Male Abusers Often Sabotage Birth Control With Partners

MONDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) — A new report says that male partners of teenage girls and young women who engage in physical and sexual violence also often try to sabotage the birth control the women are using.

The study, which appears online in the January issue of Contraception, also finds that women who experience both birth-control sabotage and violence from their partner are twice as likely to have an unintended pregnancy.


“This study highlights an under-recognized phenomenon where male partners actively attempt to promote pregnancy against the will of their female partners,” study author Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the University of California at Davis School of Medicine, said in a news release from the school. “Not only is reproductive coercion associated with violence from male partners, but when women report experiencing both reproductive coercion and partner violence, the risk for unintended pregnancy increases significantly.”

The study was conducted from 2008-2009 at five health clinics that deal with reproductive issues in Northern California. About 1,300 women aged 16 to 29 took part by responding to a computerized survey.

About 15 percent said they’d experienced birth-control sabotage, and more than half reported physical or sexual violence from a partner. More than one-third of those who said they had been the victim of partner violence also acknowledged experiencing either pregnancy coercion or birth-control sabotage, the researchers found.

“We have known about the association between partner violence and unintended pregnancy for many years,” study senior author Jay Silverman, an associate professor of society, human development and health in the Harvard School of Public Health, said in the news release. “What this study shows is that reproductive coercion likely explains why unintended pregnancies are far more common among abused women and teens.”

More information

The National Women’s Health Network has more on birth-control sabotage.

— Randy Dotinga

SOURCE: University of California at Davis, news release, Jan. 25, 2010

Last Updated: Jan. 25, 2010

Copyright © 2010 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Birth Control Pills Might Alter Mate Selection: Study

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 7 (HealthDay News) — Could birth control pills be taking human evolution in a whole new, and possibly detrimental, direction?

A review of past research finds that, by altering hormonal cycles, the pill might affect choice of mates among members of both genders in a way that could hinder successful reproduction in the future.

“The use of the pill by women, by changing her mate preferences, might induce women to mate with otherwise less-preferred partners, which might have important consequences for mate choice and reproductive outcomes,” said Alexandra Alvergne, lead author of a study appearing in the October issue of Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

“One prediction is that offspring of pill users are more homozygous than expected, possibly related to impaired immune function and decreased perceived health and attractiveness,” according to the report by Alvergne, a postdoctoral research associate in the department of animal and plant sciences at the University of Sheffield in England, and colleague Virpi Lummaa.

But another expert thinks this new revelation on the pill, which did indeed revolutionize sex in the 1960s, may have been over-interpreted.

“The study was about female preferences in their relation to hormones in the cycle but that’s not the same as your mate selection for a long-term relationship,” said Dr. William Hurd, a reproductive endocrinologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland. “If you don’t take into account society maybe we’re all animals, but in social situations I don’t think there are many women who change who they would mate with at different times of the month. It might change desires or perceptions but, gee whiz, that’s a long stretch to changing who you would date, or even who you would go to dinner with.”

Women who are ovulating tend to be attracted to so-called “manly men,” those with more masculine facial features and traits of dominance and competitiveness, according to background information in the study. They also tend to prefer the man who is not like them, genetically speaking.

And men, given a choice, will gravitate towards an ovulating female rather than a non-ovulating female.

But women on the pill are more consistently in a state that mimics pregnancy, the authors stated.

According to the study authors, who stress that “modern contraception has improved the quality of life worldwide,” 100 million women around the globe are on the pill.

Alvergne and Lummaa are hoping the paper will spur further research.

“There are important limitations from previous studies, due to the fact few of them have been addressing the question as their main focus,” Alvergne said.

Future research should focus on two questions in particular, she said: Does use of the pill affect marital relationship, satisfaction and durability; and does it affect the ability of couples to reproduce?

But Hurd thinks there are other trends changing how humans date, mate and reproduce far more radically than artificial hormone cycles.

“Probably the biggest change in my lifetime is how people meet each other: online and using programs that match them for compatibility,” he said. “That’s probably going to have a massive effect on how people end up dating and ultimately reproducing. Just because you like someone with a square jaw in the middle of your cycle probably doesn’t affect who you end up with.”

More information

For more on reproductive health and biology, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

SOURCES: Alexandra Alvergne, Ph.D., postdoctoral research associate, department of animal and plant sciences, University of Sheffield, U.K.; William Hurd, M.D., reproductive endocrinologist, University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio; October 2009, Trends in Ecology & Evolution

Last Updated: Oct. 07, 2009

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