Betrayed, Deceived and Violated: A Critical Feminist Analysis of the R v Lawrence Judgment

This article considers the judgment in the case of R v Lawrence from a feminist perspective. Currently, scholarly discussion of the judgment highlights several key issues, including the court’s failure to recognise pregnancy risks as being closely related to sexual intercourse and the importance of conditional consent in sexual relations. There is a lack of feminist analysis of the judgment in existing scholarship and to fill this gap, this article will first review feminist literature on the notion of consent, discuss a wide range of views in relation to women’s capacity and agency to consent, and highlight how sexual relations have always been considered from a male perspective. Then, this article will further explore women’s views on the notion of consent and the specific concerns raised in the R v Lawrence case through empirical research, findings of which show that women are overwhelmingly uncomfortable with the situation that has arisen in the case and that the majority of women believe that there should be criminal punishment for those who are deceitful in attempts to have unprotected sex. This article will argue that from a critical feminist perspective, the judgment in R v Lawrence has failed to justly and fairly assess the consequences closely connected to sexual acts, recognise the conditional consent that was present in this case, and consider women’s concerns when consenting to sex.