Abortion Bans Are Making It Impossible for Advocates to Help Abuse Victims

“To have to say to someone, ‘You live in a state where you’re more likely to be criminalized than the person who’s abusing you’—it’s devastating,” If/When/How’s Sara Ainsworth told Jezebel.

By Kylie Cheung
March 26, 2025

In 2007, Erica DuBois learned she was pregnant just two months after becoming cancer-free. And then the abuse began, she recalled to Jezebel. Her partner would invoke religion to justify physically harming her: “He talked about the beatings and violence like a test—if the baby survived, then it was God’s will,” DuBois said. She eventually gave birth to a healthy baby girl, but as a result of these sustained beatings, her first pregnancy was the only one that didn’t end in a miscarriage. She sometimes tried to take birth control pills, but when her abuser found them, he punished her. This violence would only escalate when she inevitably became pregnant.

Continued: https://www.jezebel.com/abortion-bans-are-making-it-impossible-for-advocates-to-help-abuse-victims

USA – Abortion Bans Can Be Deadly for Victims of Domestic Violence

Abusers often use pregnancy as a tool to exert control. When abortion is no longer an option, countless women and children are at even greater risk.

10/15/2024
by Gia Elise Barboza-Salerno, Ms.Magazine

As the 2024 election approaches, voters face a critical decision: whether to protect reproductive rights at the ballot box. In many states, abortion access is on the line, either through direct ballot measures or by electing candidates whose policies will determine the future of these rights. But what is often overlooked in this debate is the dangerous ripple effect abortion bans have on domestic violence.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned the constitutional right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy, abortion bans have made pregnant individuals more vulnerable to abuse and, in some cases, deadly violence.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/10/15/abortion-bans-domestic-violence-women-die/

15.10.2024

Commentary

domestic violence

intimate partner abuse

intimate partner violence

USA – Post-Dobbs, Abortion Bans Have Given Abusers a New Power

"Abusers could now use new laws, or confusion about those laws, to harass and threaten their partners,” the National Domestic Violence Hotline writes in a new report about how abusive partners are using abortion bans to keep their victims trapped.

By Kylie Cheung, Jezebel
June 3, 2024

It’s been almost two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and a new survey from the National Domestic Violence Hotline offers a disturbing glimpse into how abortion bans—and rampant confusion about the language of these laws and who they punish—have given abusers more control than ever.

Between October and December 2023, the Hotline conducted a survey on its website and anonymously collected domestic violence victims’ experiences with acts of reproductive coercion, or acts to control their victims’ reproductive decision-making, such as tampering with their birth control or blocking their access to abortion. The survey received 3,431 responses.

Continued: https://www.jezebel.com/post-dobbs-abortion-bans-have-given-abusers-a-new-power

Abortion Bans Are Empowering Abusive Men—and Prominent ‘Pro-Life’ Activists Are Representing Them

Murder is a leading cause of death for pregnant women. The anti-abortion movement wants to hand more power to abusive men anyway.

May 8, 2024
by JILL FILIPOVIC

The way abortions bans are designed and written allow for all kinds of horrors: women losing their organs, women bleeding out without help, women losing their lives. But they’re also written to empower abusive men. After all, the very foundation of an abortion ban is an assumption that a woman’s body does not belong to her. Abusive men agree. And so it’s perhaps not a huge surprise that several men have indeed taken advantage of these laws in an effort to control their ex partners. And it’s also not particularly surprising—although it is appalling—that they’ve found support and legal representation from some of the most powerful people in the U.S. anti-abortion movement.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/05/08/abortion-bans-violence-against-women-ex-boyfriend-husband-abuse/