Header image

Reproductive Coercion and Abuse: Addressing a Hidden Public Health Problem

Tracks
Ballroom 3: In-Person Only
Tuesday, November 24, 2026
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Ballroom 3

Overview

Laura Tarzia, The University Of Melbourne


Three Key Learnings

1. Prevalence of RCA in Australia 2. Associations between RCA and physical, sexual, psychological and reproductive health outcomes 3. Opportunities for screening, identification and response in health settings.


Speaker

Agenda Item Image
Professor Laura Tarzia
Professor
The University Of Melbourne

Reproductive coercion and abuse: Addressing a hidden public health problem

Presentation Overview

Reproductive coercion and abuse (RCA) is defined as deliberate interference with a person’s reproductive choices. It is typically categorised into two forms: pregnancy promoting RCA (e.g. forced pregnancy, contraceptive sabotage, preventing access to abortion) and pregnancy preventing RCA (e.g. forced abortion, forced sterilisation). Both forms are overwhelmingly perpetrated against women by their male intimate partners, often in a context of fear and control. Research suggests that RCA can cause enormous harm to women's health, wellbeing, and ability to parent. Despite this, RCA remains under-researched and under-addressed in policy and practice. In part, this may be due to the fact that conceptually sound, robust data on RCA is lacking globally and in Australia. Addressing this gap, this presentation will highlight new, national prevalence data on RCA from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (n=6322 women aged 43-48 and n=5711 women aged 28-35) as well as the associations between RCA and a range of critical physical, emotional, sexual and reproductive health outcomes. Implications for screening, identification, and response to RCA in health settings will also be outlined, highlighting opportunities to strengthen the health systems response to this under-researched health issue.

Biography

Laura is professor and co-lead of the Sexual and Family Violence (SAFE) research program at The University of Melbourne and Director of the NHMRC-funded RESTORE Centre of Research Excellence. Her main areas of expertise are sexual violence and reproductive coercion and abuse. Laura’s work draws on the voices of lived experience experts to understand the context and dynamics of sexual and reproductive violence and harnesses these insights to strengthen trauma-and-violence informed responses via the health system.
loading