Murder is a leading cause of death for pregnant women. The anti-abortion movement wants to hand more power to abusive men anyway.
This story originally appeared on Jill.substack.com, a newsletter from journalist, lawyer and author Jill Filipovic.
The way abortions bans are designed and written allow for all kinds of horrors: women losing their organs, women bleeding out without help, women losing their lives. But they’re also written to empower abusive men. After all, the very foundation of an abortion ban is an assumption that a woman’s body does not belong to her. Abusive men agree.
And so it’s perhaps not a huge surprise that several men have indeed taken advantage of these laws in an effort to control their ex partners. And it’s also not particularly surprising—although it is appalling—that they’ve found support and legal representation from some of the most powerful people in the U.S. anti-abortion movement.
One man in Texas sued his wife’s friends for allegedly helping her to get abortion pills (she was trying to leave him, saying that, duh, he was abusive); Jonathan Mitchell, an anti-abortion lawyer who wrote the Texas abortion bounty law and also represents president Donald Trump, represented him.
Another Texas man murdered his girlfriend after she traveled to Colorado for an abortion.
And now, a third Texas man found out his ex-girlfriend was planning to travel out of state to end her pregnancy, and he also hired Jonathan Mitchell to help stop her. Mitchell has splashed her name all over public court filings, and even though she has not actually broken the law—since traveling out of state for an abortion is perfectly legal—he’s seeking to depose her and any of her “accomplices” in what can only be described as a blatant campaign of harassment and abuse, on behalf of an nauseatingly controlling man.
It’s no wonder that the anti-abortion movement is going to legal bat for these abusers, as they also write abortion laws without rape exceptions and use the law not to protect children, but to punish women.
From Caroline Kitchener at the Washington Post:
“If the woman proceeded with the abortion, even in a state where the procedure remains legal, Davis would seek a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the abortion and ‘pursue wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child,’ the lawyer wrote in a letter, according to records.
“Now, Davis has disclosed his former partner’s abortion to a state district court in Texas, asking for the power to investigate what his lawyer characterizes as potentially illegal activity in a state where almost all abortions are banned.
“The previously unreported petition was submitted under an unusual legal mechanism often used in Texas to investigate suspected illegal actions before a lawsuit is filed. The petition claims Davis could sue either under the state’s wrongful-death statute or the novel Texas law known as Senate Bill 8 that allows private citizens to file suit against anyone who ‘aids or abets’ an illegal abortion.”
In the United States, it is legal to cross state lines for medical care, including abortion. But the anti-abortion movement wants this long-standing legal allowance to end. The Texas woman who planned to leave the state for an abortion no more broke the law than a person who lives in New Jersey but goes to the doctor in New York.
Abortion opponents, though, want to make abortion a special category—and by extension, want to make pregnant women a subcategory of citizen who are, unlike everyone else, disallowed from seeking healthcare in places where it is perfectly legal.
Nor is this an isolated tactic:
“Anti-abortion advocates have tried various tactics to dissuade women from traveling out of state for abortions. Idaho has passed a law making it illegal for someone to help a minor leave the state for an abortion without parental consent—which is currently blocked by the courts—and Tennessee is pursuing similar restrictions. Several Texas cities and counties have passed local ordinances attempting to stop women seeking abortions from using key portions of high-traffic highways.
The anti-abortion movement seems to be putting a particular focus on men who object to their current or former partners having abortions. And look, in an ideal world, every pregnancy would occur between two people in a healthy relationship who wanted it. But that is not the world we live in.
In this world, a great many women are impregnated by men who are controlling or abusive. In this world, abuse routinely scales up when a woman becomes pregnant, and pregnant women who are not able to end their pregnancies wind up much more likely than women who have abortions to remain tethered to abusive men. In this world, murder is a leading cause of death for pregnant women.
The anti-abortion movement wants to hand more power to abusive men anyway.
The idea seems to be that, by impregnating a woman, a man has laid claim to her body, and has ownership over it.
And think about it: What kind of man hires a lawyer and attempts to use the legal system to prevent his ex from ending a pregnancy? Men are of course entitled to whatever complicated feelings they have about abortion, including being sad, angry, or upset if a partner or former partner ends a pregnancy and they hoped for a different outcome. But rational, stable, decent men do not bring down the full force of the law on women who refuse to have their babies. The kind of men who use the legal system to punish women who won’t reproduce for them? Those men are abusers. That behavior is abuse.
The ideology that underlies this abuse is both insidious and common—and it underlies the anti-abortion movement more broadly. The idea seems to be that, by impregnating a woman, a man has laid claim to her body, and has ownership over it. Should she remove the pregnancy, she hasn’t just made a choice that involves her and a fetus or embryo, but she has violated his rights—his right to have her body used for the end he desires. This is the logic of the anti-abortion movement, of every rapist everywhere, of every abusive man. And so it’s no wonder that the anti-abortion movement is going to legal bat for these abusers, as they also write abortion laws without rape exceptions and use the law not to protect children, but to punish women.
It’s not about protecting life. It’s just about abusive misogyny. And these cases could not make that truth more clear.
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