< Translator’s note: The original formatting of the stories has been preserved. The translations aim to remain as close as possible to each author's original wording and expression.
Reproductive coercion is a form of gender-based violence that people refuse to recognize.
Gender-based violence does not always look like beatings or rape. Very often it happens quietly, “legally,” and with a sense of impunity. Reproductive coercion is one of its most normalized forms. It operates through control over the body, devaluation of desires, and the systematic removal of the right to choose.
You might be familiar with the feeling when it is scary to speak out loud about an unwanted pregnancy. When, instead of clear information, there is confusion, and instead of support, advice that has nothing to do with your decision. When it feels as if you tell someone, you will hear nothing but judgment. In such moments, many of us choose silence not because it is a “very intimate topic,” but because we are afraid of the consequences.
My experience of an unwanted pregnancy began exactly like this. I did not have access to clear, evidence-based information about safe options. I did not know where to go or whom to trust. The fear of being judged was stronger than concern for my own health and mental state. If this feeling is familiar to you, it is important to say directly: there was nothing “wrong” with you. This is how stigma works.
When I tried to seek support among people close to me, I did not receive it. Not because the people around me were cruel, but because in our culture, there is almost no recognition of a person’s right not to want children. Instead, there is a culture of obligation, “patient acceptance of the situation,” and the narrative: “you’ll regret it later.” In such an environment, reproductive autonomy and termination of an unwanted pregnancy are not perceived as a basic right, but rather as an impulsive, immature, and emotional decision.
In the clinic, this pressure became direct. I was told that I was already at an age when it was “time to give birth” (I was 30, lol), and that I should hurry to “catch the last train.” I was forcibly “given” time to think that I did not ask for, and the process was dragged out for two weeks, during which I almost took my life due to bodily dysphoria and worsening mental condition. My unwillingness to have children was constantly questioned, as if it were not a decision but a mistake. If you have ever had to prove the seriousness of your “no,” you know how exhausting it is.
At that moment, my situation did not seem that critical to me — I did not understand that what was being done to me was violence. Sometimes I still think I was lucky when I read stories of people who had surgical abortions without proper anesthesia, using only medications like No-Spa, and presenting it as standard practice. Pain in such situations is ignored because of the belief that a person must “endure,” as well as a desire to “punish” with pain for such a decision.
Psychological violence from doctors is often no less traumatic. Phrases like “God didn’t give me a child, and you are killing yours” do not sound like random emotions, but like a tool of pressure. People are forced to listen to the fetal heartbeat without their consent, the embryo is deliberately called a child, and guilt and shame are invoked. This is not about care, not about medicine, and not about science — it is about control and misogyny.
You may also have been told that if you have a job and a partner, then you can “already give birth.” Or compared to others who “don’t even have that, but they give birth.” In this logic, a person’s desire does not matter at all. Motherhood becomes a social obligation, not a choice.
When I was going through my negative experience of abortion in a clinic, I did not even realize that it was pressure and gender-based violence. It seemed to me that it had to be this way, that it was “normal,” just a standard procedure, actions according to a medical protocol. Only with time, reflecting on it, did I understand how much I was controlled, manipulated, and deprived of choice.
Today I work as a consultant on safe abortion, and every day I see how widespread this experience is. Teenagers come to me who are afraid to tell their parents about an unwanted pregnancy because they will be killed or kicked out of the house. People in abusive relationships whose partners try to tie them down with a child. Patients who were intimidated, humiliated, or deliberately misinformed in clinics. If something like this has happened to you and it feels like you are alone, you are not. It’s just not something people talk about.
In Ukraine, abortion is allowed up to 12 weeks, and this is often presented as a sign of progressiveness. But this term is only a legal restriction, not a medical necessity. If the pregnancy occurred as a result of rape, if there is a threat to life or serious fetal conditions, the term can be extended — but only by decision of a special commission. That is, a group of people who have nothing to do with your pregnancy or your life objectify you and decide what to do with you.
The state presents such mechanisms as care for safety, but in reality, it is about control. In many countries, abortion terms are 20 weeks or more, and this is not a matter of safety or medicine, but a matter of who controls a person’s body. When the state decides when abortion is allowed and when it is not, it is not about protection, but about limiting autonomy.
This control begins much earlier — already at school. Sex education courses seldom include a section on unwanted pregnancy, even though, statistically, every third person with a uterus has such an experience. Instead, many remember separate lessons from pro-life organizations, where abortion was called murder and discussed in the language of fear. This is also a form of reproductive coercion, just disguised as “education.”
All of this is rarely talked about in the media, and even more rarely in this framing. Even organizations that work with gender-based violence often overlook reproductive coercion, as if it is not part of the problem. But this violence is deeply rooted in our culture and continues to reproduce itself, despite the formal legality of abortion.
Abortion is not a tragedy. The tragedy is coercion, pain, humiliation, and the refusal to recognize a person’s right to make decisions about their own body. As long as reproductive coercion is not named as a form of gender-based violence, it will remain invisible. And along with it — the experience of millions of people who deserve not silence, but support and the right to choose.
Oksanka, any pronouns; story shared in 2025 as part of the campaign “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.”