Abusive Boyfriends Sabotage Birth Control

Report suggests it's disturbingly common
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 15, 2011 7:05 PM CST
Updated Feb 19, 2011 8:49 AM CST
Abusive Boyfriends Sabotage Birth Control
In this 1999 file photo, a birth control pill container designed to look like a woman's makeup compact for Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical is shown.   (AP Photo/Mike Derer, File)

A new report sheds light on a form of domestic abuse that hasn't received much attention: men pressuring their partners to get pregnant against their will, sometimes by sabotaging birth control or forcing unprotected sex. In a survey of callers to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, one in four women said they had experienced that kind of abuse, reports the New York Times.

“It was very eye-opening,” one public health advocate tells the newspaper. "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." The reasons for the men's behavior? It could be anything from gang members looking for the status of multiple kids by multiple women to an attempt to create a nuclear family by someone who grew up in a dysfunctional one. (More domestic abuse stories.)

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