When Katherine found out that she was pregnant, the man who was allegedly abusing her — micromanaging her relationships, snooping through her phone and physically barring her from leaving his apartment during a visit — was by her side.
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“I felt like I had no control over the situation and this monumental thing had happened to me,” said Katherine, who lives in Indiana and wished to be identified only by her first name. “I was not prepared for it, and I did not want any of these things with him.”
In Republican-led states that ban abortion, anti-domestic violence groups say they expect more abused women to carry pregnancies to term — possessing little recourse if they’re coerced into pregnancy and keeping them tethered to dangerous partners. Already burdened by an increase in need during the pandemic, those advocates are preparing to respond with limited resources and navigate a patchwork of laws that call into question whether they can help people end their pregnancies.
Estimates vary of how many women seek abortions in part because of abuse. One study put the number at about 3 percent, while another found that between 6 and 22 percent of women having abortions reported recent violence from a partner.
For Katherine, abortion provided a clean break from a man she said she probably would have stayed with longer if she had given birth. After her appointment, she said, she told him that she had a miscarriage.
“Had I been with the love of my life and I was happy and not being emotionally abused, I think it would have been a different story,” said Katherine, who The Washington Post is identifying by only her first name to protect her privacy. “But at that point, in my mind I had already seen some issues with our relationship, and I didn’t see it being a forever thing.”
Women who give birth are more likely to stay in contact with abusive partners and continue to face physical harm than if they have an abortion, research shows. The time before birth also carries risks: Homicide is a leading cause of death among pregnant people.
New abortion bans are likely to correspond with a rise in abuse during pregnancy, said Sarah Roberts, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California San Francisco. Many people who previously would have had abortions without telling their partners may not be able to covertly travel for access, she said.
“They will continue their pregnancy in places that don’t already provide adequate support for people who are pregnant and experiencing domestic violence or need mental health support or are financially insecure,” said Roberts, who has researched abortion and intimate-partner violence.
Facing this rising need, many domestic violence organizations will be stretched thin and are barred from using public funds to help women access abortions.
Ruth Glenn, president of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said some anti-abuse organizations don’t have the money to help an influx of people struggling to access abortions and a rise in victims bringing children into dangerous family dynamics.
“We know that for those that don’t, it’s always been a challenge,” she said. “So when you add this on, how are they going to meet that challenge, how are they going to meet that need?”
Iowa is among the states that are likely to implement restrictive abortion laws and where there is limited funding to support victims. Advocates already saw more need during the coronavirus pandemic as reported abuse rose, said Lindsay Pingel, director of community engagement at the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence. An increase in post-Roe births could make it harder for anti-abuse organizations to provide housing, legal aid, workforce development programs and other resources to those who ask for it.
“The amount of investment that we get for these services is very low,” Pingel said. “And so we continue to work to do more with less and less funding to be able to take on everyone.”
Antiabortion groups, who have long campaigned to keep people from ending pregnancies, said they are willing to help domestic violence victims access services.
Bo Linam, the founder of an antiabortion group in Tennessee, said his organization will continue to do for abuse victims who give birth what it already does: throw them baby showers, offer them shelter in volunteers’ homes, provide money for financial needs like groceries and help them report their abusers to police.
“It is putting a lot on a woman who is trying to flee for her life, to then try to figure out the legal side of her fight for safety,” Linam, who runs Hope Beyond Abortion, wrote in an email. “We should be willing (and we are), to guide and help her through that.”
Kentucky Right to Life plans to refer pregnant people facing abuse to crisis pregnancy centers — which are set up to dissuade women from having abortions — or domestic violence organizations that do not help women access abortions, said Addia Wuchner, the organization’s executive director.
“Abortion is not a solution for a domestic violence situation,” she said. “Abortion only perpetuates another violence, and that’s the violence on the life of the child.”
Without widespread abortion access, Pingel said, her Iowa organization is increasingly concerned about reproductive coercion — a practice in which abusers manipulate victims, sexually assault them or sabotage their birth control to try to cause a pregnancy as a way of maintaining control.
“If someone who is in an unsafe relationship feels that they’ve been coerced into having a baby, if they’ve been violated, sexually assaulted or their situation is one where they don’t want to move forward bringing a child into this world, all of those factors could play into making them more vulnerable to abuse moving forward,” Pingel said.
Lindsay, then 16, didn’t intend to get pregnant. She said her boyfriend told her that they didn’t need to use condoms, and she trusted him.
He isolated her from her friends, accused her of cheating and threatened to break up with her if she didn’t have sex with him, she said — but she thought she loved him, and she wanted to have the baby. Her mom talked her out of it, and she had an abortion.
Almost a decade later, Lindsay said she’s grateful that she isn’t in touch with her abuser. She imagines that if she had given birth, he would have persuaded her to move in with him, and they would have brought a child into a toxic environment. She doubts that she would have gone to college.
“If I was still tied to him in that way, I don’t know what my life would look like right now,” said Lindsay, now 25, who asked to be identified by only her first name to protect her privacy.
People who ask domestic violence organizations for help accessing abortions post-Roe may have mixed luck. Some advocates are unsure whether the laws in their states will allow them to help people end pregnancies, and they fear criminal charges if their legal interpretations are wrong.
Mackenzie Masilon, legislative liaison at the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault, said her organization was trying to determine whether the state’s service providers could legally refer women to clinics that perform abortions. Abortion is banned in Oklahoma.
“We have questions around, is simply providing resources of the nearest clinic that is offering services that they need — would that be considered something that’s illegal under this law?” Masilon said. “It’s uncharted territory for our agencies.”
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