Signs of Reproductive Abuse

Reproductive abuse happens when someone tries to control another person’s reproductive choices through manipulation, coercion, threats, or interference with contraception, pregnancy, or fertility decisions. It is an often-overlooked form of domestic abuse that strips away autonomy and turns deeply personal decisions about one’s body and future into tools of control.

Reproductive abuse can include pregnancy pressure, birth control sabotage, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, coercion around fertility treatment, or controlling whether someone is allowed to have children at all. The core issue is the same: one person is trying to take away another person’s right to make free decisions about reproduction.

The best way to protect yourself is to recognize early signs of manipulation around reproductive choices. Once you realize your reproductive autonomy is being violated, plan your next steps carefully. Abusers often tie control of fertility to emotional dependence, financial dependence, or long-term entrapment, so safety planning may matter here too. The abuse escape and safety planning page can help you prepare.

How Men Can Engage in Reproductive Abuse

Some men engage in reproductive abuse by pressuring, manipulating, or forcing women into pregnancy. These men, sometimes called “womb-chasers” or fertility gold-diggers, may see women not as full human beings with autonomy, but as ways to fulfill desires for legacy, control, emotional security, or the image of being a family man.

Examples can include:

• Coercing a woman into having “just one more baby” after she has already said no
• Threatening to abandon, cheat on, or replace her if she will not get pregnant
• Contacting fertility centres without a woman’s consent or active participation
• Sabotaging birth control by hiding condoms, refusing to use them, or tampering with contraception
• Using religion, family pressure, or gendered shame to insist that “a real woman” gives him children

The effects can be severe. A woman may feel trapped in pregnancies she never truly wanted, robbed of agency, and reduced to a reproductive role rather than treated as a person with goals, boundaries, and full humanity. This can lead to resentment, emotional withdrawal, chronic conflict, psychological harm, and sometimes separation or divorce. The psychological impact of abuse page describes these effects and how people heal.

Conversely, some men abuse women by preventing them from having desired children, such as forcing a woman to have an abortion, use contraception, or undergo permanent sterilization. Controlling someone’s reproductive autonomy in either direction is abusive.

How Women Can Engage in Reproductive Abuse

Some women engage in reproductive abuse by manipulating or deceiving men into fatherhood against their will. In these cases, pregnancy or childbearing may be used to secure attachment, financial support, or control over a partner’s life and choices. Reproduction becomes a tool of power rather than a shared decision rooted in trust and consent.

Examples can include:

• Lying about being on birth control
• Poking holes in condoms or hiding contraception
• Using pregnancy to trap a partner in a relationship or force emotional commitment
• Using parenthood to secure financial dependency or leverage
• Concealing or faking pregnancy losses to manipulate behaviour or keep a partner emotionally invested

These behaviours are also abusive. They violate consent and weaponize parenthood. The victim may feel tricked, trapped, burdened with lifelong obligations they never freely chose, or unable to trust future partners.

What Makes Reproductive Coercion Abusive

Reproductive abuse is not about building a family together through mutual love, trust, and consent. It is about putting one person’s desires above another person’s autonomy. Whether the goal is a pregnancy, an abortion, sterilization, contraception, or financial dependence, the abuse lies in taking control of a deeply personal area of someone else’s life.

When someone’s ability to freely decide about their own body, fertility, contraception, pregnancy, or family planning is diminished, that is a violation of their autonomy.

Healthy partnership means respecting each other’s reproductive boundaries. Consent, not coercion, should guide decisions about sex, birth control, pregnancy, and parenthood. If someone is pressuring, threatening, deceiving, or forcing reproductive choices on you, that is not love. That is entitlement, objectification, and control.

If your birth control or pregnancy decisions are being interfered with, a doctor, nurse practitioner, or sexual health clinic can help confidentially. In BC, Options for Sexual Health offers confidential care and the free Sex Sense line at 1-800-739-7367.

Common Questions About Reproductive Abuse

What is reproductive coercion?

Reproductive coercion is behaviour that interferes with someone’s ability to make their own decisions about contraception, pregnancy, or parenthood. It includes pressuring someone to get pregnant or not, sabotaging birth control, and forcing or preventing an abortion.

What are the signs of birth control sabotage?

Signs can include a partner hiding, throwing away, or tampering with your birth control; refusing to use or secretly removing condoms; lying about using contraception; or pressuring you to stop a method you want to keep.

Is it illegal to tamper with or remove a condom without consent in Canada?

It can be. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that secretly sabotaging a condom can cancel consent and amount to sexual assault (R. v. Hutchinson, 2014). In 2022, the Court also found that if condom use is a condition of consent, sex without one is not consensual (R. v. Kirkpatrick). If this has happened to you, a sexual assault centre or victim service can explain your options.

Can a partner force me to have, or not have, an abortion?

No. In Canada, decisions about a pregnancy belong to the pregnant person. A partner can share their feelings, but threatening, pressuring, or forcing someone to continue or end a pregnancy is abuse.

Is it abusive to pressure a partner to have a baby?

Sharing a wish to have children is normal. It becomes abusive when one partner uses threats, guilt, ultimatums, deception, or punishment to override the other person’s choice, or keeps pushing after a clear no.

Can men experience reproductive abuse?

Yes. Men can experience reproductive abuse, for example when a partner lies about using birth control or tampers with condoms to cause a pregnancy. Reproductive abuse is about control, and it can be committed by and against people of any gender.

How can I protect my birth control if my partner is interfering?

A health care provider can talk with you privately about methods that are harder for a partner to detect or interfere with, such as an IUD, implant, or injection, and about emergency contraception. In BC, Options for Sexual Health offers confidential sexual health care and the free Sex Sense line at 1-800-739-7367.

Is reproductive coercion linked to other forms of abuse?

Often, yes. Reproductive coercion frequently occurs alongside other forms of domestic abuse, and pregnancy can be a time when abuse begins or gets worse. If you are worried about your safety, an escape and safety plan can help.

Last reviewed: October 2026