To ask if you know anyone personally who got pregnant by lying about contraception?

[Pavemw]

Just that, really. I have an extremely close friend who confided in me at new year that her 11 year old dd wasn’t actually an accident. I have known her half my life and our kids are friends. She was with this man for a short time and the relationship did not last the pregnancy although he does see his dd and has been pretty good to my friend financially.

I can’t get my head around it. This is someone who I go to for advice. She’s always empathetic and kind. I can’t even believe she would have done it and I don’t know why it’s bothering me as much as it is. I don’t know her ex, haven’t seen him in many years. I almost feel she’s lied to me too, which I know is silly. She said she was late 30s, had been told her fertility wasn’t great and had had enough of being messed around by men, so when this next one seemed keen to commit she just went for it. I know she has been treated badly in the past and has always put her heart out there only to be messed about or strung along so I can almost feel how frustrated she would have been but… to do this? I can’t imagine it as I had my two in a happy marriage. Maybe I being horribly judgmental. I can’t reconcile this with who I thought she was all these years. Am I being dramatic?!

Oh boo hoo poor you. You had sex and she got pregnant.

Buuuut she toooold me she was on the pill! Wahhh. We’ve onlyyyyy been together for 5 years, and I’m nooooot readdddy to setttttle dowwwwn.

I know this isn’t the majority on this thread, but I absolutely support women taking control of their fertility. I would think there are a lot of women simply losing their patience in the end.

Would you also support a man removing a condom because he wanted a baby?

Isn’t this classed as rape/sexual assault? He agreed to sex under the agreement that she was on contraception but she knew she wasn’t. If he knew she wasn’t, his consent might have been different.

I don’t think it’s over dramatic to be upset by this. Would you want to be friends with someone like this?

No

I think there's a problem with your keyboard

Would you want to be friends with someone like this?

If they were a good friend it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. One decision does not define a person - I think we can all be grateful for that - and I am not the moral adjudicator of other people's nuanced decisions.

So why is it OK for a woman?

Would you support the man choosing to have nothing to do with the result?

Or a man sabotaging a woman’s contraception if he was “simply losing patience” waiting for her to be ready?

There is literally no reason to lie.

She can just say “I am coming off the pill”.

If he chooses to have unprotected sex after that that is 100% on him and fully informed consent has been established.

Would you remain friends with a man who confessed he has stealthed sexual partners?

I know you've spent quite a lot of time and effort trying to make these things the same but they aren't. If a woman gets pregnant by her own deceit then she carries the child and the responsibility. Men do not - nothing physical happens to them or their bodies. That's just how it is, nature has determined that - men cannot get pregnant and so the field is unbalanced from the beginning.

If a man causes a woman to become pregnant by deceit then he has assaulted her body.

These things simply aren't the same, they don't have the same consequences and they shouldn't be viewed in the same way. The consequences for women are significantly different and therefore need to be viewed with different lenses.

Sometimes laws and expectations reflect that.

Don’t be silly. Sabotaging a woman’s contraception is totally different.

Men do pretty much what they like with fatherhood anyway. That’s their choice.

No, that's assault. As has been explained to you many times.

It’s assault because the law has defined it that way in England and Wales. In places like Israel rape by deception is defined as assault.

So the assault argument is weak I am talking about ethics and morality and it’s weird how one example of theft of consent would have you abandoning a friendship and one would not.

I dont get this. You say she "just went for it" aka she didn't use protection and neither did the dad? Or did she tell him she was using protection

If he was aware then he took a risk like her. If she didn't tell.him that's a bit different.

I know someone who poked holes in her pessary and didn't tell her dh as she wanted a 4th.

Why is it totally different?

They are both sabotaging contraception - with the exception that the one still has additional steps she can take to avoid parenthood.

I know someone who poked holes in her pessary and didn't tell her dh as she wanted a 4th.

That's awful!

I never had much sympathy for calls for “financial abortions” from some spaces but I get it now given just how many women are fine with overriding somebody’s consent as long as it’s a woman doing it and a man on the receiving end.

I went looking for information on the Israeli laws and found this interesting article from Yale Law.

https://yalelawandpolicy.org/solving-riddle-rape-deception

I’m in the - if you want to have sex with a woman and not have a baby then use contraception camp.
funny how a hormonal contraceptive has never been invented for men. I’m sure if they were that bothered it would be hard but they’d rather leave it to women to deal with all the responsibility/ side effects and ultimately the consequences 💁🏼‍♀️

Surely that’s obvious?

No, it’s not obvious which is why I asked.

100% this

Not really. I don't really care what the law says, it happens to agree with me here but it could easily not - there are lots of laws (and laws that don't exist) that I disagree with. I still think the same, the two things are not equivalent. Is any form of deceit bad? Yes. But men and women are not equal, the world is just different for them - this is not the first or the last time you will find that.

Fighting for absolute equity between two very unequal parties is absurd, and serves only to punish those who it affects the most. It's like trying to argue an equal jail sentence for someone who stole £10 and someone who stole £3,000,000 on the basis that they both commited theft.

What does that article have to do with the point I made?

I think the reality might be complete population collapse with men secretly talking contraceptive pills while 'trying' for a baby. I very much doubt that many families would exceed two children.