Abusive Partners Can Sabotage Birth Control; OB-GYNs Told to Watch Out

Women may be facing a form of abuse that wasn't on a doctor's radar before--reproductive coercion. When a women's partner hides her birth control pills, sabotages a condom or pressures her to get pregnant, she probably should find help. Researchers are now encouraging women's health care providers to watch out for this form of abuse during routine checkups.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recently published recommendations for doctors about reproductive and sexual coercion. Interference in birth control covers everything from destroying birth control pills to poking holes in condoms. Although researchers don't know exactly how common this type of coercion is (though surveys do give a rough estimate), it's prevalent enough that the organization has informed health care providers that they should screen women for signs.

In fact, studies cited by the committee found that birth control sabotage was reported by 25 percent of teen girls with abusive partners and by 15 percent of women who were physically abused. Some men even went so far as to pull out a women's intrauterine device, also known as a vaginal contraceptive ring. In addition, a 2010 survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 4.8 percent of total women in the U.S. admitted to having a partner who tried to get them pregnant against their wishes.

Although these new recommendations are aimed at women, men also can suffer from reproductive coercion. About 8.7 percent of men reported having a partner who tried to get pregnant against their wishes.

The recommendation from the committee urges obstetricians and gynecologists to direct women in these situations to agencies and hotlines that help abused women, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline. In addition, it recommends that doctors take more direct action by providing women with hard-to-detect birth control methods, such as a stash of contraceptive pills in a plain envelope or IUDs with the removal strings cut.