Intimate partner violence during pregnancy is more common than several maternal health conditions, such as pre-eclampsia or placenta previa.
— Van Parys et al., Intimate Partner Violence and Pregnancy: A Systematic Review of Interventions (2014)

Pregnancy places women at high risk for both physical and sexual assault. Just as pregnancy is the time when so much physical assault begins, it is also the time when sexual assault often begins (McFarlane, Intimate Partner Sexual Abuse, 2005). One-third of the women in Raquel Kennedy Bergen's sample reported increased physical and sexual abuse during pregnancy and many said the sexual violence began with their pregnancies (Bergen, Wife Rape, 1996).

For women raped while pregnant there was the additional trauma of fearing for their unborn babies' lives.

"It started right before the baby was born. When I was pregnant, the doctor said not to have relations, but he kept wanting it. I had hard pregnancies."

— Delilah, quoted in Bergen, Wife Rape (1996) at 23.

"It happened for the first time when I was 4 months pregnant, and I was scared for the baby."

— Danielle, quoted in Bergen, Wife Rape (1996) at 23.

“I believed that he raped me as part of his means of killing my unborn child.”

— Tanya, quoted in DeKeseredy & Schwartz, Dangerous Exits: Escaping Abusive Relationships in Rural America (2009) at 72.

Another woman reported that her partner sexually assaulted her to punish her for getting pregnant.

— Id. at 62.

"Meena's husband used physical force as a form of birth control. She stated, ‘My husband beat me every day in my stomach, he kicked me that he don't want me to become pregnant [sic]. Every day he, he did the sex with me [sic], and every next day he'd kick me.'"

— Dasgupta, Body Evidence (2007) at 63.