abuse. The goal isn’t x (a clean house, respectful children, dinner done on time, having a baby with your partner, whatever), the goal is control. It’s way easier to get control over someone by setting up a situation that is completely out of their hands, if there aren’t any rules they can follow that will spare them and the abuse is inevitable. For the abuser’s part, it’s way easier to feel like you’re in control when you can do whatever you want, whenever you want–having to lay off the victim because they followed your rules and did what you said you wanted doesn’t fit into that very well.
Of course they will coerce! We as a society should be taking this into account and providing a safe environment for teen girls to get birth control and abortions. Instead we require them to tell their abusers and get permission from them. If anyone wanted this stopped it could be, almost overnight. Our collective disdain for abortion could end and it could be seen as just the medical procedure it is. Our collective disdain for young women having control over their own bodies could end, give out birth control and not just the condoms that require the man’s approval and cooperation but the pill as well. It should be available at nurse’s offices and quite frankly should be available without a prescription. But no one will do this because dudnation hates women. Especially women who want to control their own uterus. That’s the last thing men want. So Viagra will be given out like candy while what women need will become more and more unavailable. Because ladies, whether you realize it or not- men hate us.
As disturbing as this problem is, the piece has an inspiring tone of hope–that diagnosing this problem is the critical first step toward helping to solve it. And the model of prevention programs that discuss healthy relationships with young women while they discuss mechanics of birth control makes perfect sense. But that can only be part of the prescription. A striking throw-away line in the piece is Leyla’s recognition that her parents’ abusive relationship affected her idea of a “normal” relationship. It’s likely that the same thing happened to her abusive boyfriend. The point I’m meandering to is that the problem of intimate partner abuse isn’t really solved by getting women and girls out of abusive relationships; it’s solved by society ceasing the creation of men who abuse. That means that getting boys into programs that discuss healthy relationships is just as important as getting girls into such programs. How do reproductive health providers do that? Maybe they don’t. But somebody has to.
I recently read “Sex On The Rates”, the autobiography of Glaswegian sexual health doctor in the 1960s, which gives accounts of abusive partners burning pill packets etc. For her patients, the depot contraceptive injection was a revolution as it allowed women to control their fertility and conceal this control from abusive partners. Her book suggests that this problem is not a new issue, and this article suggests that this problem has not gone away.
Like AK, this article hits very close to home for me. My first “serious” relationship was a lot of the things mentioned in the article, (physical and sexual abuse, pressure to get pregnant, stds, drugs) and it resulted in me having an abortion at age 14 (He was only 16, and I was the third girl to abort his baby). No matter the personal circumstances surrounding this decision or the political environment surrounding my sex education and access to birth control (in TN), I feel like this article does a very good job of explaining what I was going through at that time. It almost articulates it better than I ever could have. I am relieved to finally have this perspective through which to view this part of my life, and I think that I am now better equipped to discuss it with my daughter, when that time comes.. Maybe even better equipped to finally deal with it and let it go..