Sexual Cruelty, Consent, and the ‘Communication of a Loathsome Disease’: Identifying Reproductive Coercion and Abuse in the Australian Divorce Courts, 1880–1914

The two decades either side of Australia’s Federation have been understood as a period within which white women increasingly took control over their fertility, maternity, and bodily autonomy. Yet, during the years that the birth rate declined so dramatically that it prompted a Royal Commission – 1891–1900 – victim-survivors used newly amended divorce laws to label their husbands’ violence during pregnancy as cruelty and detail how their husbands’ sexual cruelty impacted their health and reproductive capacity. Exploring the debates over consent, cruelty, and reproduction in the Australian Divorce Courts, this article shows the limits of women’s autonomy in the fertility transition. It also considers the utility of the term ‘reproductive coercion and abuse’ in interpreting the experiences relayed by victim-survivors, arguing that the use of this term illuminates the historical contingencies surrounding women’s bodily autonomy under coverture and the power dynamics inherent to sexual intimacy in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Australian marriages.