Reproductive coercion

Reproductive coercion involves controlling another person’s choices sex and contraception. These include sabotaging contraception, pressuring someone into or out of pregnancy, or controlling decisions about their own body.

Courts have had to grapple with this issue, including cases about whether the person has capacity to make their own decisions about contraception, separate from whether another person is trying to make that decision for them.

This is one of the least-discussed forms of coercive control , despite being recognised as a distinct category of economic and psychological abuse in safeguarding guidance.