When I got back to Michigan I forced Charles to leave, and filed for divorce. He’d violated my trust in one of the most bedrock deep ways. I could not forgive.

Time passed and Charles continued to beg me to stop the divorce and allow him back into our home. I kept refusing. The children were doing well going back to public school and I’d returned to my old position in healthcare. We were all starting to stabilize after the changes we’d been put through and had left our church. The pastor and the elders kept trying to force forgiveness and reconciliation.

Then it happened. One night a few months before our divorce would be final Charles stopped by the house while the children were off visiting their grandmother several states away. I’d had a lot of wine, was in a mood of melancholia when Charles started behaving in his most charming manner. We ended up in bed together.

Three weeks later I started to feel awful, sick to my stomach, feverish and lacking all energy. When I went to the doctor I learned I was pregnant again. How? I kept demanding. I’d only had sexual intercourse once in the last year and he’d worn a condom. Charles had worn a condom.

After wrestling with the news of my unexpected pregnancy for a month and talking to trusted friends and counselors I made the hard decision to call off the divorce and reunite with Charles. I remember when I told him of my choice how he seemed overjoyed but not surprised.

We rejoined our church, I had another baby and then had more pregnancies, one every year as the pressure to be Quiverfull increased in our group.

Years later during our failed marriage counseling sessions when our life fell apart again it came out that Charles had planned everything, his seduction of me, poking holes in the condom before hand and the renewal of our marriage. He purposely impregnated me in order to control me – the real essence of Quiverfull: Men controlling women via their uterus. Not because they love children, not because they love their wives.

I’ve been divorced from Charles for some years now but I still feel broken by what he did to me. No woman should ever be forced into childbearing so some man can be in control.

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