Abstract
In a significant number of cases, clerical sex offenders impregnate their victims and force them into hiding, abortion, or adoption. This phenomenon is referred to in this paper as reproductive abuse. Clearly, most victims of reproductive abuse are adults, but even among minor victims of clerical child abuse, between 1 and 10 percent may have experienced reproductive abuse. On the basis of pertinent studies, this paper explores archival material on several dozen allegations of reproductive abuse in the context of clergy sexual abuse of minors in the US Catholic Church. Besides some tentative estimates of the general frequency of the phenomenon, this paper offers a distinction of three different types of reproductive abuse and an analysis of the interplay of clericalist and secular misogyny, which appears to be largely responsible for the silencing of victims as well as for the impunity of perpetrators and leads to the invisibility of this phenomenon, despite the high importance attributed to reproductive issues in the Catholic context.
Highlights
Regardless of the specific context and even though reproductive abuse clearly “intensifies the effects of sexual violence” (Duggan and Jacobson 2009), it is hardly ever prosecuted by criminal law (Altunjan 2021) and, in many disciplines and contexts, it is still a surprisingly under-discussed topic
This applies not least to research on clergy sex abuse (CSA)
Even though research on CSA in the Catholic Church has virtually boomed in recent years, the number of victims who were impregnated by their clerical perpetrators has not been surveyed in any of the major studies, globally
Summary
Regardless of the specific context and even though reproductive abuse clearly “intensifies the effects of sexual violence” (Duggan and Jacobson 2009), it is hardly ever prosecuted by criminal law (Altunjan 2021) and, in many disciplines and contexts, it is still a surprisingly under-discussed topic. In many societies, a system of reproductive injustice prevails, that forbids those who are reproductively vulnerable to make their own reproductive decisions freely Their needs and points of view are not systematically taken into account by those who hold reproductive power, often resulting in restricted reproductive autonomy and adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes for girls and young women, many of them mothers (Freedman and Isaacs 1993; Cook et al 2003; Traina 2018). It is one thing for a person to be vulnerable on an ontological level because of biological and technical contingencies.
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