Summary: A baby is abandoned by a dumpster on a cold morning, and almost dies of hypothermia. Elliott and Olivia find the mother – a high-powered forty-something professional who recently adopted the baby. Mom is engaged to a suave lawyer – played by John Stamos – who set up the closed adoption for her. John is sleeping with Mom’s hot young nanny, which the detectives discover when they find a ripped condom in the nanny’s garbage can. The person who abandoned the baby, we learn, is Mom’s downstairs neighbor, who was appalled by John’s serial cheating and wanted the baby to have a better life. Mom forgives John for shagging the nanny – because Mom is pregnant with John’s baby. Hearing the news, John embraces her and whispers, “I’m so glad that condom broke.”
“You’re a reproductive abuser!” Olivia says. (Wow, based on two broken condoms? She was positively clairvoyant tonight.) Turns out, John’s character likes to poke holes in condoms before sex in order to get women pregnant. A beautiful reproductive-abuse expert named Audrey is called in to educate the detectives. “Putting semen inside a woman without her consent should be rape,” Audrey declares. Olivia and Audrey discover that Mom’s adopted baby is actually John’s biological baby (with a junkie ice-rink janitor lady). He took this baby from its biological mother without filing the correct adoption papers. They arrest him on misdemeanor adoption-paperwork charges. The DA declines to prosecute, but the detectives get every women in NY with whom John has a child – all 20 of them! – to confront him as he’s being released. Although it’s clear that he’s ruined many lives, he’s nonchalant. In fact, he says, he has 47 kids if you count the rest of America and Europe.
Later that night, John is gruesomely killed in the Mom’s garden. The killer was Audrey, the reproductive-abuse expert, who took personal offense at John’s manipulative ways. When he tried to seduce her, she grabbed a special SCUBA knife that blows CO2 into its victims, stabbed him with it, and exploded his intestines all over Mom’s sidewalk.
Verdict: B
What They Got Right: “Reproductive abuse” or “coerced reproduction” is a real phenomenon we’re just starting to learn about. It involves a man using verbal threats, physical aggression, or birth-control sabotage to pressure a woman to get pregnant. All the literature suggests the phenomenon is a one-way street in terms of gender – the phrase doesn’t cover women who manipulate men into getting them pregnant. Doesn’t seem fair, really. But maybe it’s because “coerced reproduction” often goes hand-in-hand with domestic abuse (which usually – although certainly not always – has a female victim of a male perpetrator). In fact, there are higher rates of unintended pregnancies in relationships with partner violence.
What They Got Wrong: Reproductive abuse doesn’t look like this. In real life, it’s more like one guy trying to control one girl. According to an article in Newsweek, “You have guys telling their partners, ‘I can do this because I’m in control’ or ‘I want to know that I can have you forever.’ ” The real scenario looks more like your average domestic abuse relationship than a charming international Lothario.
This episode reminded me of that creepy doctor who secretly impregnated 75 of his patients at a fertility clinic with his own sperm. Remember him? His name was Cecil Jacobson, and he looked more like John Goodman than John Stamos.
Shudder.
They called him the Sperminator. (They didn’t have terms like “reproductive abuse” then.) He was convicted in 1992 of 52 counts of fraud and perjury. Click here for the transcript of a Saturday Night Live skit about this (a throwback to the days before YouTube, when we had to rely on written transcripts to re-play funnies). He was awarded a spoof prize, the IgNobel, for “devising a simple, single-handed method of quality control.”
All views on this website are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Alma Fellows says
5 May, 2011 at 6:27 amYour mentioning of the “Sperminator” reminded me of another L&O (original) episode: Season 5, “Seed,” in which the cops investigate a shooting at a bank, which leads them to a fertility doctor, which leads to the DAs discovering the fraudulent doctor using his own sperm.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629413/
Allison Leotta says
12 May, 2011 at 1:08 pmInteresting. Just like in real life, the Sperminator’s seeds are all over TV!
Andrew MacKie-Mason says
5 May, 2011 at 7:08 amRegarding “reproductive abuse,” it seems like there’s a variety of issues there that a single term can’t encompass. If a guy uses some sort of birth control sabotage to get the woman pregnant, that’s a sort of assault. If he talks her into keeping a baby that she doesn’t want to have, than it’s either a normal relationship, or possibly some sort of emotionally abusive relationship (not necessarily one where the law should step in, but that’s a complicated issue).
If a woman uses birth control sabotage to get pregnant, there’s no assault, but it seems that there’s a kind of fraud involved. At the very least, if the man can show that the woman sabotaged the birth control, she shouldn’t be able to extract child support from him.
Allison Leotta says
12 May, 2011 at 1:10 pmRight, it is complicated. I agree with a lot of what you said, but I’m not sure about the child support. You have to feel sorry for a guy who unwillingly becomes a father that way — but on the other hand, what do you do about this poor child who now exists and needs to be brought up?
Amber says
5 May, 2011 at 3:06 pmLast night when I was watching the episode I was really looking forward to your review. I was skyping with my mom (herself a DV survivor) and we both got really upset with the way Benson said “He’s abusing you” right in front of Stamos — isn’t one of the first principles of helping people in abusive relationships to not say things like that in front of the abuser, especially if the victim hasn’t come around yet?
My biggest question of the night however was how much money he must be making to afford child support for 47 children. I realize that they’re probably staggered in age, so some are probably past the age of support, but whoa.
Allison Leotta says
12 May, 2011 at 1:13 pmHi Amber. I’m so glad you’re enjoying the blog! And I love the idea of skyping with your mom while watching a TV show. I should try that with my mom. I’m glad that your mom found the strength to leave an abusive relationship. It’s good to hear a real-life story with a happy ending.
Yeah, Olivia probably shouldn’t have been saying all that stuff in front of the woman’s abuser. It put the woman in a bad position, and it obviously didn’t convince her. If this was a physically violent relationship, that whole interaction might’ve sparked another violent incident.
And yes, 47 kids to support — whoa! Even if he was the King of Brunei, I think he’d have a hard time coming up with that kind of cash.
mike says
5 May, 2011 at 5:08 pmI like your riffs on the plot a lot! The plot itself seems kinda crazy, huh?
Allison Leotta says
12 May, 2011 at 1:14 pmThanks, Mike! This episode was twisty … but aren’t they all?
Anon says
6 May, 2011 at 6:05 pmOlivia is always so loving and affectionate with the victims. There must have been a misunderstanding. I love Olivia Benson / Mariska Hargitay.
Allison Leotta says
12 May, 2011 at 1:14 pmAgreed!
Abigail Wilder says
17 April, 2013 at 7:15 pmI think that “reproductive abuse” involving women as the manipulator would be more common, but maybe with different incentives for manipulation. For example I have heard of at least three women who have poked holes in condoms simply to become pregnant and by extension trying to ensure that the would be father of the baby staying in the woman’s life. That to me would seem like abuse, and controlling by any measure.
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