Reproductive Coercion is getting some surprise attention this week after actors Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder went on Dr Berlin’s Informed Pregnancy Podcast and related their pregnancy story with a few red flags. (Note: Dr. Berlin is a prenatal chiropractor, chiropractors are not medical doctors.)
I’ve linked the podcast so you can listen for yourself (the section in question is within the first 8 minutes) as well as a Jezebel article that includes a partial transcript, but basically, Reed says Somerhalder knew way before she did that he definitely wanted children, after they were married Somerhalder wanted to have children around the same time his best friends’ did, and then one night on vacation with aforementioned best friends, he popped Reeds’ birth control pills out one by one into the toilet while their friends filmed it and Reed was “freaking out.” Somerhalder ends the story by admitting really he was the one who decided to get pregnant, rather than his earlier use of “we.”
Is this reproductive coercion? And what is reproductive coercion anyway?
Reproductive Coercion (RC) is a type of intimate partner violence where one partner seeks to limit or control the other partner’s ability to make choices about their reproductive health. RC is a spectrum of behaviors, which can range from pregnancy promoting behaviors like tampering with birth control, sexual assault, and preventing someone from seeking an abortion if they want one, to behaviors that attempt to pressure, control, or harm a pregnant person with the aim of ending the pregnancy against their will.
When you listen to the actual audio, it seems as if they’re trying to make this into a cute, jokey story, but I can’t shake the red-flag-feeling. Reed’s response on twitter, shortly after media outlets started picking up on the story on Friday, characterizes the controversy as something the media has blown out of proportion, while most fan replies to her tweets are encouraging and insist that they knew it was lighthearted.
Here’s the thing – the narrative was their own. There are many times that a controversy over how something was reported in a profile of a celebrity – which come from much longer interviews that are condensed for publication and may only feature select quotes, but this came from a podcast where Reed and Somerhalder were speaking openly and unedited. The multiple journalists and outlets that picked up on the podcast (a podcast which I imagine rarely makes national headlines) raised the red flag over Somerhalder’s description of tossing her birth control in the toilet while Reed was upset, and that Reed asks about the video that was taken and wonders if she was too drunk to remember. These elements are alarming facts, and I when I listened to the actual audio the way they were told didn’t make me feel any better. Maybe they didn’t tell the story in an artful way, but these are tactics that are part of the spectrum of behaviors known as RC.
Reed and Somerhalder later put out a joint statement addressing the allegations of reproductive coercion:
Celebrities are very often not experts on the topics they become associated with. This is true. However, it is a rare moment in pop culture that a relatively little-known public health problem is gaining some attention, which is ultimately a good place to start a conversation.
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