Abusive Boyfriends Sabotage Birth Control

A new report sheds light on a form of domestic abuse that hasn't received much attention: men pressuring their partners to get pregnant against their will, sometimes by sabotaging birth control or forcing unprotected sex. In a survey of callers to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, one in four women said they had experienced that kind of abuse, reports the New York Times.

“It was very eye-opening,” one public health advocate tells the newspaper. "There were stories about men refusing to wear a condom, forcing sex without a condom, poking holes in condoms, flushing birth control pills down the toilet." The reasons for the men's behavior? It could be anything from gang members looking for the status of multiple kids by multiple women to an attempt to create a nuclear family by someone who grew up in a dysfunctional one. (More domestic abuse stories.)