When He Controls Your Health Too: Domestic Abuse and Health Control
Domestic abuse and health control often go hand in hand. It isn’t just about your money, or where you’re allowed to go. It can mean what medication you’re allowed to take, whether you can get to an appointment, whether you’re even using contraception at all.
If he controls your contraception, your pregnancy, or your decisions about abortion, that’s reproductive coercion. If he controls your medication or your access to healthcare more broadly, researchers call this chemical control.
Both are recognised forms of domestic abuse under UK law, not a grey area, not “he’s just controlling,” a named, defined category with legal consequences.
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021’s statutory guidance explicitly lists reproductive coercion as abuse, restricting your access to birth control, refusing to use it, lying to you about using it, or forcing or denying you an abortion, IVF, or a related procedure. It’s also covered under the Serious Crime Act 2015, and carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison as coercive or controlling behaviour. If he removes a condom without your consent, that’s rape under UK law.
What it can look like for you
He hides, sabotages, or lies to you about using contraception
He pressures or forces you into sex without contraception, or forces a pregnancy or a termination on you against your will
He controls access to your prescribed medication so you can’t take it properly
He refuses to let you go to medical or dental appointments, or reacts with anger when you do
He controls whether your children get vaccinated
He monitors or accesses your GP records or app to see what you’ve told a doctor
One woman, in a UK study of survivors, said her partner restricted her access to her own tablets. She never told anyone. She never went back to her GP.
How common this actually is
A BMJ-covered study found 1 in 4 women in the UK don’t have control over their own reproductive rights.
In one UK survey, a third of women said they’d felt pressured into sex without contraception, 10% said their contraception had been sabotaged, and 15% said they’d been forced to terminate a pregnancy they wanted to keep.
A UK primary care study found women exposed to domestic abuse were around twice as likely to need emergency contraception as women who weren’t, a pattern significant enough that clinicians are now told a request for emergency contraception can itself be worth asking about.
More than one woman a week in England and Wales is killed by a male partner or ex-partner, 67 such deaths were recorded in the year to March 2025 alone.
If you’ve seen a doctor and nothing was ever said, that doesn’t mean nothing was wrong
80% of women in a violent relationship will see a health professional, usually a GP, at least once, often it’s the only professional contact they have at all. And yet only around 15% ever have that abuse referenced anywhere in their medical record.
So if you’ve sat in a GP’s waiting room, maybe more than once, and left without anyone asking the right question, or without you finding the words yourself, that’s not unusual, and it’s not a sign that what’s happening to you isn’t serious enough to count. Most women in your position have had the exact same experience. The gap isn’t in you.
The part almost no one tells you: your GP records can be a risk, and you can do something about it
The NHS has flagged proxy access, where a partner is given the ability to manage your GP appointments or order your prescriptions on your behalf, as a specific coercive control risk, since it can hand him direct control over your healthcare.
Since 2020, GP practices have had to offer you online access to your own health records. That’s usually a good thing, but it becomes a risk if he can force you to show him your phone or the app, since it means he can see what you’ve told a doctor.
You’re allowed to ask your GP practice to switch this off, or to restrict what’s visible, or to flag your file, and you don’t have to explain everything to do it. It doesn’t require a formal disclosure or a big conversation. You can simply ask.
Why this matters
This kind of control is often invisible, even to you. It doesn’t leave a mark the way other forms of abuse do, and it’s easy to explain away, “he’s just careful about money,” “he worries about side effects,” “he just wants what’s best for the baby.” But if he controls your body, he’s controlling you, and it’s abuse whether or not it comes with a bruise.
If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not imagining it, and you’re not alone in it.
The Women’s Railroad is the original practical guide to equip women with the knowledge and options to navigate and leave domestic abuse.
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