Today we're talking about reproductive coercion, which is one of the most uncomfortable topics we can discuss in recovery from narcissistic
relationships. That's because it involves our children. Have you ever heard of reproductive coercion?.
It's something that some toxic people do in order to sort of get their hooks in a person. You might even
personally be a result of reproductive coercion.
Did you know that at least half of all pregnancies in the United States are reported to be "unintended" pregnancies?.
Now, it's really easy for us to just assume that in most of those cases, either birth control failed or people just didn't use it.
Unfortunately, new research indicates that some of those pregnancies, some of those "unintended pregnancies" are actually the result of
reproductive coercion. That's exactly what we're talking about today at QueenBeeing.com.
Reproductive coercion and the toxic narcissist.
So let's get started. (Closed captioning provided by Athena Moberg and
CPTSDfoundation.org). My name is Angie Atkinson and on this channel, I offer free, daily video coaching to help you discover,
understand and overcome
narcissistic abuse and toxic relationships. I like to call it toxic relationship rehab.
So if that sounds good to you, hit that subscribe button, and let's get going.
What is reproductive coercion?.
Well, essentially reproductive coercion is when someone either refuses to use birth control or
sabotages your birth control in order to force you to have a child with them.
This can be done by men or women and it's
always done by someone who is a very toxic
person, someone who isn't considering the implications of what they're doing and who's making a choice that will affect not only their own lives,
but the lives of both the other parents and the potential child.
It's actually a form of sexual abuse that begins with emotional manipulation in many cases.
It also might involve threats, physical violence and a number of other issues.
Last year when Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson who has been in the news recently for his mental health joked about
messing with his then girlfriend Ariana Grande's birth control, manypeople got very upset and there was a good reason for this.
That's because four out of every ten
survivors of any sort of domestic abuse has reported that their partner has attempted to get them pregnant against their will or attempted to
them from having
control over whether or not they parent a child, because they stopped them from using birth control or lie about using birth control.
84 percent of these people ended up with children that they didn't necessarily want to have with that person.
This doesn't mean they don't love their children and it doesn't mean they're not grateful for their children,
but what it does mean is that they have been put into a
position to have a child with someone who they did not choose to have a child with and against their will. This is not news,
reproductive coercion has been an ongoing issue for generations and
often
carried out by people who are abusive or controlling or both.
Basically,
what it comes down to is that reproductive coercion is used against victims in order to create and maintain a certain sense of power
over them. Control, domination all within your relationship.
It's the least
discussed type of abuse and
I guess that means there's no surprise here that you might not have heard of it before.
It turns out according to a study that was published last year,
reproductive coercion is much more prevalent than originally believed. The study was based on a survey done of
164 survivors of abuse who were in domestic violence programs and shelters It was done by the Institute for Women's policy research
and was administered in 11 states as well as Washington, DC.
It was meant to find out how does going through abuse really affect your ability to get a job or keep a job or
decide whether or not you start a family and when and also maintaining good credit and what's ironic about that
is that all three of those things affect our ability to actually leave our abusers and are affected by
reproductive
coercion. How?. Well, think about it in addition to having a child that you may not have chosen to have at that moment,
now you're also saddled with the financial responsibility and with the care of the child which costs money and takes time. This can obviously
affect your ability to get or keep a job. Regardless of what you think about birth control or what your religious beliefs are about birth
control
reproductive coercion is a form of abuse and it affects everyone, including men, including transgender people, including other
non-binary or non-conforming people in different relationships, different types of relationships.
It's not just between a man and a woman.
In fact,
according to a study by the National Domestic Violence hotline, out of over
30,000 callers, one in 4 said they had experienced some form of reproductive coercion,
but despite that, it's still really hard to kind of define it because what if they both got excited and just kind of moved into
it and it happened or what if the condom really broke or what if something else happened and it was really an accident.
I forgot to take my pill or like in the case of my middle son
I was on antibiotics which affected my birth control pills, but thank goodness
it did in that case. Moving right along, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, sabotaging
someone's birth control is considered a typical type of reproductive coercion.
So by sabotaging someone's birth control, whether it is a woman who lies about being on the pill or it's a man who pokes holes
in a condom or some other action that sabotages birth control, which also takes away a person's choice,
this is behavior that abusers use to really get and maintain power over their victims as well as control over the
relationship.
This type of reproductive coercion is meant to really stop you from being able to have a job or even get an education.
It may seem more vulnerable
and more dependent on the abuser, because they need to help provide for the children and ultimately it stops us from
getting away from these people.
Two-thirds of the people in the domestic abuse survey said that going through those toxic
relationships really negatively affected their ability to get jobs, to
even reach out and try to go back to college or to take a job training opportunity.
More than 80% of them said their partners had actually stopped them from working in some way and most of them said there was financial abuse involved.
In fact,
3 out of 4 said their partners took their money against their will or
didn't let them have access to the family money and 3 out of 5 had partners who damaged their credit score as well,
which of course left most of them unable to get a loan or even an apartment when they tried to leave. There are 4 major
signs you can look for when it comes to figuring out whether you're dealing with reproductive coercion
and the first one is the sabotaging of birth control.
So, like I said, this might include poking holes and condoms or losing condoms or otherwise sabotaging them.
It could be that somebody throws away
somebody's birth control pills or
replaces them with different pills or that that person tells lies about whether or not they're actually taking birth control and what it comes down
to is that if you're doing these things and your partner has said I don't want to have children,
this is a problem. Ironically though,
it can also be an issue if you've agreed to have a child with someone and then you secretly continue with birth control
behind their back, but that's another issue. Like I said, the next sign is lying about being on birth control.
This happens more frequently than you would think, especially with toxic females. Pregnancy is not the only thing to be concerned about here,
there's also disease and other sexual health issues that you might be worried about.
Another sign is what they call
stealthy.
Which is where a toxic man will remove the condom during intercourse and not let you know that at all.
Unless you discover it, in which case it's already too late in most cases
and in this case, this not only takes away your right to safe sex, but it takes away the protection from pregnancy
of course.
The fourth thing is that any sort of forcing your partner into either an abortion or a pregnancy is another
sign that you're dealing with
reproductive coercion.
No one should be forced to have a child before they're ready or
against their will. For many people, wanting to have children is a normal experience. Many people want to have children,
not everybody does and in any case
it's never okay to force someone into parenting your child or it's never okay to force someone to not have a child. Whatever your belief is
about birth control, whatever your perception is, we all have the right to have autonomy.
We all have the right to decide what happens with our bodies,
don't forget that. Remember that you're the only person who can decide what happens in your life
and what doesn't. Trying to control someone else's
reproductive health puts that person at risk, mentally, physically and otherwise. Don't forget that in a healthy relationship,
both partners should have the right to say exactly
what they want to do and should have the right to decide what happens with their own bodies.
Reproductive coercion is not okay, ever.
This brings me to the question of the day and the question of the day is; Have you dealt with
reproductive coercion or do you think you might have? Share your thoughts,
share your ideas, share your experiences in the comments section below and let's talk about it. Now, before I go,
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