USA – Abortion Restrictions and Intimate Partner Violence

Scholars find that travel distance to abortion facilities resulting from new laws increases rates of violence.

Ellie Rudnick
Nov 18, 2025

President Donald J. Trump’s recently enacted megalaw relies on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, illustrating the continued impact of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. Another continued impact is the influence of Dobbs on the amount of violence women experience from their partners.

In a working paper, Dhaval M. Dave, a research associate at Bentley University, and several coauthors report research finding “the first causal evidence” of the impact of post-Dobbs abortion restrictions on rates of intimate partner violence. They find that these restrictions resulted in over ten thousand additional violent incidents.

Continued: https://www.theregreview.org/2025/11/18/rudnick-abortion-restrictions-and-intimate-partner-violence/

18.11.2025

Research

Dhaval M. Dave

intimate partner violence

National Incident-Based Reporting System

Scotland – Paramedic jailed for secretly giving woman drug to abort their child

July 7, 2025
Catriona Renton, BBC Scotland News

A paramedic who secretly gave a pregnant woman an abortion drug, killing their unborn child, has been jailed for 10 years and six months. Stephen Doohan, who was a clinical team leader with the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS), administered the drug after he found out the woman was pregnant with his baby.

The woman, who did not know Doohan was married when they were in a relationship, suffered a miscarriage after the 33-year-old crushed pills into a syringe and injected her as she lay in bed at his Edinburgh home in 2023.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9qxneddqn2o

07.07.2025

News

intimate partner violence

Judge Lord Colbeck

reproductive coercion

reproductive violence

Scott McKenzie 'Mark Stewart'Fiona Kirkby

Scottish Ambulance Service

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

Time is running out: let’s accelerate progress towards gender equity in health care

8 March 2025

Frances Longley, FIGO Chief Executive

This international Women's Day we must reflect on the of the serious challenges women and girls face.

Every 11 minutes, a woman or girl is killed by a member of her own family. One in three women have suffered physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both.

Worldwide, 800 women die every day worldwide from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth and 40% live in countries where abortion laws are restrictive. 270 million women worldwide have no access to modern contraception.

Continued: https://www.figo.org/blog/time-running-out-lets-accelerate-progress-towards-gender-equity-health-care

08.03.2025

Editorial

Accelerate Action theme

female genital mutilation

FIGO

Frances Longley

International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics

International Women’s Day

intimate partner violence

The CDC Hasn’t Asked States to Track Deaths Linked to Abortion Bans

The Biden administration hasn’t delivered on its goals of measuring the public health impact of abortion bans. Experts say it’s a missed opportunity to study how the laws may lead to deaths and long-term injuries.

by Kavitha Surana, Robin Fields and Ziva Branstetter
Dec. 20, 2024

After the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, President Joe Biden issued an executive order tasking the federal government with assessing the “devastating implications for women’s health“ of new state abortion bans.

Experts were warning that these bans would interfere with critical medical care and lead to preventable deaths. And the states that passed the laws had little incentive to track their consequences.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-ban-deaths-cdc-maternal-health-care

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

In Nigeria, Ipas’s innovative partnership with religious leaders aims to reduce gender-based violence

May 17, 2024
Combatting gender-based violence is a massive challenge in Nigeria, where nearly one of every three women and girls aged 15-49 has experienced physical violence, including rape and other forms of sexual violence. Ipas has developed a crucial partnership with religious leaders that’s helping to change this.

In 2023, the Ipas Nigeria Health Foundation began carrying out an innovative effort aimed at reducing gender-based violence, ensuring that survivors get the sexual and reproductive care they need, and seeing that more perpetrators are punished for their crimes.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/in-nigeria-ipass-innovative-partnership-with-religious-leaders-aims-to-reduce-gender-based-violence/

17.05.2024

News

gender-based violence

intimate partner violence

Ipas Nigeria Health Foundation

SAIF Advocacy Foundation

sexual violence

Violence Against Persons Prohibition

More teens are reporting that a partner has threatened their reproductive health

The increase in "reproductive coercion” calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline after the overturn of Roe v. Wade underscores the need for policies addressing teen dating violence, experts say.

Jennifer Gerson
February 22, 2024

The country’s central domestic violence hotline received a major spike in calls from teens about reproductive coercion in the year following the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

New data from the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NVDH), also known as The Hotline, shows that 24 13- to 17-year-olds called about reproductive coercion in the year before June 2022; in the next year, that number rose to 44.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/02/teens-national-domestic-violence-hotline-reproductive-coercion/

22.02.2024

Research

intimate partner violence

IPV

Marium Durrani

National Domestic Violence Hotline

reproductive coercion

United States

Health

Human Rights

States That Restrict Abortion Have Higher Rates of Intimate Partner Homicide

“[T]here’s an epidemic of preventable violence that disproportionately affects vulnerable populations,” one study finds.

By Zane McNeill , TRUTHOUT
February 13, 2024

According to a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS), pregnant women who live in states that restrict abortion are more likely to experience intimate partner homicide. Researchers also found that the risk of intimate partner homicide is higher for young women under the age of 30, Black women, and women with lower education levels.

“This study reveals that in the United States, there’s an epidemic of preventable violence that disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, including peripartum people,” said Grace Keegan, lead author of the study and third-year medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/states-that-restrict-abortion-have-higher-rates-of-intimate-partner-homicide/

13.02.2024

abortion and violence

Grace Keegan

intimate partner violence

IPV and abortion laws

Journal of the American College of Surgeons

Justin Cirone

maternal mortality

peripartum homicides

pregnancy and homicide

Tanya Zakrison

USA – How abortion bans are undercutting efforts to prevent domestic violence

OB-GYNs are often the first or only doctors to learn if a patient is facing intimate partner violence. As they leave places with abortion bans, domestic violence victims are feeling the impacts.

By Jennifer Gerson, Shefali Luthra
November 13, 2023

As more abortion bans have gone into effect across the country, it has become far more difficult to perform a standard element of gynecological care: screening patients for domestic abuse.

Research shows that OB-GYNs are often the first or only doctors to learn if a patient is facing intimate partner violence. While women of all ages experience intimate partner violence, it is most prevalent among women of reproductive age, the people most likely to see an OB-GYN. Meanwhile, abortion bans have contributed to reproductive health care providers leaving states, retiring early or declining to practice where the procedure is restricted.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/11/abortion-bans-hindering-domestic-violence-screenings-prevention/