The "choice" discourses let us down

As long as "choice" means legal abortion, choice isn't nearly enough.

I've written before about reproductive coercion, and as Lynn Harris explains in an article in The Nation, the role of reproductive coercion in partner violence and unwanted pregnancies isn't being talked about nearly enough:

Two new studies have quantified what advocates for young women’s health have observed for years: the striking frequency with which it is in fact young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant. Their goal: not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control. (“Control” may also include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship.)

[...] In the largest study of this phenomenon to date, “Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy,” published in the January issue of the journal Contraception, lead researcher Elizabeth Miller and others surveyed nearly 1,300 16- to 29-year-old women who’d sought a variety of services at five different Northern California reproductive health clinics. Among those who had experienced intercourse, i.e. who could be at risk of unintended pregnancy, not only did 53 percent of respondents say they’d experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner, but one in five said they had experienced pregnancy coercion; 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage, including hiding or flushing birth control pills down the toilet, intentional breaking of condoms and removing contraceptive rings or patches. These figures were consistent from clinic to clinic.

Emphasis mine.

Choice means nothing to the person who is being raped, or whose birth control is being sabotaged, or whose partner refuses to use a barrier. Choice means nothing when violence and lack of autonomy are systemic. It's not that choice has no place in discussions of reproductive freedom. Of course it's important. But we talk about it almost to the exclusion of other factors. And that's the wrong way round. Choice matters, but it's not the right paradigm.

This isn't even a problem that sex ed is going to solve, although definitely, we need sex ed. One might be fully informed about contraception and STDs and that still won't help if your partner forces sex without a barrier. Although having said that, I'm increasingly moving towards the position that deliberately withholding safer sex information (eg, by the government) is abusive.

We should be talking about challenging domestic abuse, supporting people in abuse situations, and what constitutes a healthy relationship based on mutual respect. We need, desperately, to connect the dots between abuse and reproductive freedom.

(Hat tip: Melissa McEwan at Shakesville)

--IP

[Crossposted at Modus Dopens]