Garcia said she was motivated to write a bill to ban the practice after reading law student Alexandra Brodsky’s law journal article on the topic in 2017, which has since been credited with kick-starting a wider discussion on stealthing.

Brodsky, who is now a civil rights attorney and author of the book Sexual Justice, says few people were talking openly about nonconsensual condom removal at the time and that victims face additional scrutiny, because stealthing starts with consensual sex.

Brodsky says nonconsensual condom removal is a violation in itself, but it also poses the risk of an unplanned pregnancy or the transmission of a sexually transmitted infection.

“The experience of realizing that your partner, your sexual partner, has no concern for your autonomy, your individual dignity, your right to make decisions about who you have sex with, when and how,” Brodsky told NPR, “that’s a terrible violation regardless of whether a physical injury occurs, regardless of whether a pregnancy occurs.”