https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elopement A humorous, staged photograph (circa 1904) depicting an attempted elopement with clichéd
ladder to the prospective bride's upstairs bedroom. The bride has
fallen down the ladder, knocking over her beau and waking her father.
Elopement is a marriage
which is conducted in a sudden and secretive fashion, sometimes
involving a hurried flight away from one's place of residence together
with one's beloved with the intention of getting married without
parental approval. An elopement is contrasted with an abduction (e.g., a
bride kidnapping), in which either the bride or groom has not consented, or a shotgun wedding in which the parents of one (prototypically the bride's) coerce both into marriage.
Controversially, in modern times, elopement is sometimes applied to any small, inexpensive wedding, even when it is performed with parental foreknowledge.
The term elopement is sometimes used in its original, more
general sense of escape or flight, e.g. an escape from a psychiatric
institution. In this context, elopement (or wandering) can refer to a patient with dementia leaving the psychiatric unit without authorization. It has also referred to a married person leaving their spouse in order to run away with a third party.
Background
Today
the term "elopement" is colloquially used for any marriage performed in
haste, with a limited public engagement period or without a public
engagement period. Some couples elope because they wish to avoid parental or religious objections.
In some modern cases, the couple collude together to elope under the guise of a bride kidnapping, presenting their parents with a fait accompli. In most cases, however, the men who resort to capturing a wife are often of lower social status, because of poverty, disease, poor character or criminality. They are sometimes deterred from legitimately seeking a wife because of the payment the woman's family expects, the bride price (not to be confused with a dowry, paid by the woman's family).
In some areas, elopement is met with violent reactions from family
members, while in other places eloping has become more accepted.
Examples
United Kingdom
In England, a prerequisite of Christian marriage is the "reading of the banns"—for
any three Sundays in the three months prior to the intended date of the
ceremony, the names of every couple intending marriage has to be read
aloud by the priest(s) of their parish(es) of residence, or the posting
of a 'Notice of Intent to Marry' in the registry office for civil ceremonies. The intention of this is to prevent bigamy
or other unlawful marriages by giving fair warning to anybody who might
have a legal right to object. In practice, however, it also gives
warning to the couples' parents, who sometimes objected on purely
personal grounds. To work around this, it is necessary to get a special
licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury—or to flee somewhere the law did not apply.
For civil marriages notices must be posted for 28 clear days, at the appropriate register office.
Southeast Asia
Philippines
In the Philippines, elopement is called "tanan". Tanan
is a long-standing practice in Filipino culture when a woman leaves her
home without her parents' permission to live a life with her partner.
Usually she will elope during the nighttime hours and is awaited by her
lover nearby, who then takes her away to a location not of her origin.
The next morning, the distraught parents are clueless to the whereabouts
of their daughter. Tanan often occurs as a result of an impending arranged marriage or in defiance to parents' dislike of a preferred suitor.
Indonesia
In Indonesia, an elopement is considered as "kawin lari", translated as "runaway marriage" ("kawin", means marriage, "lari"
means running/fleeing). This happens if the groom, the bride or both
fail to get parental permission for the marriage. As Indonesia is a
religiously strict country, a couple cannot be married without a
parent's (or next closest living relative) consent. Thus, most
Indonesian couples who engage in elopement often end up marrying without
acknowledgment or official record by the government.
Malaysia
Similar to Indonesia, an elopement in Malaysia is considered as "kahwin lari"
or "marriage on a run". This mostly occurs when either (or both) of the
couple's families does not approve the relationship or when the
marriage involves a foreign man. Additionally, elopement can happen when the court does not give permission for polygamy
or if the man wants to keep the new marriage secret from the first wife
or even the existence of the first wife from the second. The eloping
couple also may get married outside the border (e.g Pattani)
when the dowry amount is too high, causing them to be desperate to run
away. Elopement outside the country is valid according to certain law,
but failure to register the marriage according to Islamic family law can
cause issues with inheritance, performing umrah/hajj,
divorce, and the registration of the birth of a child. However, some
couples marry out of the country specifically to avoid the registration
requirements of their Islamic religious council, which are seen by them
as overly complicated.
West Asia
In Assyrian society, elopement ("Jelawta" or "Jenawta") against parental request is very disreputable, and is rarely practised. In the 19th and early 20th century, Assyrians had heavily guarded their females from abduction
and also consensual elopement, when it came to their neighbours such as
Kurds, Azeris and Turks, who would abduct Assyrian women and marry
them, in some cases forcefully, where they would convert them to Islam.
Pre-marital romance was tolerated by the Nomadic and Militaristic Kurdish Bolbas tribal confederation, most notability the Mangur
tribe; these relationships usually ended up in elopement if not
approved for marriage by the bride's family. These love marriages were
called “radu khstn”, meaning "chased after [a person (typically a
girl after a boy)]." Typically elopement was only considered honorable
if the family of the bride repeatedly rejects the possibility of
marriage to her lover until the bride takes it in her own hands and
marries her lover herself; otherwise, such as if the bride never
mentions a request to marry her lover to her family before eloping with
him or in certain families who only approve elopement of divorced women and restrict virgin girls only to arranged marriages,
it is considered dishonorable. Many Bolbas women had been in at least
one love marriage in their life and it is considered an honor. This
caused conflict with the surrounding settled-feudalistic and urbanized fellow Kurdish Mokri tribe,
whom measured a woman's honor in delicacy and modesty rather than
strength and stubbornness, who promoted the ban of this practice. The Mangur tribe were of the last Kurdish tribes to practice this tradition, continuing the practice until the 1980s.
In popular culture
The relationship between Helen and Paris of Troy is sometimes depicted as an elopement instead of an abduction.
Searches for elopement photography ideas on Pinterest
increased by 128 percent in 2019, with other related terms like
"elopements at city halls" and "elopements in forests" also seeing
increases in volume.
In contract bridge, an elopement play is a form of trump coup that enables a smaller card to score a trick if it is lying over the higher card of an opponent.
If the rank of the card does not matter, it is known as a "pure"
elopement; if the rank does matter it is known as a "rank" elopement.
Arranged marriage is a type of marital union where the bride
and groom are primarily selected by individuals other than the couple
themselves, particularly by family members such as the parents. In some
cultures, a professional matchmaker may be used to find a spouse for a young person.
Arranged marriages have historically been prominent in many cultures. The practice remains common in many regions, notably the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and West Asia. In many other parts of the world, the practice has declined substantially during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Forced marriages, practised in some families, are condemned by the United Nations. The specific sub-category of forced child marriage is especially condemned. In other cultures, people mostly choose their own partner.
History
Arranged marriages were very common throughout the world until the 18th century.
Typically, marriages were arranged by parents, grandparents or other
close relatives and trusted friends. Some historical exceptions are
known, such as courtship and betrothal rites during the Renaissance period of Italy and Gandharva Vivah in the Vedic period in the Indian subcontinent.
Marriage in Greco-Roman antiquity
was based on social responsibility. Marriages were usually arranged by
the parents; on occasion professional matchmakers were used. For the
marriage to be legal, the woman's father or guardian had to give permission to a suitable man who could afford to marry. Orphaned daughters were usually married to cousins. The couple participated in a ceremony which included rituals such as removal of the veil. A man was typically limited to only one wife, though he could have as many mistresses as he could afford.
In China,
arranged marriages (baoban hunyin, 包办婚姻) – sometimes called blind
marriages (manghun, 盲婚) – were the norm before the mid-20th century. A
marriage was a negotiation and decision between parents and other older
members of two families. The boy and girl were typically told to get
married, without a right to demur, even if they had never met each other
until the wedding day.
Arranged marriages were the norm in Russia before the early 20th century, most of which were endogamous.
Until the first half of the 20th century, arranged marriages were common in migrant families in the United States.
They were sometimes called "picture-bride marriages" among
Japanese-American immigrants because the bride and groom knew each other
only through the exchange of photographs before the day of their
marriage. These marriages among immigrants were typically arranged by
parents or close relatives from the country of their origin. As
immigrants settled in and melded into a new culture, arranged marriages
shifted first to quasi-arranged marriages where parents or friends made
introductions and the couple met before the marriage; over time, the
marriages among the descendants of these immigrants shifted to
autonomous marriages driven by individual's choice, dating and courtship
preferences, and an increase in marrying outside of their own ethnic
group. Similar historical dynamics are claimed in other parts of the world.
Arranged marriages have declined in countries where forced
marriages were politically outlawed (e.g. Imperial Russia or Japan) or
in a prosperous countries with more social mobility and increasing
individualism; nevertheless, arranged marriages might still be seen in
countries of Europe and North America, among royal families, aristocrats
and minority religious groups such as in placement marriage
among Fundamentalist Mormon groups of the United States. In most other
parts of the world, arranged marriages continue to varying degrees and
increasingly in quasi-arranged form, along with autonomous marriages.
In some communities, especially in rural parts of the Middle East,
North Africa, and South Asia, a woman who refuses to go through with an
arranged marriage, tries to leave an arranged marriage via divorce, or
is suspected of any kind of "immoral" behaviour may be considered to
have dishonored her entire family. This being the case, her male
relatives may be ridiculed or harassed and any of her siblings may find
it impossible to enter into a marriage. In these cases, killing the
woman is a way for the family to enforce the institution of arranged
marriages. Unlike cases of domestic violence, honor killings are often done publicly for all to see and there are frequently family members involved in the act.[13]
Comparison
Marriages have been categorized into four groups in scholarly studies:
Forced arranged marriage: parents or guardians select, the individuals are neither consulted nor have any say before the marriage
Consensual arranged marriage: parents or guardians
select, then the individuals are consulted, who consider and consent,
and each individual has the power to refuse; sometimes, the individuals
meet – in a family setting or privately – before engagement and marriage
as in shidduch custom among Orthodox Jews
Self-selected marriage: individuals select, then parents or
guardians are consulted, who consider and consent, and where parents or
guardians have the power of veto.
Autonomous marriage: individuals select, the parents or guardians are neither consulted nor have any say before the marriage
Gary Lee and Lorene Stone suggest that most adult marriages in recent
modern history are somewhere on the scale between consensual arranged
and autonomous marriage, in part because marriage is a social
institution. Similarly, Broude and Greene, after studying 142 cultures
worldwide, have reported that 130 cultures have elements of arranged
marriage.
Extreme examples of forced arranged marriage have been observed in some societies, particularly in child marriages of girls below age 12. Illustrations include vani which is currently seen in some tribal/rural parts of Pakistan, and Shim-pua marriage Taiwan before the 1970s (Tongyangxi in China).
Types
There are many kinds of arranged marriages, some of these are:
Arranged exogamous marriage: is one where a third party finds and selects the bride and groom irrespective of their social, economic and cultural group.
Arranged endogamous marriage: is one where a third party finds and selects the bride and groom from a particular social, economic and cultural group.
Consanguineous marriage: is a type of arranged endogamous marriage. It is one where the bride and groom share a grandparent or near ancestor. Examples of these include first cousin marriages,
uncle-niece marriages, second cousin marriages, and so on. The most
common consanguineous marriages are first cousin marriages, followed by
second cousin and uncle-niece marriages. Between 25 and 40% of all
marriages in parts of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
are first cousin marriages; while overall consanguineous arranged
marriages exceed 65 to 80% in various regions of North Africa and
Central Asia.
The bride and groom in all of the above types of arranged marriages,
usually do have the right to consent; if the bride or the groom or both
do not have a right to consent, it is called a forced marriage.
Forced marriages are not the same as arranged marriages; these forced
arrangements do not have the full and free consent of both parties, and
no major world religion advocates for forced marriages. Arranged
marriages are commonly associated with religion; a few people in some
religions practice this form of marriage the religion does not promote
it.
According to The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955
of India, non-consensual marriages and marriages where either the
bridegroom is below the age of 21 years or the bride is below the age of
18 are prohibited for the Hindus, Buddhist, Sikhs and Jains.
Non-consanguineous arranged marriage is one where the bride and
groom do not share a grandparent or near ancestor. This type of arranged
marriages is common in Hindu and Buddhist South Asia, Southeast Asia,
East Asia and Christian Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Consanguineous marriages are against the law in many parts of United States and Europe. In the United Kingdom uncle-niece marriages are considered incestuous
and are illegal, but cousin marriages are not forbidden, although there
have been calls to ban first-cousin marriages due to health concerns.
While consanguineous arranged marriages are common and culturally
preferred in some Islamic countries and among migrants from Muslim
countries to other parts of the world, they are culturally forbidden or
considered undesirable in most Christian, Hindu and Buddhist societies.
Consanguineous arranged marriages were common in Jewish communities
before the 20th century, but have declined to less than 10% in modern
times.
Arranged matchmakers in India
For
matchmakers, traditionally called nayan, in India it is customary for
them to be a family friend or a distant relative. Some people however do
not prefer to use a matchmaker. As stated by Santana Flanigan, “Some
families with marriageable age children may prefer not to approach
possible matches with a marriage proposal because communication between
families could break down, and could result in accidental disrespect
between the two families.”
This person is a neutral matchmaker when families are trying to plan an
arranged marriage. The nayan usually has two roles that they play: one
is as a marriage scout and the other is as a negotiator. As a marriage
scout, the matchmaker goes out into the community and tries to find a
potential match for the person who wants to get married. As a
negotiator, the matchmaker talks to different families and tries to come
to a common ground about a potential arranged marriage between two
families. While going about this process the matchmaker considers
several different considerations including but not limited to family
background, financial status, and family reputation. Once the nayan
finds a match they will get in contact with the families and start to
arrange communication between the future couple. Communication starts
strictly from the matchmaker to the two people and their families.
Eventually, families will begin to communicate with each other while
also allowing the new couple to communicate with one another. After the
families have talked about the marriage and made wedding plans the
matchmakers come back to help in the process of the wedding. The help
offered by the nayan can come in the form of jewelry or wedding setup.
Usually, the matchmaker does not receive any pay for the work that they
have done but will often be given gifts from the families of the new
couple.
Causes and prevalence
Over
human history through modern times, the practice of arranged marriages
has been encouraged by a combination of factors, such as the practice of
child marriage, late marriage, tradition,culture, religion, poverty and limited choice, disabilities, wealth and inheritance issues, politics, social and ethnic conflicts.
Child marriage does not prepare or provide the individual much
opportunity to make an informed, free choice about matrimony. These
child marriages are implicitly arranged marriages.
In rural areas of East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin
America, poverty and lack of options, such as being able to attend
school, leave little choice to children other than be in early arranged
marriages.
Child marriages are primarily seen in areas of poverty. Parents arrange
child marriages to ensure their child's financial security and
reinforce social ties. They believe it offers protection and reduces the
daughter's economic burden on the family due to how costly it is to
feed, clothe and (optionally) educate a girl. By marrying their daughter
to a good family, the parents improve their social status by
establishing a social bond between each other.
According to Warner, in nations with the high rates of child
marriages, the marriage of the girl is almost always arranged by her
parents or guardians. The nations with the highest rates of arranged child marriages are: Niger, Chad, Mali, Bangladesh, Guinea, Central African Republic, Afghanistan, Yemen, India and Pakistan. Arranged child marriages are also observed in parts of the Americas.
Poverty
In
impoverished communities, every adult mouth to feed becomes a continuing
burden. In many of these cultures, women have difficulty finding
gainful employment (or are simply prohibited from doing so), and their
daughters become the greatest burden to the family. Some scholars argue
that arranging a marriage of a daughter becomes a necessary means to
reduce this burden. Poverty, stemming from poor decisions therefore is a consequent driver of arranged marriage.
This theory is supported by the observed rapid drop in arranged marriages in fast
growing economies of Asia. The financial benefit parents receive from
their working single daughters has been cited as a reason for their growing reluctance to see their daughters marry at too early an age.
Late marriage
Late
marriage, particularly past the age of 30 years old, reduces the pool
of available women for autonomous marriages. Introductions and arranged
marriages become a productive option.
For example, in part due to economic prosperity, about 40% of
modern Japanese women reach the age of 29 and have never been married.
To assist late marriages, the traditional custom of arranged marriages
called miai-kekkon
is re-emerging. It involves the prospective bride and groom, family,
friends and a matchmaker (nakōdo, 仲人); the pair is selected by a process
with the individuals and family involved (iegara, 家柄). Typically the
couple meets three times, in public or private, before deciding if they
want to get engaged.
Limited choices
Migrant
minority ethnic populations have limited choice of partners,
particularly when they are stereotyped, segregated or avoided by the
majority population. This encourages homogamy
and arranged marriages within the ethnic group. Examples of this
dynamic include Sikh marriages between 1910 and 1980 in Canada, arranged marriages among Hasidic Jews,
and arranged marriages among Japanese American immigrants before the
1960s, who would travel back to Japan to marry the spouse arranged by
the family, and then return married. In other cases, a girl from Japan
would arrive in the United States as a picture bride, pre-arranged to marry the Japanese American man on arrival, whom she had never met.
Custom
Arranged
marriage may be the consequence of certain customs. For example, in
rural and tribal parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, disputes, unpaid
debts in default and crimes such as murder are settled by a council of
village elders, called jirga.
A typical punishment for a crime committed by males involves requiring
the guilty family to marry their virgin girls between 5 and 12 year old
to the other family. This custom requires no consent from the girl, or
even her parents. Such arranged child marriages are called vani, swara and sak in different regional languages of Pakistan.
Another custom in certain Islamic nations, such as Pakistan, is watta satta,
where a brother-sister pair of one family are swapped as spouses for a
brother-sister pair of another family. In other words, the wife is also
the sister-in-law for the males in two families. This custom inherently
leads to arranged form of marriage. About 30% of all marriages in
western rural regions of Pakistan are by custom watta-satta marriages, and 75% of these Muslim marriages are between cousins and other blood relatives.Some immigrant families prefer customary practice of arranged marriage.
Arranged marriages across feudal lords, city states and kingdoms, as a
means of establishing political alliances, trade and peace were common
in human history.
When a king married his son to a neighboring state's daughter, it
indicated an alliance among equals, and signaled the former's state
superiority. For example, the fourth daughter of Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary, Marie Antoinette, married the dauphin (crown prince) of France, who would become King Louis XVI.
Wealth and inheritance issues
Throughout
most of human history, marriage has been a social institution that
produced children and organized inheritance of property from one
generation to next. Various cultures, particularly some wealthy royals
and aristocratic families, arranged marriages in part to conserve or
streamline the inheritance of their wealth.
Tongyangxi, also known as Shim-pua marriage
in Taiwanese – literally child or little daughter-in-law – was a
tradition of arranged marriage, in which a poor family would arrange and
marry a pre-adolescent daughter into a richer family as a servant.
The little girl provided slave-like free labor, and also the
daughter-in-law to the adoptive family's son. This sort of arranged
marriage, in theory, enabled the girl to escape poverty and the wealthy
family to get free labor and a daughter-in-law. Zhaozhui was a related
custom by which a wealthy family that lacked an heir would arrange
marriage of a boy child from another family. The boy would move in with
the wealthy family, take on the surname of the new family, and marry the family's daughter. Such arranged marriages helped maintain inheritance bloodlines. Similar matrilocal arranged marriages to preserve wealth inheritance were common in Korea, Japan and other parts of the world.
Dowries In India
A
dowry is a gift of money, property, or valuable items gifted to a groom
by the bride’s family after marriage. As stated by Santana Flanigan,
“Dowries originally started as 'love' gifts after the marriages of upper
caste individuals, but during the medieval period the demands for
dowries became a precursor for marriage.”
The practice of the dowry system has helped enhance women's marriages
in different ways. One of the ways is helping the woman find a better
husband by offering more to him. Another way is it helps women have a
guaranteed social status and economic security. Lastly, dowries can help
families with similar social and economic status allin with one
another. Although using dowries does not always have a positive outcome
some negative side effects may happen. In many instances, the families
of women can not afford to put up a dowry for their daughters. This can
cause the daughter not to get married which in turn, in severe cases,
can lead to suicide or depression. When a family can not afford a dowry
for their daughters, this as well can make the daughter feel like a
financial burden to the family. As a result of these negative side
effects, a law was passed in 1961. This law was called the Dowry
Prohibition Act of 1961 and was passed in India. The Dowry Prohibition
Act of 1961 made it so it was illegal for a family to demand, give, or
take a dowry, and if caught, they could be punished by law. However,
this act has some loose knots in terms of its rules. It is stated that
the couple is allowed to have a wedding present in the form of money,
clothes, or other things that do not count as a dowry. It also states
that if a family does decide to give a dowry, it does not invalidate the
marriage and no legal issues will be taken unless they get caught.
Therefore, giving a dowry is illegal by law but many people still find
ways to give them. They found these ways by finding the loopholes in The
Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961. For example, the family will gift gifts
of large sums of money to the couple as a wedding gift, this money to
some, may be seen as a dowry, and since giving money as a wedding gift
is allowed this may be considered a loophole. According to Lodhia at
Britannica, “In 1984…it was changed to specify that presents given to a
bride or a groom at the time of a wedding are allowed.”
This correction to The Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 made things more
specific. The corrections made it so that when the married couple
received wedding gifts they had to document the gift, who gave it to
them, the relation of the person to the couple, and how much the gift
was worth. This made it easier to track if a couple did receive a dowry
versus if it was a wedding gift. After 1984 even more additions were
made. In the Indian Penal Code modifications were made to help female
victims of dowry-related violence. Dowry-related violence is when the
groom's family demands a dowry from the bride's family before, during,
or after the marriage. These acts of violence only affect the women in
the marriage and can often lead to very brutal violence. According to
The Advocates For Human Rights, “The most common forms of dowry-related
violence are physical violence, marital rape, acid attacks, and wife
burning (where a woman is covered in kerosene or some other accelerant
and deliberately set on fire).”
These violent attacks result from the bride’s family not wanting to or
being unable to pay a dowry that the groom's family has demanded.
In many cultures, particularly in parts of Africa and the Middle
East, daughters are valuable on the marriage market because the groom
and his family have to (not must) pay cash or property for the right to
marry the daughter. This is termed as bride-wealth and locally by
various names such as Lobola and Wine Carrying.
The bride-wealth is typically kept by the bride's family, after the
marriage, and is a source of income to poor families. The brothers,
father, and male relatives of the bride typically take keen interest in
arranging her marriage to a man who is willing to pay the most wealth in
exchange for the right to marry her.
Religion
Some
religious denominations recognize marriages only within the faith. Of
the major religions of the world, Islam forbids marriage of girls of a
devout parent to a man who does not belong to that religion. In other
words, Islam forbids marriage of Muslim girls to non-Muslim men, and the religious punishment for those who marry outside might be severe. This is one of the motivations of arranged marriages in Islamic minority populations in Europe.
The marriage process in the
Apostolic Christian Church begins with a brother in the faith deciding
that it is time for him to be married. The brother makes it a matter of
prayer that God will show him who is to be his wife. Once a sister in
the faith is selected the brother speaks to his father about it. With
the father's blessing the brother then takes his proposal to the Elder,
or leader, of his local church. If the local Elder feels the request is
reasonable and that the brother's spiritual life is in order, he will
forward the request to the Elder of the prospective bride's church. If
this Elder feels that the request is reasonable and that their spiritual
lives are in order, then the proposal is forwarded to the father of the
prospective bride. If the father is in agreement then the proposal is
forwarded to the sister in the faith. She is to them make it a matter of
prayer to determine if it is God's will that she marry this brother in
the faith. If she agrees, then the proposal is announced to their
respective home churches. Marriages generally follow short engagement
periods, as strict church discipline, including excommunication, is
applied to those who have premarital relations.
Since religion is important in the Hindu community, parents often
find spouses that have the same religion for their children. When two
people with different religions fall in love, one must convert to the
other's religion, forsaking their own.
It is socially unacceptable for people to intermarry, which is why
parents arranging a marriage for their children will make sure they
marry someone from the same faith. Hindus favor religious segregation,
so many of them do not keep friendships with those from other religions.
A study shows that 45% of Hindus only have friends who have the same
religion as them and 13 percent have friends with different religions.
This trains children to only desire to be around those of the same
religion since intermingling of religious friendships and marriages are
not too common. Furthermore, the people must marry within their caste
system and most have a specific type of religion. They are taught this
from a young age and it is considered one of the most important rules.
When love outside of a person's caste happens, the parents sometimes
threaten to kill the lover.
Families fear of the opinions of the public is another reason why
parents forbid their children from marrying outside their caste. The
lowest, known as the untouchables, are seen as unclean and they are not
even allowed to walk past someone from a higher caste because of fear
that they will defile them.
Controversy
Arranged
marriages are actively debated between scholars. The questions debated
include whether arranged marriages are being used to abuse international
immigration system, to inherently violate human rights, particularly
women's rights, if they yield more stable marriages for raising children, the next generation, and whether there is more or less loving, respectful relationship for the married couple.
Sham marriages
In the United Kingdom, public discussion
has questioned whether international arranged marriages are a sham
without the intention that the spouses will live as a couple, a
convenient means to get residency and European citizenship to some male
or female immigrants, who would otherwise be denied a visa to enter the
country. These fears have been stoked by observed divorces once the
minimum married residence period requirement is met. MP Ann Cryer has alleged examples of such abuse by West Asian Muslim families in her motion to the UK's House of Commons. The United States has seen a similar controversy with sham arranged marriages.
Human rights
Various
international organizations, including UNICEF, have campaigned for laws
to ban arranged marriages of children, as well as forced marriages. Article 15 and 16 of The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) specifically cover marriage and family law, which support such a ban.
Arranged marriages are a matter of debate and disagreements.
Activists, such as Charlotte Bunch, suggest that marriages arranged by
parents and other family members typically assume heterosexual
preference and involve emotional pressure; this drives some individuals
into marriages that they consent under duress. Bunch suggests that all marriages should be autonomous.
In contrast, preventing arranged marriages may harm many
individuals who want to get married and can benefit from parental
participation in finding and selecting a mate. For example, Willoughby
suggests
that arranged marriages work because they remove anxiety from the
process of finding a spouse. Parents, families and friends provide an
independent perspective when they participate in learning and evaluating
the other person, past history, behavior, as well as the couple's
mutual compatibility. Willoughby further suggests that parents and
family provide more than input in the screening and selection process;
often, they provide financial support for the wedding, housing,
emotional support and other valuable resources for the couple as they
navigate past the wedding into married life, and help raise their
children.
Michael Rosenfeld says
that the differences between autonomous marriages and arranged
marriages are empirically small; many people meet, date and choose to
marry or cohabit with those who are similar in background, age,
interests and social class they feel most similar to, screening factors
most parents would have used for them anyway. Assuming the pool from
which mates are screened and selected is large, Rosenfeld suggests that
the differences between the two approaches to marriages are not as great
as some imagine them to be. Others have expressed sentiments similar to Rosenfeld.
Laws in the United States
The United States has some very clean and concrete laws about arranged and forced marriages.
According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services,
“Forced marriage can happen to individuals of any race, ethnicity,
religion, gender, sex, age, immigration status, or national origin. It
can happen to individuals from any economic or educational background."
This usually happens because of religious, cultural, or social status
reasons. In most cases, the families of both parties feel that the two
people should get married for many different reasons but the men and
women that are to be married do not want to get married. In the United
States forced marriages are not permitted at all and can be pushed
through the law. According to The United States Citizenship and
Immigration Services, “...in all U.S. states, people who force someone
to marry may be charged with violating state laws, including those
against domestic violence, child abuse, rape, assault, kidnapping,
threats of violence, stalking, or coercion."
In an arranged marriage the families of the individuals help choose the
marriage partner but overall will not force marriage upon anyone if
they do not want to get married. This is the one difference between
arranged and forced marriages. Usually for forced marriages the family
plays a part in choosing the individual the person will marry but they
have no say in whether they want to marry them or not. The United States
Government is against forced marriage and sees it as a human rights
abuse.
Stability
Divorce
rates have climbed in the European Union and the United States with
increase in autonomous marriage rates. The lowest divorce rates in the
world are in cultures with high rates of arranged marriages such as
Amish culture of United States (1%), Hindus of India (3%), and Ultra-Orthodox Jews of Israel (7%).
According to a 2012 study by Statistic Brain, 53.25% of marriages are
arranged worldwide. The global divorce rate for arranged marriages was
6.3%, which could be an indicator for the success rate of arranged
marriages.
This has led scholars to ask if arranged marriages are more stable than
autonomous marriages, and whether this stability matters. Others
suggest that the low divorce rate may not reflect stability, rather it
may reflect the difficulty in the divorce process and social ostracism
to the individuals, who choose to live in a dysfunctional marriage
rather than face the consequences of a divorce.
Also, the perception of high divorce rates attributed to self-arranged
marriages in the United States is being called into question.
Love and respect in arranged versus autonomous marital life
Various
small sample surveys have been done to ascertain if arranged marriages
or autonomous marriages have a more satisfying married life. The results
are mixed – some state marriage satisfaction is higher in autonomous
marriages, others find no significant differences. Johnson and Bachan have questioned the small sample size and conclusions derived from them.
Scholars
ask whether love and respect in marital life is greater in arranged
marriages than autonomous marriages. Epstein suggests that in many
arranged marriages, love emerges over time. Neither autonomous nor
arranged marriages offer any guarantees. Many arranged marriages also
end up being cold and dysfunctional as well, with reports of abuse.
In some cultures where arranged marriages are common; there is a
higher inequality between men and women. Some believe that those in
arranged marriages might have a more satisfying union since they have
realistic expectations and are not clouded by emotion when going into
the marriage, while others believe it can lead to unhappiness and
discontentment in the marriage.
Many people that are in autonomous marriages look at arranged marriages
as a way of force, but results have shown that many people go into
arranged marriages out of their own free will. According to one study,
the divorce rate was 4% for arranged marriages, while in the U.S., 40%
of autonomous marriages end in divorce.
There's also been questions about sexual gratification; In Japan it was
reported that the men in arranged marriages are more sexually
satisfied, while in autonomous marriages the partners are in the middle. In India, there showed to be an equal amount of compassionate love shown between arranged marriages and autonomous marriages.
This article is about a non-profit organization in the United States. For other related topics, see Outline of domestic violence.
Futures Without Violence (formerly Family Violence Prevention
Fund) is a non-profit organization with offices in San Francisco,
Washington, D.C., and Boston, United States, with the goal of ending domestic and sexual violence. Futures Without Violence is involved in community-based programs, developing educational materials, and in public policy work.
About
Futures
Without Violence (previously known as Family Violence Prevention Fund)
develops programs, policies, and campaigns geared toward individuals and
organizations working to end violence against women and children around
the world. The national nonprofit trains professionals such as
doctors, nurses, judges, and athletic coaches on improving responses to
violence and abuse. Futures Without Violence also works with advocates,
policymakers, and others in an effort to build sustainable community
leadership and educate people about the importance of respect and
healthy relationships.
Origins
In 1980, Esta Soler
received a federal grant and founded the Family Violence Project. The
grant money provided more funding and resources for education and
training programs in response to domestic violence calls for police
departments to undergo. This police response reform had a domino effect
for police departments across the country.
Development
Soon
after the grant for the Family Violence Project and the nationwide
police response reform concerning domestic violence cases, Soler
partnered up with various organizations to form the Violence Against Women Act
(VAWA). The bill was drafted to provide more funding and services for
domestic violence shelters across the country, to change the way police
departments and court systems handled domestic violence cases, to
provide more training and intervention programs concerning domestic
violence, and help support public education campaigns nationwide. VAWA
was passed on September 13, 1994. Domestic violence has decreased 80%
since 1980 as a result. The Family Violence Project was later renamed as
Futures Without Violence in 2011. Soler still serves as the founder and
president of the nonprofit.
Shaping Public Policy
Futures
Without Violence was a driving force behind passage of the Violence
Against Women Act of 1994—the nation’s first comprehensive federal
response to the violence that plagues families and communities. Congress
reauthorized and expanded the law in 2000, 2005, and 2013. The
organization is now working with advocates, policymakers, and more to
spearhead efforts to pass the International Violence Against Women Act to prevent gender-based violence on a global scale.
Campaigns
Coaching Boys into Men In 2001, Futures Without Violence and the Advertising Council
launched a public-education campaign called Coaching Boys into Men.
This media campaign encourages men to talk to the boys in their life
about the importance of respect and nonviolence. The Coaching Boys into
Men media campaign included television, radio, and print public service
announcements in multiple languages.
In 2004, Coaching Boys Into Men expanded from a media campaign
into a sports-based program for athletic coaches to lead with their
young male athletes. The Coaching Boys into Men Coaches Leadership
Program includes tools and resources to guide coaches in talking to
their athletes about respect, non-violence, and relationships. The
program provides support materials for coaches to lead weekly activities
with their athletes throughout the sports season.
Coaching Boys Into Men also includes work outside of the United States. In 2007, Futures Without Violence and UNICEF partnered to develop and distribute an International Coaches Manual that includes quotes and endorsement from stars such as David Beckham, Emmanuel Adebayor, and Thierry Henry.
In 2009, Futures Without Violence began an initiative with the Nike
Foundation to develop a cricket-based Coaching Boys Into Men program in
India. The program has since been introduced in South Africa, Australia,
New Zealand, and Canada.
Start Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationships Start
Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationships is the largest initiative
ever funded to target 11- to- 14-year-olds and rally entire communities
to promote healthy relationships as the way to prevent teen dating
violence and abuse. A national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in collaboration with Futures Without Violence, the RWJF and Blue Shield of California
Foundation invested $18 million in 11 Start Strong communities across
the country to identify and evaluate best practices in prevention to
stop dating violence and abuse before it starts.
RESPECT! The RESPECT! Campaign was a social action
campaign designed to promote respect in relationships and increase
awareness about the positive role everyone can play to help end and
prevent relationship violence and abuse. The RESPECT! Campaign was a
multi-year initiative supported by Macy’s, the national founding partner
and exclusive retailer of the official RESPECT! bracelet.
That's Not Cool In 2009, Futures Without Violence and
The Advertising Council launched That’s Not Cool, a national public
service advertising campaign that uses digital examples of controlling
behavior online and by cell phone to encourage teens to draw their own
line about what is, or is not, okay in a relationship. This multimedia
campaign, created pro bono by R/GA, includes an interactive website and mobile app.
Programs
Health Futures
Without Violence provides health care providers with resources to help
identify and respond to domestic violence. The organization hosts the
biennial National Health Conference on Domestic Violence, convening
medical, public health, and domestic violence experts from across the
U.S. to advance the health care system’s response to domestic violence.
The organization provides technical assistance and materials to
thousands of people each year through the National Health Resource
Center on Domestic Violence.
The Center is one of five specialized domestic violence resource
centers in the country funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.
Judicial Education Futures Without Violence’s National
Judicial Institute gives judges guidelines, education, and materials to
ensure that their courtrooms provide help to victims of family violence.
Early Childhood Trauma The Futures Without Violence
Children’s Initiative works with domestic violence and batterer
intervention programs, child welfare agencies, and community organizers
to build collaborations and partnerships that promote safe and healthy
families. As the national technical assistance provider of Attorney
General Eric Holder's Defending Childhood Initiative to prevent and
reverse the impact of early exposure to violence on children, the
organization leads the prevention, intervention, treatment, and
community organizing strategies used by every Defending Childhood site
across the nation.
Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention in the Workplace Futures
Without Violence's Workplace Project is a collaboration with employers
and unions, and offers an online resource kit which includes items like
sample workplace domestic violence policies, education and training
materials, case studies, and resources.
Rape can cause difficulties during and after pregnancy, with
potential negative consequences for both the victim and a resulting
child.
Medical treatment following a rape includes testing for, preventing,
and managing pregnancy. A woman who becomes pregnant after a rape may
face a decision about whether to have an abortion, to raise the child or to make an adoption
plan. In some countries where abortion is illegal after rape and
incest, over 90% of pregnancies in girls age 15 and under are due to
rape by family members.
The false belief that pregnancy can almost never result from rape
was widespread for centuries. In Europe, from medieval times well into
the 18th century a man could use a woman's pregnancy as a legal defense
to "prove" that he could not have raped her. A woman's pregnancy was
thought to mean that she had enjoyed the sex and, therefore, consented
to it. In recent decades, some anti-abortion organizations and politicians (such as Todd Akin)
who oppose legal abortion in cases of rape have advanced claims that
pregnancy very rarely arises from rape, and that the practical relevance
of such exceptions to abortion law is therefore limited or non-existent.
Rape-pregnancy incidence
Estimates of the numbers of pregnancies from rape vary widely. Recent estimates suggest that rape conception happens between 25,000 and 32,000 times each year in the U.S.
In a 1996 three-year longitudinal study
of 4,000 American women, physician Melisa Holmes estimated from data
from her study that forced sexual intercourse causes over 32,000
pregnancies in the United States each year.
Physician Felicia H. Stewart and economist James Trussell estimated
that the 333,000 assaults and rapes reported in the US in 1998 caused
about 25,000 pregnancies, and up to 22,000 of those pregnancies could
have been prevented by prompt medical treatment, such as emergency contraception.
Other analyses indicate a much lower rate. The Rape, Abuse and Incest
National Network, a charity based in Washington, D.C., reached a much
lower figure calculated using estimates from the Justice Department's
2005 National Crime Victimization Survey. The network took that survey's
annual average of 64,080 rapes committed in 2004 and 2005 and applies
the 5 percent pregnancy rate to reach an estimate of 3,204 pregnancies a
year from rape.
Rate
A 1996 study
of 44 cases of rape-related pregnancy estimated that in the United
States, the pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of
reproductive age (aged 12 to 45). A 1987 study also found a 5% pregnancy rate from rape among 18- to 24-year-old college students in the US.[15] A 2005 study placed the rape-related pregnancy rate at around 3–5%.
A study of Ethiopian adolescents who reported being raped found that 17% subsequently became pregnant, and rape crisis centres in Mexico reported the figure the rate of pregnancy from rape at 15–18%.
Estimates of rape-related pregnancy rates may be inaccurate since the
crime is under-reported, resulting in some pregnancies from rape not
being recorded as such, or alternately, social pressure may mean some rapes are not reported if no pregnancy results.
Most studies suggest that conception rates are independent of whether insemination is due to rape or consensual sex.
Some analysts have suggested that the rate of conception may be higher from insemination due to rape.Psychologist Robert L. Smith states that some studies have reported "unusually high rates of conception following rape".
He cites a paper by C.A. Fox and Beatrice Fox, reporting that biologist
Alan Sterling Parkes had speculated in personal correspondence that
"there is a high conception rate in rape, where hormonal release, due to
fear or anger, could produce reflex ovulation". Smith also cites veterinary scientist Wolfgang Jöchle, who "proposed that rape may induce ovulation in human females". Literary scholar Jonathan Gottschall and economist Tiffani Gottschall argued in a 2003 Human Nature
article that previous studies of rape-pregnancy statistics were not
directly comparable to pregnancy rates from consensual intercourse,
because the comparisons were largely uncorrected for such factors as the
use of contraception.
Adjusting for these factors, they estimated that rapes are about twice
as likely to result in pregnancies (7.98%) as "consensual, unprotected
penile-vaginal intercourse" (2–4%). They discuss a variety of possible
explanations and advance the hypothesis that rapists tend to target victims with biological "cues of high fecundity" or subtle indications of ovulation.
In contrast, psychologists Tara Chavanne and Gordon Gallup Jr.,
found that women in the ovulatory phase of their menstrual cycle reduce
risk-taking behaviors, which could theoretically reduce the likelihood
of rape during fertile periods. Anthropologist Daniel Fessler
disputed these findings, saying, "analysis of conception rates reveals
that the probability of conception following rape does not differ from
that following consensual coitus".
Sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that causing pregnancy by rape may be a mating strategy in humans, as a way for males to ensure the survival of their genes by passing them on to future generations. Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer
are key popularizers of this hypothesis. They assert that most rape
victims are women of childbearing age and that many cultures treat rape
as a crime against the victim's husband. They state that rape victims
suffer less emotional distress when they are subjected to more violence,
and that married women and women of childbearing age experience greater
psychological distress after a rape than do girls, single women or
post-menopausal women.
Rape-pregnancy rates are crucial in evaluating these theories, because a
high or low pregnancy rate from rape would determine whether such
adaptations are favored or disfavored by natural selection.
In 1995–1996, the journal Family Planning Perspectives published a study by the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual health research and policy organization, on statutory rape (sexual intercourse with a minor) and resulting pregnancies. It drew on other research
to conclude that "at least half of all babies born to minor women are
fathered by adult men", and that "although relatively small proportions
of 13–14-year-olds have had intercourse, those who become sexually
active at an early age are especially likely to have experienced
coercive sex: Seventy-four percent of women who had intercourse before
age 14 and 60% of those who had sex before age 15 report having had a
forced sexual experience". Because of difficulties in bringing such
cases to trial, however, "data from the period 1975–1978 ... indicate
that, on average, only 413 men were arrested annually for statutory rape
in California, even though 50,000 pregnancies occurred among underage
women in 1976 alone". In that state, it was found that two thirds of babies born to school-age mothers were fathered by adult men.
Sexual abuse early in life can lead young women to feel a lack of
control over their sexual lives, decrease their future likelihood of
using contraceptives such as condoms, and increase their chances of becoming pregnant or acquiring sexually transmitted infections. A 2007 paper by Child Trends
examined studies from 2000 to 2006 to identify links between sexual
abuse and teenage pregnancy, starting with Blinn-Pike et al.'s 2002 metastudy of 15 studies since 1989.
It found that childhood sexual abuse has a "significant association"
with adolescent pregnancy. Direct connections have been demonstrated
both by retrospective studies examining antecedents to reported
pregnancies and prospective studies, which track the lives of sex abuse
victims and "can be helpful for determining causality". The more severe forms of abuse, such as rape and incest, entail a greater risk of adolescent pregnancy.
Although some researchers suggest that pregnancy could be a choice made
to escape a "bad situation", it may also be "a direct result of
unwanted intercourse", which one study found to be the case for about
13% of participants in a Texas parenting program.
In Nicaragua,
between 2000 and 2010, around 172,500 births were recorded for girls
under 14, representing around 13% of the 10.3 million births during that
period. These were attributed to poverty, laws forbidding abortion for
rape and incest, lack of access to justice, and beliefs held in the
culture and legal system. A 1992 study in Peru
found that 90% of babies delivered to mothers aged 12–16 were conceived
through rape, typically by a father, stepfather, or other close
relative. In 1991 in Costa Rica, the figure was similar, with 95% of adolescent mothers under 15 having become pregnant through rape.
Many of the youngest documented birth mothers in history experienced precocious puberty and were impregnated as a result of rape, including incest. The youngest, Peruvian Lina Medina, was impregnated when she was four and had a live birth in 1939, at age five.
Rape has been used as a weapon of psychological warfare for centuries, to terrorize, humiliate, and undermine the morale of the enemy. Rape was also used as an act of ethnic cleansing to produce babies that share the perpetrators' ethnicity. Forced pregnancy has been noted in places including Bangladesh, Darfur, and Bosnia.
More broadly, pregnancy commonly results from wartime rape that was
perpetrated without the intention of impregnating the enemy, as has been
found in conflicts in East Timor, Liberia, Kosovo, and Rwanda. Gita Sahgal of Amnesty International
commented that, rather than being primarily about "spoils of war" or
sexual gratification, rape is often used in ethnic conflicts as a way
for attackers to perpetuate social control and redraw ethnic boundaries. Children may be born to women and girls forced to "marry" abductors and occupiers; this happened in the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and in the Lord's Resistance Army's conflict in Uganda.
Children born as the result of wartime rape may be identified
with the enemy and grow up stigmatized and excluded by their
communities; they may be denied basic rights or even killed before
reaching adulthood.
Children are particularly at risk for such abuse when they are visibly
identifiable as sharing half their ethnicity with the occupying forces,
as in the case of half-Arab children of Darfuri women raped by janjaweed soldiers as part of the war in Darfur. Children of war rape are also at risk due to neglect by traumatized mothers unable to provide sufficient care.
Rape of Nanking
In 1937 the Japanese army took over Nanking, which at the time was the capital of China. In the resulting seven-week occupation known as the Rape of Nanking, as many as 80,000 women were raped.
Chinese women and girls of all ages were raped, mutilated, tortured,
sexually enslaved, and killed; unknown numbers of them were left
pregnant. Many pregnant Nanking women killed themselves in 1938, and others committed infanticide when their babies were born.
During the rest of the 20th century there was no record of any Chinese
woman acknowledging her child as having been born as a result of the
Rape of Nanking.
During the 1992–1995 Bosnian War, pregnancy from rape was used to perpetrate genocide.
There were reports of deliberately created "rape camps" intended to
impregnate captive Muslim and Croatian women. Women were reported to
have been kept in confinement until their pregnancies had advanced
beyond a stage at which abortion would be safe. In the context of a patrilineal
society, in which children inherit their father's ethnicity, such camps
were intended to create a new generation of Serbian children. The women's group Tresnjevka claimed that more than 35,000 women and children were held in such Serb-run camps. Estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000 victims. Feryal Gharahi of Equality Now reported:
Families were separated, and women and children were kept in the
gym, where all of the women and girls over ten years old were raped in
the first few days.... There are rape camps all over the country.
Thousands of women are being raped and killed. Thousands of women are
pregnant as a result of rape. Over and over again, everywhere I went in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Croatian refugee camps, women told me stories
of abomination – of being kept in a room, raped repeatedly and told they
would be held until they gave birth to Serbian children.
After the Bosnian War, the International Criminal Court
updated its statute to prohibit "confin[ing] one or more women forcibly
made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of
any population".
Treatment and outcomes
Immediate
post-rape protocols call for medical professionals to assess the
likelihood that a victim will become pregnant in their assessment of the
physical damage done to the woman. Protocol for gaining a history of
the use of contraceptives, as a woman's use of birth control pills or other contraceptives before a rape affect her chance of becoming pregnant. Treatment protocols also call for clinicians to provide access to emergency contraception and counseling on abortion in countries where it is legal. High-dose estrogen pills were tried as an experimental treatment after rape in the 1960s, and in 1972 Canadian physician A. Albert Yuzpe and his colleagues began systematic studies on the use of ethinylestradiol and norgestrel to provide emergency contraception after an assault. These treatments reduced the rate of pregnancy after rape by 84%. This method is now called the Yuzpe regimen. Before being treated with pregnancy prevention measures, a rape victim is given a HCGpregnancy test to determine whether she was already pregnant before the rape.
When being discharged from emergency care, clinicians provide
information about pregnancy as well as other complications such as
infection and emotional trauma.
While a woman who has become pregnant during the past 48 hours will
test negative for pregnancy in an HCG pregnancy test (unless she was
already pregnant before the rape), pregnancy resulting from the rape can
be detected at the two-week follow-up visit.
Decisions of whether to end a rape-related pregnancy or carry it
to term, and whether to keep the child or place the child for adoption
can be severely traumatizing for a woman.
Abortion rates for pregnancies due to rape vary significantly by culture
and demographics; women who live in countries where abortion is illegal
must often give birth to the child or secretly undergo a dangerous, unsafe abortion. Some women do not wish to get abortions for religious or cultural reasons. In a third of cases, rape-related pregnancies are not discovered until the second trimester of pregnancy,
which may reduce a woman's options, particularly if she doesn't have
easy access to legal abortion or is still recovering from the trauma of
the rape itself.
In the United States, 1 percent of 1,900 women questioned in 1987
listed rape or incest as the reason for having an abortion; of these,
95 percent named other reasons as well.
A 1996 study of thousands of US women showed that, of pregnancies resulting from rape, 50% were aborted, 12% resulted in miscarriage, and 38% were brought to term and either placed for adoption or raised. Peer-reviewed studies have reported from 38% of American women to 90% of Peruvian adolescents carrying the pregnancy to term. In Lima, Peru, where abortion is illegal, 90% of girls aged 12 to 16 who became pregnant through rape carried the child to term.
Of all children born, 1% are placed for adoption; the number of children
conceived from rape who are placed for adoption was found to be about
6% in one study and 26% in another.
When a mother commits neonaticide,
killing an infant younger than 24 hours old, the child's birth being
the result of rape is a main cause, although other psychological and
situational factors are generally present.
Some people turn to drugs or alcohol to cope with emotional trauma
after a rape; use of these during pregnancy can harm the fetus.
Children of rape
When a mother chooses to raise her child conceived in rape, the
traumatic effect of the rape and the child's blood relationship to the
rapist has the potential to create some psychological challenges, but
the circumstance of conception is no guarantee to cause psychological
problems.If a woman decides to keep and raise the child, she may have difficulty
accepting it, and both mother and child face ostracism in some
societies.
Mothers may also face legal difficulties. In most US states, the rapist maintains parental rights.
Research by legal scholar Shauna Prewitt indicates that the resulting
continued contact with the rapist is damaging for women who keep the
child.
She wrote in 2012 that in the US, 31 states allow rapists to assert
custody and visitation rights over children conceived through rape.
History
Infanticide
Children
whose births result from rape have been killed by their mothers at
various times in history. During ancient and medieval times, such infanticide was not prohibited (however, penance was expected of these mothers in medieval Europe).
Beliefs about whether rape can result in pregnancy
The Ancient Greek physician Galen's belief that women could not conceive without pleasure influenced medical and legal thinking for centuries.
Beliefs that rape could not lead to pregnancy were widespread in both legal and medical opinion for centuries. Galen,
an ancient Greek physician, believed that a woman must experience
pleasure to release "seed" and become pregnant, and could not derive
such pleasure from nonconsensual sex. Galen's thinking influenced understanding from medieval England to Colonial America. Aristotle disagreed, as he believed that "women's bodies were not hot enough to produce semen".
Female reproduction was, in many ways, viewed through the lens of male
reproductive processes, imagining that female organs functioned as
inverted versions of male organs, and hence orgasm was required for conception.
Centuries later, in medieval Europe, the belief that pregnancy
could not occur without consent was still standard; in fact, conception
by a woman was considered a legitimate defense against charges of rape. The belief was codified in the medieval British law texts Fleta and Britton. Britton states:
If the defendant confesses the fact, but says that the
woman at the same time conceived by him, and can prove it, then our will
is that it be adjudged no felony, because no woman can conceive if she
does not consent.
Medieval literary scholar Corinne Saunders acknowledged a difficulty
in determining how widely held was the belief that pregnancy implies
consent, but concluded that it influenced "at least some justices",
citing a 1313 case in Kent.
By the late 1700s, scientists no longer universally accepted the
view that pregnancy was impossible without pleasure, although this view
was still common. A 1795 British legal text, Treatise of Pleas of the Crown, disparaged the belief's legal utility and its biological veracity:
Also it hath been said by some to be no rape to force a
woman who conceives at the time; for it is said, that if she had not
consented, she could not have conceived, but this opinion seems very
questionable, not only because the previous violence is no way
extenuated by such a subsequent consent, but also because, if it were
necessary to shew that the woman did not conceive, the offender could
not be tried till such time as it might appear whether she did or did
not, and likewise because the philosophy of this notion may very well be
doubted of.
The 1814 British legal text Elements of Medical Jurisprudence by Samuel Farr
claimed that conception "probably" could not occur without a woman's
"enjoyment", so that an "absolute rape" was unlikely to lead to
pregnancy. On the other hand, in the US in an 1820 court case in the Arkansas Territory a man pleaded not guilty to rape charges because the victim became pregnant, but the court rejected the argument:
The old notion that if the woman conceive, it could not
be a rape, because she must have in such case have consented, is quite
exploded. Impregnation, it is well known, does not depend on the
consciousness or volition of the female. If the uterine organs be in a
condition favorable to impregnation, this may take place as readily as
if the intercourse was voluntary.
In more recent times, opponents of legal abortion have argued that pregnancy resulting from rape is rare. In a 1972 article, physician and anti-abortion activist Fred Mecklenburg argued that pregnancy from rape is "extremely rare", adding that a woman exposed to the trauma of rape "will not ovulate even if she is 'scheduled' to". Blythe Bernhard wrote in The Washington Post,
"That article has influenced two generations of anti-abortion activists
with the hope to build a medical case to ban all abortions without any
exception."
Historian Ian Talbot has written about how countries with Quran-based Islamic codes on rape and pregnancy use Sura An-Nur,
verse 2, as a legal basis: "The law of evidence in all sexual crimes
required either self-confession or the testimony of four upright (salah)
Muslim males. In the case of a man, self-confession involved a verbal
confession. For women however medical examinations and pregnancy arising
from rape were admissible as proof of self-guilt."
Under Islamic law, a woman can kill her rapist.
Pregnancy from rape can also occur when the victim is male and the rapist is female. Many such cases involve the statutory rape of underage boys by adult women who subsequently became pregnant. In Kansas, Hermesmann v. Seyer established that a 13 year old male victim of rape can be held liable to pay child support for a baby that results from the rape, and later cases in the United States have held likewise.
