Anyone else notice this?

Reproductive coercion is a lot more common than people realize. And society tends to assume that if anyone is reproductively coercing it must be the baby crazy woman, right? Nope. Probably 9 times out of 10 it's the man, trying to entrap the woman. Nothing will sidetrack a woman's life faster than a pregnancy, nor plummet her standards to such incredible new lows. Pregnancy leads to countless women settling for shitty relationships with LVM, NVM, and abusers.

My abusive ex reproductively coerced me, raped me, and quickly succeeded in getting me pregnant. When I told him, literally one of the first things he said was, "You're mine now." Very early on in our relationship I'd made the huge mistake of confiding in him that I want to be a mother, that it's a dream of mine. I told him that when I have kids I want to be able to stay at home until they're in grade school. I don't see the point in having kids if I can't even be with them for their formative years. He hadn't really responded to that at the time. But once I was pregnant, suddenly he was informing me that I'd have to keep working and that our moms (mine who neglected and emotionally abused me and his who physically abused him) could watch the baby. I was his cash cow and he had zero intention of letting that dry up. God forbid he step up and work more than 16 hours a week to provide for the life he'd coerced into me. He wouldn't even stop smoking weed around me even though it's obviously not a good idea to smoke around a pregnant person and it exasperated my awful nausea.

It took me something like 7 days from that positive pregnancy test to schedule an abortion. My world came crashing down on me and I was overcome with this impending sense of doom. I was dooming myself, I was dooming my baby. This wasn't the life I wanted for us. Survival mode kicked in, thankfully. He'd told me he'd kill me if I ever aborted but tbh dying would have been preferable to being tethered to him for the rest of my life. Would have been preferable to allowing him to ruin my baby's life.

Stay on high alert, ladies. These scumbags are everywhere, some more overt than others. Please look into birth control that's tamperproof, like the implant or an IUD. You can't trust men when it comes to reproduction. Please do not rely only on condoms. Every man I've been with has pressured me to let them take the condom off. Two of them took condoms off without saying anything, knowing I wasn't on birth control. If, when, and how you have kids is the biggest life choice you will ever make. Don't let it be stolen from you. Our right to abortion is being threatened, and even if it is easily accessible to you it can have a dire emotional/mental impact. Prioritize yourself, your health, and your desires.