Coercive Control and Violence Against Women
Happy New Year, Dear Reader!
I am in the middle of assembling my latest project: Birthzilla: The Podcast, which you can start following on Instagram or my (currently empty) YouTube channel. But petty oligarch—or as his mom calls him “genius of the world”— Elon Musk’s recent Tweet made me stop and realize that I needed to send out a newsletter.
In case you missed it, Musk Tweeted that cesareans are better for people because it allows babies with bigger brains to be born. This kind of low-grade misogyny is nonsense as usual from him, but it is worth noting that there is no evidence to suggest long-term brain differences based on method of birth.
If Musk were the only problem, we’d probably be fine. The problem is that in 2025, we’re likely to see a lot more of this low-grade misogyny and beyond, and I wanted to put a few things on your radar as we start the year.
Violence Against Women is on the Rise
The subtle misogyny of Musk’s Tweet, blatant misogyny of Twitter-at-large, Musk, Trump, and their kind, and the truly horrifying misogyny in the manosphere online are going to be big problems in the future.
The Council on Criminal Justice reports an 8% increase in domestic violence during the COVID lockdown. Historically, this is not surprising. During hard economic times domestic violence goes up. In addition, domestic violence and violence against women are associated with political instability, authoritarian regimes, and political violence generally. During the Great Depression, domestic violence was high. During Nazi Germany, Hitler banned abortions for “good” German and Germanize-able women and mandated them for “bad” women (Roma/“gypsies,” Jews, the disabled, anyone not Aryan enough). Control over women’s fertility is deeply associated with unstable, totalitarian and/or authoritarian, patriarchal political orders.
Violence Against Women is a Maternal Health Problem
Last year I featured some research showing that one of the leading causes of death among pregnant women is intimate partner homicide. That has not changed, and it may have gotten worse.
According to a 2024 JAMA Network report rates of pregnancy-associated homicides were “significantly higher” in states that limited access to reproductive health choices. As more states increase restriction on abortion (like Texas suggesting the death penalty) and pregnancy prevention services, there is a real worry that rates of domestic violence, including homicide, will increase even more. Another 2024 study in Health Affairs found that even before Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health (2022) and the associated rise in maternal and infant mortality:
enforcement of each additional Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) law was associated with a 3.4 percent increase in the rate of intimate partner violence–related homicide in this population. We estimated that 24.3 intimate partner violence–related homicides of women and girls ages 10–44 were associated with TRAP laws implemented in the states and years included in this analysis.
As a maternal health policy researcher, I find this very unsettling (but wholly predictable). Babies are being left to die in Texas, just like reproductive health scholars said they would be. Yet despite the consequences of these disastrous laws, states are doubling down (because they don’t actually care about women or babies).
Domestic violence and childbirth are, sadly, linked in the United States. Despite claims to care deeply about “life,” states with the highest restrictions on abortion also have high rates of domestic violence. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists report that 1 in 6 women who are domestic abuse victims first experience domestic abuse during pregnancy, while the March of Dimes reports that approximately 320,000 women are abused by their partners during pregnancy each year. Because both domestic violence and rape are underreported, it becomes very difficult to tell what the actual numbers are, but the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2024 that there were at least 65,000 rape-related pregnancies in the US.
Coercive Control and The Banality of Violence Against Women
The ACOG study is important because it is not widely discussed in society that in some families, abuse does not start until the woman is particularly vulnerable. Pregnancy and childbirth leave a woman physically, emotionally, and economically precarious. Add coercive control to this situation and you have a recipe for disaster.
Coercive control is a type of domestic abuse where perpetrators engage in practices such as isolating their victim, psychological manipulation, heavy monitoring and stalking, and other serious types of non-physical violence (often paired with physical and sexual violence). This includes forcing a partner into pregnancy to prevent them from leaving and maintaining control over them. This is one of the reasons Supreme Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s admission that right-wing judges have no problem with forced pregnancy was so horrifying. Abortion regulations and violence against women at the institutional and political level is basically coercive control by policy or at least an accomplice to coercive control, and that has incredibly serious effects on domestic violence victims and survivors.
Few cases illustrate more clearly how women can be married to monsters and not know it than the Gisele Pellicot case in France. The incredibly brave woman stood up in court to show that not only her husband, but at least 50 other ordinary men were complicit in repeatedly drugging and raping her over decades. Close on the heels of that case’s headlines—as men and complicit women around the world were claiming Pellicot was an isolated case—came another example in Germany where 70,000 men were sharing information in a group chat on how to sedate and rape women.
The reality is that these men are not monsters or outliers. They are ordinary men capable of extraordinary cruelty, violence, and malice towards women—even those they profess to love. This is the world in which women live. Despite this reality, there are those who seek to justify or otherize the perpetrators in the Pellicot case as outliers, but how many outliers does it take to make a sample?
What to watch for
While this might all sound like a nightmare, it is not hopeless. ProPublica’s latest article, part of a continuing revelations that local law enforcement are engaged with domestic terrorist and white supremacist groups is certainly a fear factor. As it the constitutional sheriff movement and other sheriffs who refuse to enforce red flag laws. Likewise, Twitter’s descent into chaos with Zuckerberg (who at least got rid of the baby bangs while he’s in his Neville Chamberlain phase) allowing women to be listed as “household objects” are problems.
But I am suspiciously optimistic because there are a lot of young activists out there. It would help us to remember our power. Time of great trial produce times of great opportunity, we just have to find them.
