Republicans, flush from their success at stuffing the Supreme Court and from the achievement of actually choosing a speaker for the House, are turning their sights on women. They have already taken away their right to get an abortion - even in the case of a 9 year old who was raped and ended up pregnant. Nope, conservative politicians say she can't get an abortion even if carrying the fetus kills her.
Texas now has laws on the books that prevent even giving someone a ride to another state to get an abortion. So if you are poor and pregnant in Texas, you are going to have that baby by order of a Texas politician - and if your best friend helps you get a ride, that friend could end up in jail.
(Needless to say, if a Texas politician's mistress gets pregnant, she will find herself with all the money she needs to travel to a blue state to fix that inconvenient problem.)
Now they are working to make divorce much, much harder to get. Decades ago, if you wanted a divorce, you had to prove your partner was cheating or something. This prevented women from getting divorces from abusive spouses, since often they could not prove that they had beaten them. The husband would say "no, she fell down the stairs, and you have no proof of anything else!" and the issue would die - and the husband would continue to abuse her.
In 1969, no-fault divorce became the law of the land in California, where either person could get a divorce by demanding it. It was signed into law by Ronald Reagan, who would eventually become the first divorced US president. By 2010, all states had legalized it.
This has been a good thing for women. From AJ Willingham of CNN:
Since 1969, studies have shown no-fault divorce correlates with a reduction in female suicides and a reduction in intimate partner violence. A 2004 paper by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolvers found an 8 to 16% decrease in female suicides after states enacted no-fault divorce laws. They also noted a roughly 30% decrease in intimate partner violence among both women and men, and a 10% drop in women murdered by their partners.
“Unilateral divorce both potentially increases the likelihood that a domestic violence relationship ends and acts to transfer bargaining power toward the abused,” the study states.
So a good thing overall.
Now - of course - conservatives want to cancel it. Beverly Willet, of the Coalition For Divorce Reform, recently said that "unilateral no-fault divorce clearly violates the 14th Amendment. Too often in family court, defendants are deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law.” Setting aside the chilling concept that people are denied their "property" by allowing them to divorce their partner, removing that option would certainly result in more spousal abuse.
New House Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing a similar idea called "covenant marriage" a form of marriage that it is very difficult to get out of. It is already a law in three red states, and red-state legislatures are working hard to get it passed other places. Johnson claims this will decrease divorce (which of course it will) and therefore save society. For . . . spousal abusers? Men, at least.
Texas now has laws on the books that prevent even giving someone a ride to another state to get an abortion. So if you are poor and pregnant in Texas, you are going to have that baby by order of a Texas politician - and if your best friend helps you get a ride, that friend could end up in jail.
(Needless to say, if a Texas politician's mistress gets pregnant, she will find herself with all the money she needs to travel to a blue state to fix that inconvenient problem.)
Now they are working to make divorce much, much harder to get. Decades ago, if you wanted a divorce, you had to prove your partner was cheating or something. This prevented women from getting divorces from abusive spouses, since often they could not prove that they had beaten them. The husband would say "no, she fell down the stairs, and you have no proof of anything else!" and the issue would die - and the husband would continue to abuse her.
In 1969, no-fault divorce became the law of the land in California, where either person could get a divorce by demanding it. It was signed into law by Ronald Reagan, who would eventually become the first divorced US president. By 2010, all states had legalized it.
This has been a good thing for women. From AJ Willingham of CNN:
Since 1969, studies have shown no-fault divorce correlates with a reduction in female suicides and a reduction in intimate partner violence. A 2004 paper by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolvers found an 8 to 16% decrease in female suicides after states enacted no-fault divorce laws. They also noted a roughly 30% decrease in intimate partner violence among both women and men, and a 10% drop in women murdered by their partners.
“Unilateral divorce both potentially increases the likelihood that a domestic violence relationship ends and acts to transfer bargaining power toward the abused,” the study states.
So a good thing overall.
Now - of course - conservatives want to cancel it. Beverly Willet, of the Coalition For Divorce Reform, recently said that "unilateral no-fault divorce clearly violates the 14th Amendment. Too often in family court, defendants are deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law.” Setting aside the chilling concept that people are denied their "property" by allowing them to divorce their partner, removing that option would certainly result in more spousal abuse.
New House Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing a similar idea called "covenant marriage" a form of marriage that it is very difficult to get out of. It is already a law in three red states, and red-state legislatures are working hard to get it passed other places. Johnson claims this will decrease divorce (which of course it will) and therefore save society. For . . . spousal abusers? Men, at least.
