Forced pregnancy

Forced pregnancy is the practice of forcing a woman to become pregnant, often as part of a forced marriage, or as part of a programme of breeding slaves, or as part of a programme of genocide. When a forced pregnancy leads to reproduction, it is a form of reproductive coercion.

The practices of bride kidnapping and forced marriage typically (with the exception of purely symbolic "bride kidnappings" which are actually consensual elopements) involve the rape of the "bride" with the intention of forcing her to become pregnant, putting her in a position where she becomes dependent on the rapist and his family and, because of cultural attitudes toward rape, unable to return to her own family.

During the period of slavery in the United States, many slave owners attempted to influence the reproduction of slaves in order to increase the wealth of slaveholders.

Slave breeding included coerced sexual relations between male and female slaves, promoting pregnancies of slaves, sexual relations between master and slave with the aim of producing slave children, and favoring female slaves who produced a relatively large number of children.

The purpose of slave breeding was to produce new slaves without incurring the cost of purchase, to fill labor shortages caused by the termination of the Atlantic slave trade, and to attempt to improve the health and productivity of slaves. Slave breeding was condoned in the South because slaves were considered to be subhuman chattels, and were not entitled to the same rights accorded to free persons.

Rape, sexual slavery, and related actions including forced pregnancy and sexual slavery, are now recognized under the Geneva Convention as crimes against humanity and war crimes; in particular from 1949, Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and later also the 1977 Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, explicitly prohibit wartime rape and enforced prostitution. The Rome Statute Explanatory Memorandum, which defines the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, recognises rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, and forced pregnancy as crimes against humanity if part of a widespread or systematic practice.

...
Wikipedia