Can a woman be forced into pregnancy?

USUALLY when a woman becomes pregnant it is either seen as a choice to expand her family or a mistake from having unprotected sex. But for some women, it can also be a situation of being forced into pregnancy by the men they are involved with.

Dr Adwoa Onuora, lecturer in the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Mona unit, told All Woman that women in this context are, for the most part, poor women who are not empowered to negotiate condom usage, and subsequently they become subject to the whims of men who dictate how they negotiate sex and condom usage.

“In that regard, it can be something that can be imposed upon them — unwanted pregnancy — and when they are put in vulnerable positions, they can’t necessarily say, ‘Okay, I want to use a condom today,’” Dr Onuora said.

“There are no laws in place for contraception use, and if it’s not their right and it’s not their choice, then patriarchal society forces women to carry these unwanted pregnancies.”

She said the issue of reproductive choice is something that can be front and centre in the discussions around decriminalisation of abortion, or conversations around increasing the choices that women have to access reproductive technologies.

She also said when it comes to the question of whether a woman can be forced emotionally or otherwise into pregnancy, one has to think carefully about how ‘force’ is being defined, as a lot of these decisions are made because of external factors and socio-cultural realities.

Referencing a recent Jamaica Observer report of women in the inner- city being forced to survive on $300 a day, the gender specialist said public conversations that surfaced around the article questioned why women were having so many children they could not care for.

In the story, “Living on $300 a day”, one mother in a community close to Three Miles, told a story of how, at age 31, she has eight children and was forced to beg or do odd jobs on a daily basis to make ends meet. Unemployed and left alone to fend for herself and her children, the woman said that it has been years since she last saw any of the six fathers of the children.

Another 30-year-old woman told her story of having seven children.

“Yes, people will cuss and say why we make wiself reach in this situation, but when yuh reach a stage where you have to struggle to make ends meet, things happen,” she said. “Sometimes me get so desperate a sell mi have to sell mi body.

“When you reach a stage where when you contact the fathers of your children for maintenance money and they tell you that you have to have sex with them, it’s hard.”

Dr Onuora pointed out that the public discussions completely negate the fact that for so many of these women, child support and their very livelihood hinges on having sex with men in order to survive daily and to feed their children.

Instead, she said Jamaicans need to analyse the women’s situation from the point of view that they had no choice.

“A woman might be, for example, in dire straits, goes to the father of her child or children for support, and is told, ‘You have to sleep with me.’ In such a situation, when you desperately need to feed yourself and your children, it becomes difficult to say I’m going to choose to have sex in a particular way’, and in that way women can be forced indirectly into pregnancy,” she said.

Dr Onuora said the legal mechanisms or framework of a country that doesn’t support the choice to have an abortion, or when there’s decay in the health infrastructure, poor women are again placed in vulnerable positions with few to no options.

“When you go to the hospital as a poor woman and you hear ‘Okay, we’re out of condoms today’ or ‘we don’t have any pills today’, what happens is you had a slip-up the night before and can’t access the kinds of birth control like the morning- after pill. Then, of course, it’s not a choice anymore for you. These issues of pregnancies and how they happen really begin a discussion of class and what segment of women really get to decide whether they want to have children or continue pregnancies that are unwanted,“ she said, adding that the denial of the right to choose to have access to safe abortions is also a part of this conversation.

When it comes to solutions, Dr Onuora said what can be done speaks to the current economy.

“Certain classes of women get to choose the kinds of reproductive access they have.

“Women don’t have to be subject to the whim of persons in power who decide that if you’re going to eat a meal, you have to sleep with me and the cycle continues — she sleeps with you, gets pregnant, and then can’t access the necessary health support because it’s either not accessible or poorly lacking, or the public health system can’t find the necessary resources to deal with the problem. Ultimately the State needs to bear the cost of this by putting in appropriate income-security programmes that guarantee liveable conditions for people who are most vulnerable.“

Obstetrician/gynaecologist Dr Daryl Daley said often women are forced into pregnancy because their partners want children.

He said this abuse should not be encouraged, but unfortunately, in some cases, this is the scenario.

Ideally all patients should have preconception counselling to see if the woman is mentally, physically and emotionally ready for a pregnancy.