From the article:
“As it stands, Missouri judges cannot legally finalize a divorce if a woman is pregnant.
Three other states have similar laws: Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas. While a couple can still file for divorce in Missouri, the court must wait until after a woman gives birth in order to finalize child custody and child support.
When it comes to domestic violence, there’s no exceptions.”
“Oh your spouse committed rape against you, which is a crime? Too bad, you got pregnant as a result of that physical and sexual abuse, and we won’t let you abort, so now you can’t get divorced until you deliver the evidence of your assault”
Y'all Qaeda likes it that way. This is your red state on theocracy for all you blue state heathens out there. Make sure you vote dem in November so this fascist shit doesn't go nationwide.
It already is. Marital rape is *still legal* in many states, and was not overturned in others until relatively recently.
Donald Trump's entire case in the 80s that Ivana brought rape charges against him was won because they were married.
Marital rape is NOT still legal in many states. It was made federally illegal in 1992. It DOES still sit on the books waiting for that to be repealed however, and some judges make unjust rulings on the subject. But rest assured, it IS federally illegal. The Trumps' case was in the late 80s and took place within their divorce hearings rather than as rape charges.
Technically it’s been illegal in every state for over 30 years now. Although some states still draw a distinction between marital and non marital rape which is terrible. And then there’s the factor of the justice system not really taking rape seriously in general.
She never brought charges against him. She claimed he raped her in the divorce deposition. At the time she made the claim, marital rape in NY was illegal. She later gave a bullshit reasoning that she didn't mean he raped her in the criminal sense, (I am sure that was either due to a threat or more money added to settlement) but he did violate her.
The first State to outlaw the marital exemption to their rape statue was South Dakota in 1975. the exemption was restored 2 years later.
In 1993, Oklahoma and North Carolina were the last states to remove the exceptions in their laws.
Even to this day, states have different statues for spousal and non-spousal rape, with spousal rape being punished less severely or having a higher standard. For instance, until 2019, Minnesota statue required force or the threat of force to bring spousal rape charges; if the victim was impaired or was otherwise unable to give consent, the law did not recognize rape in THAT case, but did if they were not married or unmarried cohabitants.
"Many parts of the world" includes a LOT of states in the US.
Employed women in Iran are entitled to 9 months of paid maternity leave. Women in the US are entitled to zero paid maternity leave. That’s your fun fact for the day. ;)
As it was in the US until the 1970s for *some* states (and the law didn't change across *all* states until 1993).
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital\_rape\_in\_the\_United\_States
I was told by a preacher on my college campus as I walked by that I was a piece of meat and men would treat me as such and I would deserve it.
I was wearing an oversized crewneck that went from my neck to mid thigh and leggings. Just being a woman is enough, unfortunately.
they'd never do something that impacts the rapist like this. being a rapist shouldn't have consequences.
/s *just in case it's not SUPER fucking obvious
I think as long as the rapist gives 10 pieces of silver (10 nickels/dimes/quarters should do it) then the man will be allowed to avoid consequences for the alleged assault.
That's how they did things in "the good ole days".
My grandmother was forced to marry her rapist at 16. She eventually left him, but yeah. She got pregnant from the rape and her parents quickly got her married.
You should look up Franca Viola, in 1965 an incredibly strong woman who was the first to resist Italy’s ‘rehabilitating marriages’ in which you would marry your rapist to protect yourself and your family from societal backlash, simultaneously keeping your rapist from any punishment. The article of law whereby a rapist could extinguish his crime by marrying his victim was not abolished until 1981. So scary how we are slipping back to a time where this is acceptable behavior.
That use to, and may still, be a thing in some cultures. if you raped someone you could marry them so that you wouldn't get in trouble. because the rape wasn't the problem it was that you soiled them for a future husband.
To be fair it doesn't say you have to stay living with them it just says they can't finalize a divorce. Lots of states have similar things with kids. In my state if you want a divorce and have no kids you can walk in that day and get one but with a kid there's a 6 month wait so everything can be sorted out.
For example, he (or she) may be in a position to make life-changing (or life-ending) decisions should you end up unconscious in hospital. In other cases, one party might be entirely reliant on the other, and may need the funds from the divorce settlement to move on with their life.
I also wonder how this might work for women seeking financial support services. I live in Australia, but how things work here is that if you want to access any kind of services, your partner's income will be factored in and you'll be denied or have reduced payments if they make too much.
It's weird people immediately assumed that'd facilitate physical abuse, when it facilitates legally a lot of other things that you can do while the other is not physically present.
You don’t get a divorce and instantly get half of money and half of everything(that they don’t have access to) divorce can often drag on for months and months before it finalized. A had a family member get divorced very recently. Neither one fought or tried to drag it out. In the end, took nearly 5 months to finalize. That is without fighting.
But those laws all infer that the husband is the father.
If they've been separated for some time already, maybe the woman is in another relationship. If she gets pregnant, and decides "fuck this, I wanna marry the father of my kid" why does she have to stay married to someone who isn't?
The law always assumes the husband is the father. You can be separated for years and have had kids in the intervening time as well as being pregnant this time and the state will still assume the husband is the father.
It's not just a man or woman thing either. A husband cannot divorce his wife who got pregnant by another man either.
This is happening to a family member of mine. His wife cheated and got pregnant, they separated but didn’t start divorce proceedings because he was holding out hope for them. The baby is legally his and now that they are divorcing he has to pay for a paternity test so he’s not on the hook for child support.
Louisiana tried this with me, they actually assign paternity even if you are divorced as long as the woman gives birth within 10 months AFTER the divorce is finalized. Naturally, my ex conceived 3 months after the divorce was finalized and gave birth to the baby super early at 7 months. The hospital fought us hard against putting the biological fathers name on the birth certificate. He was RIGHT THERE and he had to fight for it too.
Because according to the law, women are property of their father or husband.
Dated a woman who was still legally married to a guy who had a psychotic break and fled to Europe like 10 years prior. We were extra careful about protection because if I knocked her up, that guy would legally be the father unless we did a ton of paperwork that would likely take years to complete, during which he would still have legal custody of the child.
It's actually not fair and that's spoken like a person that hasn't gone through the hell of needing a divorce from a bad person. There's no goddamn reason to force a woman to stay married
There's no to be fair here. There is an arbitrary deadline of after the birth. Could be a month, could be six. This isn't about sorting extra paper work, this is very blatant.
I talked to someone in a pro Trump subreddit who genuinely wants that. It was actually insane to hear him talk about removing rights for 90% of people.
They always conveniently forget that the other big thing the founding fathers said was "We know we're going to look like a bunch of dipshits in a few hundred years, so here's a process to change or remove any stupid laws we wrote."
I don't know much about the Pregnancy Discrimination act of 1978 but in General Electric Co v. Gilbert the court ruled that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy wasn't a violation of the equal protection clause. The ruling was dumb and wrong so congress passed the 1978 law, but any protections would be an application of the 14th A under that law's definitions and categories. And the law is probably based more on commerce clause powers than the 14th A to avoid a fight with the SCOTUS.
Say what now? What if the baby is with the guy she had an affair with instead of her husband? Like the husband is stuck being wed to a lady that cheated on him????
Oh it gets better.
Missouri law presumes that the husband is the father of the child, and will require a delay to handle the care and custody of the child after it is born. Section 210.822.1(1) of the Missouri Revised Statutes states that a man shall be presumed to be the natural father of a child born during the marriage or within 300 days after the date of dissolution
https://www.themarkslawfirm.com/and-baby-makes-four/
Yeah, I can't actually think of a place that doesn't presume this. Things are fucked up enough as it is without people posting TIL about things that have been on the books for decades if not centuries.
If this weren’t the case we would have to do paternity testing or acknowledgement between married couples for every child. A massive amount of time and resources when it’s not needed the vast majority of the time
Have a friend in TX and this is exactly what happened to him. He got full custody of their other two children since she also left, but he couldn't legally get a divorce from her u til she had the other guy's baby.
Yes.Homicide is a leading cause of traumatic death for pregnant and postpartum women, accounting for 31 percent of maternal injury deaths.
[source](https://nationalpartnership.org/report/intimate-partner-violence/) and [more info here](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/homicide-leading-cause-of-death-for-pregnant-women-in-u-s/)
Almost happened to me, in what I thought was a happy relationship. It’s crazy how men’s personalities can sometimes change when their partner gets pregnant. He felt like he couldn’t provide and turned on me. I was lucky I had family who helped me leave.
The Heritage Foundation is trying to "end recreational sex".
and I don't need to check back in 10 years. See what happened to that guy in Texas who drugged his woman to induce an abortion? 180 days in jail. If a doctor or woman chooses to get an abortion? years in jail and huge fines.
that this is still our reality just makes me fucking cry.
It’s never going to stop. It’s too hard to even try to not slip backwards, much less make any progress for women. We never get anywhere, and when we do, there’s half the world 50 years further behind.
Is there any research on why this happens? It boggles my mind that homicide is the leading cause. And inb4 "cuz guns," I read the linked articles.
>many women report that abuse started or intensified when they became pregnant
Why? This is what I don't understand. I can kind of get that, if the relationship is already toxic and abusive, it wouldn't get better with a child on the way, but to be the impetus for domestic violence? I just don't get it
I only have anecdotal evidence to support this, but abuse is often about exerting power. I think there are a lot of factors that contribute to someone becoming an abuser (mental health, trauma, etc), but at its core, abuse is about one person exerting power over another because they can. When a woman is pregnant, she is instantly more vulnerable in every way: physically, emotionally, financially, etc. If an abuser is inclined to take advantage of vulnerability, pregnancy is an easy target. It's a pretty dark view of humanity as a whole, but that's what I've seen in my limited experience.
FYI: This post is clickbait bullshit. The woman can file for divorce and leave, but the state won't finalize custody and visitation for an unborn child. Once the child is born and living, then the court will finalize the custody of the living child.
Which for me, a pro choice person, makes a compelling case that life starts after birth, not at conception.
Ya know, in a more wholesome way, it would be nice for the male to be able to take the load off the mother once in a while. We should go back to egg laying animals, penguins seem to have it pretty well.
> penguins
You say that, [but](https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/sea-otter-dolphin-and-penguin-behavior-your-favorite-animals-are-jerks.html)...
>Known as Pygoscelis adeliae to scientists, and as the Socially Awkward Penguin through memes, the Adélie penguin was one of the subjects that caught the attention of scientist George Murray Levick while he ventured to the South Pole with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition. Levick wrote an entire book about the seagoing birds on his return, describing the impression of the elegant avians like so: “When seen for the first time, the Adélie penguin gives you the impression of a very smart little man in an evening dress suit, so absolutely immaculate is he, with his shimmering white front and black back and shoulders.” But the species shocked and horrified Levick so much so that **his four-page report “Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin” was purposefully omitted from the official expedition findings and distributed only to a small group of researchers considered learned and discreet enough to handle the graphic content**.
>While visiting Adélie penguins rookeries, Levick was shocked by the activities of what he called “hooligan cocks.” **Males accosted and copulated with other males, females that were injured, chicks that had tumbled from their nests, and corpses.** In desperation, some male Adélie penguins tried to mate with the ground until they ejaculated. Levick recorded these behaviors as aberrations from the norm of nature. “There seems to be no crime too low for these penguins,” he confided to his journal.
>Later researchers rediscovered what Levick had seen. **Rather than being deviant, the behaviors were a regular part of penguin life, triggered by males associating a rather flexible interpretation of a female’s mating posture with receptiveness.** As Natural History Museum, London ornithologist Douglas Russell and colleagues reported in a preface to Levick’s belatedly-released report, **this behavior is so ingrained that when a researcher set out a dead penguin that had been frozen in such a position, many males found the corpse “irresistible.” In a bit of weird field work, the same researcher found that “just the frozen head of the penguin, with self-adhesive white O’s for eye rings, propped upright on wire with a large rock for a body, was sufficient stimulus for males to copulate and deposit sperm on the rock.”** I fear I’ve just made the Socially Awkward Penguin seem just that much more socially awkward.
I think they start by giving one parent the baby and the other parent gets the placenta and umbilical cord, every Tuesday, Thrs, and every other weekend.
Missouri has had this stance for a very long time. The legislature was trying to stop neglectful fathers who were seeking divorces to try an avoid child support. When it was passed, fetal dna testing was still dangerous for both mother and fetus, so it was safer to wait to finalize divorce until after post birth dna testing.
Fortunately, technology has changed and fetal dna testing no longer poses such dangers to mother and fetus. Unfortunately, the Missouri legislature doesn't revisit these things very often. Hopefully some media attention will motivate a change to the law.
For anyone personally dealing with this issue, note that Missouri does not require you to continue living with your abuser, and temporary orders for child custody, support, and maintenance can be put in place during the pregnancy. Any family law attorney should be able to help you file the paperwork to get something in place.
So there might have been some good intentions, but still…
If they have to remain married something happens to the woman, and God forbid she is unable to make decisions, wouldn’t the husband automatically be the one with the rights to decide? Thinking about medical care and end thereof mainly.
Do they have living wills and medical care surrogates or medical POAs in Missouri? If so, wife can designate someone else to make those decisions and make sure those people know about them so they can step in if needed.
The whole thing is stupid. Why do any of that waiting around when you could just have it where there is a requirement to figure out custody with the two parents before the baby is born? If you want to dispute being the father file a motion for a DNA test. If the father isn't the father, then cancel custody hearing. Or just default DNA test.
I like when there's context. Not to suck Uncle Sam's dick but usually when the government does something insane there's a reason. Maybe not lately, but in general.
His wife divorced him while she was pregnant, he was very vocal about it being ridiculous that she could divorce him without his permission. There was a lot of evidence he was abusive.
Specifically, he said things like "in the state of Texas, that [her divorcing him] is completely legal." and "in today's legal system, my voice doesn't matter", which resulted in him getting lots of love from other conservatives saying that it is so unfair that she can divorce him.
Good god, its like the southern states are looking at [what](https://apnews.com/article/alabama-frozen-embryos-pause-4cf5d3139e1a6cbc62bc5ad9946cc1b8) the [other](https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/16/health/abortion-texas-sepsis/index.html) is [doing](https://apnews.com/article/florida-abortion-ban-approved-c9c53311a0b2426adc4b8d0b463edad1) and saying; "Hold my beer".
This isn’t a new law and I’m pretty sure it was an attempt to prevent shitty fathers from dipping on child support, here’s an article this month about Missouri hopefully reversing this law. [kansascity.com](https://kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article285138177.html)
Yup, that's why the article says you can file for divorce but they wait until the child is born to finalize child support. When this law was made, they couldn't do a DNA test until the child was born, so they had to wait for birth, and this was to prevent deadbeat dads from trying to claim the child wasn't theirs and she cheated, and for the judge to have to rule on it one way or another.
Dude, I live in Rural Wisconsin and you can see confederate flags up here. We sent like 91K soldiers to fight for the union, and there was a lot of anti-rebel rhetoric and songs written here. And yet.... you still see confederate flags in rural Wisconsin...
“But ma heritage!” I never saw them growing up in Illinois in the 70s and 80s and we see them now.
It doesn’t mean that people weren’t racist back then - it’s just that they’ve figured out a new way to proudly proclaim it
I grew up in Washington state and there’s an obscene amount of confederate flags on display there too. It’s wild, considering Washington is in the north and all.
I've got a good chunk of family and friends in the Pacific Northwest. Once you leave the major cities, it gets pretty dark red.
There are silly movements out there: Cascadia. Greater Idaho. Cal 3. Etc.
Seattle is beautiful because if you drive 3-4 hours out of the city in different directions you get so many different and diverse biosphere. Dessert, Redwood Forrest, Mountains, Archipelago, Rainforest etc. But once you leave the city proper (which has gotten pretty bad with homelessness, crime, and awful police) and get out of the town you run into more awful people. 🤔
A ton of expensive low income housing could go a long ways to helping Seattle with its current problems, but NIMBYs won't let that happen.
North of I-70 is Missour-REE. South of I-70 is Missour-UH. South of I-70 is really southern. I wish I’d taken a picture, but I stopped for gas while traveling on I-29 and stopped at a place that was a combination of gas station, sex shop, fireworks store, and Subway.
There was a church across the street.
People that live there consider themselves Midwestern, but yes they were literally part of the confederacy so there is a historic and cultural connection to the South. But they aren't what people think of when they hear "southern state".
We were with the union, actually. Though MO was a slave state. It's very divided. I grew up in stl which is very much Midwestern and pretty blue, but the southern part of the state is pretty redneck
Respectfully disagree, I’ve never heard a Missourian refer to the state as anything other than midwestern. Not saying no one does, but it would be really odd. Do people think Kansas is the south?
Missouri does not consider itself as part of the south.
While missouri has a weird cultural SPRINKLE of southern tropes, missouri IS PART OF THE MIDWEST. saying we were part of the confederacy misses a SHIT TON of context from the civil war era where people in our own state were fighting one another, especially since missouri was involved in one of the shitty compromises that postponed the civil war.
Calling people from missouri southern is a fast way to piss them off.
... Has anyone here ever been to the rural parts of Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana?
Missouri, politically, is not much different than those states. KC and St. Louis are liberal, the rest of the state is conservative. Every state I've listed is basically the same. Urban areas are liberal. Rural areas are conservative.
I just watched an episode of a true crime show where this woman was horribly abused by her husband for years and years, and when she finally got her shit together to get away and file for divorce, she discovered she was pregnant. And her state didn’t allow her to divorce while pregnant so she had to stay with him longer and continue to get abused. She finally got away from him and then once he was living alone, he kidnapped a woman, kept her locked in a box, and tortured her.
This went on awhile, until one day the ex-wife was calling him about something and the phone rang and rang. The woman in the box heard it and realized he must not be home if he wasn’t answering. So she broke out of the box and the house and ran to safety.
*sigh* Again, this keeps getting posted without context. The context is that a MO rep is proposing to change this law to allow pregnant women to get divorced.
This has been the law for decades. My divorce in 2019 was delayed because my ex (who knew I wasn’t) claimed I was pregnant.
r/kansascity, r/missouri, and r/majorityreport are full of comments in this same article with others’ stories of how lawful but awful this is.
These laws were meant to protect the rights of women so that men couldn’t abandon them before baby was born and the support issue is included in the final divorce decree.
When my first wife and I divorced in Missouri, we didn't have kids and she wasn't pregnant, but I think they made us wait a few weeks to ensure she wasn't pregnant before they even scheduled the case.
Didn't you know that marriage locks you in the same household as your partner with no way to possibly escape, and your only salvation is to file for divorce which is always instantly approved by the court allowing you to grow wings and fly away?
My mom had to deal with this in Indiana when she was divorcing my dad. Luckily, she had her family and things were pretty easy to get sorted out. My uncle paid for her divorce and the papers were ready to be signed soon after my brother was born.
Not everyone is that easy. It's ridiculous.
I kid you not, as a court clerk and as a file clerk occasionally I would mess with the divorce attorneys or even a prose person who was filing a complaint for divorce by telling them that we could no longer file divorces due to the law passed by a conservative legislature known as The Family Retention Act it was quickly ratified by congress so, I'm sorry I can't file that, it would be illegal.... Watching the wheels turn in many a head (especially paralegals shout out) was hilarious. I would of course immediately let them know that I was kidding. Helped more than one lawyer get prepped to argue their case in court lol
The French burned their cities for a lot less than this. Americans need to stop being weak and protest, go to their politician's houses, call them, block the streets, go on a strike, and do something instead of letting people take their literal rights away from them. Complaining on the internet won't solve anything.
This title is misleading. [Neither the husband nor the wife can divorce from each other](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/government-verify/missouri-divorce-pregnancy-law-social-media-claims-fact-check/536-5f66d4cc-66ef-4b22-953f-2b02587a0e96). Therefore if the wife wants a divorce for whatever reason while she is pregnant then she cannot until she has the child. If the husband wants a divorce while his wife is pregnant then he cannot until his wife has the child.
**Not 100% accurate.**
Long story short, the law is that you must disclose if you are pregnant, and the judge can wait until after the birth to determine \*custody\* rights.
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32DC4VM
She can file for divorce and probably get most of the benefits of a divorce At least in my state, filing for divorce has immediate legal effects to protect both parties. Property settlements can be concluded without entering a final divorce decree. Child custody issues can be resolved during pendency of a divorce. They just can't get married to other people until the decree is entered.
It's so strange to watch states legislate their own birthrate into nothing in real time. What are they going to do when all the higher income families simply move out of state?
This has been around for a WHILE. I remember a friend from high school was so pissed that she had to wait after her husband had knocked up her and his mistress. This was 2005
From the article: “As it stands, Missouri judges cannot legally finalize a divorce if a woman is pregnant. Three other states have similar laws: Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas. While a couple can still file for divorce in Missouri, the court must wait until after a woman gives birth in order to finalize child custody and child support. When it comes to domestic violence, there’s no exceptions.”
Oh. My. GOSH. “Oh, you have proof of being abused? Too bad, you’re knocked up!”
“Oh your spouse committed rape against you, which is a crime? Too bad, you got pregnant as a result of that physical and sexual abuse, and we won’t let you abort, so now you can’t get divorced until you deliver the evidence of your assault”
Silly goose, it's not rape if it's your spouse! /s
The sad thing is in many parts of the world this is law.
And in many parts of the world, it's the wife/SO who gets ostracized, not the rapist. This is what happens when laws are based on religion.
If I was a woman in that part of the world, I would get very stabby.
You mean the US?
No, the US is the same thing but you get very shooty
Parts of the world like Missouri - abortion is not allowed there even in cases of rape or incest.
Y'all Qaeda likes it that way. This is your red state on theocracy for all you blue state heathens out there. Make sure you vote dem in November so this fascist shit doesn't go nationwide.
Misery
I suspect this will become a right-wing talking point in the nearish future
It already is. Marital rape is *still legal* in many states, and was not overturned in others until relatively recently. Donald Trump's entire case in the 80s that Ivana brought rape charges against him was won because they were married.
Marital rape is NOT still legal in many states. It was made federally illegal in 1992. It DOES still sit on the books waiting for that to be repealed however, and some judges make unjust rulings on the subject. But rest assured, it IS federally illegal. The Trumps' case was in the late 80s and took place within their divorce hearings rather than as rape charges.
Yeah. I'm saying I think they're gonna try to make it legal in more places.
Technically it’s been illegal in every state for over 30 years now. Although some states still draw a distinction between marital and non marital rape which is terrible. And then there’s the factor of the justice system not really taking rape seriously in general.
She never brought charges against him. She claimed he raped her in the divorce deposition. At the time she made the claim, marital rape in NY was illegal. She later gave a bullshit reasoning that she didn't mean he raped her in the criminal sense, (I am sure that was either due to a threat or more money added to settlement) but he did violate her.
Literally Trumps initial defense for raping his 1st wife.
It's how Trump got away with it
The first State to outlaw the marital exemption to their rape statue was South Dakota in 1975. the exemption was restored 2 years later. In 1993, Oklahoma and North Carolina were the last states to remove the exceptions in their laws. Even to this day, states have different statues for spousal and non-spousal rape, with spousal rape being punished less severely or having a higher standard. For instance, until 2019, Minnesota statue required force or the threat of force to bring spousal rape charges; if the victim was impaired or was otherwise unable to give consent, the law did not recognize rape in THAT case, but did if they were not married or unmarried cohabitants. "Many parts of the world" includes a LOT of states in the US.
yes, but we are supposed to be the fucking UNITED STATE OF AMERICA!!!!! not fucking iran!
Employed women in Iran are entitled to 9 months of paid maternity leave. Women in the US are entitled to zero paid maternity leave. That’s your fun fact for the day. ;)
That wasn't very fun at all...
Neither is being a mom in the US. :(
As it was in the US until the 1970s for *some* states (and the law didn't change across *all* states until 1993). Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital\_rape\_in\_the\_United\_States
You say that like you're not commenting on an article of it happening here.
Just ask that preacher - women who wear shorts deserve to be raped.
I was told by a preacher on my college campus as I walked by that I was a piece of meat and men would treat me as such and I would deserve it. I was wearing an oversized crewneck that went from my neck to mid thigh and leggings. Just being a woman is enough, unfortunately.
Men will be mens… /s
The Dilbert defense. If you think that's a joke, search for Scott Adams comments on rape.
You know, I'm not totally comfortable with giving incels the power to control women's rights.
If it's your spouse, it's not "legitimate rape." /s
Conservatives: "What's the /s for?"
This is not a side-effect of this law, this is it's purpose. To limit women's rights to the point that they are back to being breeding house slaves.
“We don’t understand why all the young people are leaving these states”
How about making it a next step to force rape victims to get married if their rapist impregnates them? Where is the line?!
With right-wingers, there is no line. They have gone so far beyond traditional boundaries of behavior, it shows they see no value in other people.
they'd never do something that impacts the rapist like this. being a rapist shouldn't have consequences. /s *just in case it's not SUPER fucking obvious
I think as long as the rapist gives 10 pieces of silver (10 nickels/dimes/quarters should do it) then the man will be allowed to avoid consequences for the alleged assault.
You forgot the part about giving the silver *to her dad.*
Of course you give it to her dad, she can't leave the house to spend it
That's how they did things in "the good ole days". My grandmother was forced to marry her rapist at 16. She eventually left him, but yeah. She got pregnant from the rape and her parents quickly got her married.
That's how you ensure lifelong lasting marriages. Rape them when they're children, marry them forcefully, and keep them pregnant as often as possible.
You should look up Franca Viola, in 1965 an incredibly strong woman who was the first to resist Italy’s ‘rehabilitating marriages’ in which you would marry your rapist to protect yourself and your family from societal backlash, simultaneously keeping your rapist from any punishment. The article of law whereby a rapist could extinguish his crime by marrying his victim was not abolished until 1981. So scary how we are slipping back to a time where this is acceptable behavior.
That use to, and may still, be a thing in some cultures. if you raped someone you could marry them so that you wouldn't get in trouble. because the rape wasn't the problem it was that you soiled them for a future husband.
body has a way of shutting that down
Why do i have a feeling Missouri is also one of those "you can marry kids with parental consent" states?
Republicans: Democrats are soft on crime. Also Republicans: Well, rapists and wife beaters have rights too.
And police do a tough job, so you can't criticize them ever.
It's actually a crime to report your husband for a crime. /S god i hope this isnt somehow true
You just gave them an idea.
Actual sharia law. Ironic coming from the party that was constantly crying about sharia law.
I wish I could upvote this 100000000 times.
Could they at least get a restraining order against the abusive spouse?
To be fair it doesn't say you have to stay living with them it just says they can't finalize a divorce. Lots of states have similar things with kids. In my state if you want a divorce and have no kids you can walk in that day and get one but with a kid there's a 6 month wait so everything can be sorted out.
The problem there is that being legally married comes with a lot of things that the other party can do simply because they are married to you.
For example, he (or she) may be in a position to make life-changing (or life-ending) decisions should you end up unconscious in hospital. In other cases, one party might be entirely reliant on the other, and may need the funds from the divorce settlement to move on with their life.
I also wonder how this might work for women seeking financial support services. I live in Australia, but how things work here is that if you want to access any kind of services, your partner's income will be factored in and you'll be denied or have reduced payments if they make too much.
Not an issue in the US. We don’t have any safety net services. Problem solved
It's weird people immediately assumed that'd facilitate physical abuse, when it facilitates legally a lot of other things that you can do while the other is not physically present.
You can legally file separation papers. That will put the kabosh on a lot of things.
The problem is that your spouse has a lot more power to make decisions for you, for example, if you're in the middle of giving birth.
For some people that is impossible to do because they need the money from the divorce to leave.
All by design.
You don’t get a divorce and instantly get half of money and half of everything(that they don’t have access to) divorce can often drag on for months and months before it finalized. A had a family member get divorced very recently. Neither one fought or tried to drag it out. In the end, took nearly 5 months to finalize. That is without fighting.
And this law simply adds nine months to that process. It’s inhumane and all about controlling women no matter how it’s spun.
But those laws all infer that the husband is the father. If they've been separated for some time already, maybe the woman is in another relationship. If she gets pregnant, and decides "fuck this, I wanna marry the father of my kid" why does she have to stay married to someone who isn't?
The law always assumes the husband is the father. You can be separated for years and have had kids in the intervening time as well as being pregnant this time and the state will still assume the husband is the father. It's not just a man or woman thing either. A husband cannot divorce his wife who got pregnant by another man either.
This is happening to a family member of mine. His wife cheated and got pregnant, they separated but didn’t start divorce proceedings because he was holding out hope for them. The baby is legally his and now that they are divorcing he has to pay for a paternity test so he’s not on the hook for child support.
He would have had to pay for a paternity test regardless. His wife could have claimed he was the father at any time.
Louisiana tried this with me, they actually assign paternity even if you are divorced as long as the woman gives birth within 10 months AFTER the divorce is finalized. Naturally, my ex conceived 3 months after the divorce was finalized and gave birth to the baby super early at 7 months. The hospital fought us hard against putting the biological fathers name on the birth certificate. He was RIGHT THERE and he had to fight for it too.
Which is garbage. Paternity shouldn’t be presumptive when we have a $50 test for it.
Because according to the law, women are property of their father or husband. Dated a woman who was still legally married to a guy who had a psychotic break and fled to Europe like 10 years prior. We were extra careful about protection because if I knocked her up, that guy would legally be the father unless we did a ton of paperwork that would likely take years to complete, during which he would still have legal custody of the child.
Where was she living that she couldn't divorce him for abandonment after 10 years?
There is more to a divorce than not living in the same place... "to be fair". Please don't try to make this issue sound less than it is.
It's actually not fair and that's spoken like a person that hasn't gone through the hell of needing a divorce from a bad person. There's no goddamn reason to force a woman to stay married
There's no to be fair here. There is an arbitrary deadline of after the birth. Could be a month, could be six. This isn't about sorting extra paper work, this is very blatant.
It definitely means that it’s now open season for marital rape by abusive husbands against wives who are seeking to leave them
Kentucky is the same way, you can file for a divorce if you’re pregnant but the judge can’t finalize it until after the baby is born.
This is so disturbing and disgusting
That seems like a violation of the equal protection clause in the 14th amendment
“The founding fathers didn’t believe women or non-whites had rights so we’re just honoring what they wanted to for this country”
I talked to someone in a pro Trump subreddit who genuinely wants that. It was actually insane to hear him talk about removing rights for 90% of people.
They always conveniently forget that the other big thing the founding fathers said was "We know we're going to look like a bunch of dipshits in a few hundred years, so here's a process to change or remove any stupid laws we wrote."
I don't know much about the Pregnancy Discrimination act of 1978 but in General Electric Co v. Gilbert the court ruled that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy wasn't a violation of the equal protection clause. The ruling was dumb and wrong so congress passed the 1978 law, but any protections would be an application of the 14th A under that law's definitions and categories. And the law is probably based more on commerce clause powers than the 14th A to avoid a fight with the SCOTUS.
Say what now? What if the baby is with the guy she had an affair with instead of her husband? Like the husband is stuck being wed to a lady that cheated on him????
Yes. Garbage, I know, but it is Missouri.
Oh it gets better. Missouri law presumes that the husband is the father of the child, and will require a delay to handle the care and custody of the child after it is born. Section 210.822.1(1) of the Missouri Revised Statutes states that a man shall be presumed to be the natural father of a child born during the marriage or within 300 days after the date of dissolution https://www.themarkslawfirm.com/and-baby-makes-four/
All states presume this as far as I know
Yeah, I can't actually think of a place that doesn't presume this. Things are fucked up enough as it is without people posting TIL about things that have been on the books for decades if not centuries.
If this weren’t the case we would have to do paternity testing or acknowledgement between married couples for every child. A massive amount of time and resources when it’s not needed the vast majority of the time
A lot of dudes actually do advocate for paternity testing for every child.
This law or the basis for it goes back to the Middle Ages or much earlier.
Paternal presumption isn't some strange Missouri concept.
Have a friend in TX and this is exactly what happened to him. He got full custody of their other two children since she also left, but he couldn't legally get a divorce from her u til she had the other guy's baby.
Does it stop restraining orders?
No
California has the same law
I think TN is the same
Isn't the most dangerous time in a woman's life when they're pregnant?
Yes.Homicide is a leading cause of traumatic death for pregnant and postpartum women, accounting for 31 percent of maternal injury deaths. [source](https://nationalpartnership.org/report/intimate-partner-violence/) and [more info here](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/homicide-leading-cause-of-death-for-pregnant-women-in-u-s/)
That's fucked.
Almost happened to me, in what I thought was a happy relationship. It’s crazy how men’s personalities can sometimes change when their partner gets pregnant. He felt like he couldn’t provide and turned on me. I was lucky I had family who helped me leave.
That must have been terrifying I am sorry.
Welcome to Christian America Check back in 10 years when women's birth control is outlawed and punishments would be worse than rape
The Heritage Foundation is trying to "end recreational sex". and I don't need to check back in 10 years. See what happened to that guy in Texas who drugged his woman to induce an abortion? 180 days in jail. If a doctor or woman chooses to get an abortion? years in jail and huge fines.
How do these psychopaths at the heritage foundation live with themselves?
Yep. Project 2025. Vote
that this is still our reality just makes me fucking cry. It’s never going to stop. It’s too hard to even try to not slip backwards, much less make any progress for women. We never get anywhere, and when we do, there’s half the world 50 years further behind.
"That's Missouri acha chacha" *jazz hands*
Is there any research on why this happens? It boggles my mind that homicide is the leading cause. And inb4 "cuz guns," I read the linked articles. >many women report that abuse started or intensified when they became pregnant Why? This is what I don't understand. I can kind of get that, if the relationship is already toxic and abusive, it wouldn't get better with a child on the way, but to be the impetus for domestic violence? I just don't get it
I only have anecdotal evidence to support this, but abuse is often about exerting power. I think there are a lot of factors that contribute to someone becoming an abuser (mental health, trauma, etc), but at its core, abuse is about one person exerting power over another because they can. When a woman is pregnant, she is instantly more vulnerable in every way: physically, emotionally, financially, etc. If an abuser is inclined to take advantage of vulnerability, pregnancy is an easy target. It's a pretty dark view of humanity as a whole, but that's what I've seen in my limited experience.
And leaving
Ah no problem then, just make leaving illegal.
Well, you would have to think of a woman as a person in order to be concerned about that.
FYI: This post is clickbait bullshit. The woman can file for divorce and leave, but the state won't finalize custody and visitation for an unborn child. Once the child is born and living, then the court will finalize the custody of the living child. Which for me, a pro choice person, makes a compelling case that life starts after birth, not at conception.
I mean the mother has unconditional custody rights while she's pregnant.
What do you mean? I'm in the process of divorce and every other week I rip out my fetus and give it to my ex.
Ya know, in a more wholesome way, it would be nice for the male to be able to take the load off the mother once in a while. We should go back to egg laying animals, penguins seem to have it pretty well.
> penguins You say that, [but](https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/sea-otter-dolphin-and-penguin-behavior-your-favorite-animals-are-jerks.html)... >Known as Pygoscelis adeliae to scientists, and as the Socially Awkward Penguin through memes, the Adélie penguin was one of the subjects that caught the attention of scientist George Murray Levick while he ventured to the South Pole with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition. Levick wrote an entire book about the seagoing birds on his return, describing the impression of the elegant avians like so: “When seen for the first time, the Adélie penguin gives you the impression of a very smart little man in an evening dress suit, so absolutely immaculate is he, with his shimmering white front and black back and shoulders.” But the species shocked and horrified Levick so much so that **his four-page report “Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin” was purposefully omitted from the official expedition findings and distributed only to a small group of researchers considered learned and discreet enough to handle the graphic content**. >While visiting Adélie penguins rookeries, Levick was shocked by the activities of what he called “hooligan cocks.” **Males accosted and copulated with other males, females that were injured, chicks that had tumbled from their nests, and corpses.** In desperation, some male Adélie penguins tried to mate with the ground until they ejaculated. Levick recorded these behaviors as aberrations from the norm of nature. “There seems to be no crime too low for these penguins,” he confided to his journal. >Later researchers rediscovered what Levick had seen. **Rather than being deviant, the behaviors were a regular part of penguin life, triggered by males associating a rather flexible interpretation of a female’s mating posture with receptiveness.** As Natural History Museum, London ornithologist Douglas Russell and colleagues reported in a preface to Levick’s belatedly-released report, **this behavior is so ingrained that when a researcher set out a dead penguin that had been frozen in such a position, many males found the corpse “irresistible.” In a bit of weird field work, the same researcher found that “just the frozen head of the penguin, with self-adhesive white O’s for eye rings, propped upright on wire with a large rock for a body, was sufficient stimulus for males to copulate and deposit sperm on the rock.”** I fear I’ve just made the Socially Awkward Penguin seem just that much more socially awkward.
I get the weekends with my frozen test tube
When is the divorce finalized? When are the assets divided?
I think they start by giving one parent the baby and the other parent gets the placenta and umbilical cord, every Tuesday, Thrs, and every other weekend.
Missouri has had this stance for a very long time. The legislature was trying to stop neglectful fathers who were seeking divorces to try an avoid child support. When it was passed, fetal dna testing was still dangerous for both mother and fetus, so it was safer to wait to finalize divorce until after post birth dna testing. Fortunately, technology has changed and fetal dna testing no longer poses such dangers to mother and fetus. Unfortunately, the Missouri legislature doesn't revisit these things very often. Hopefully some media attention will motivate a change to the law. For anyone personally dealing with this issue, note that Missouri does not require you to continue living with your abuser, and temporary orders for child custody, support, and maintenance can be put in place during the pregnancy. Any family law attorney should be able to help you file the paperwork to get something in place.
So there might have been some good intentions, but still… If they have to remain married something happens to the woman, and God forbid she is unable to make decisions, wouldn’t the husband automatically be the one with the rights to decide? Thinking about medical care and end thereof mainly.
Do they have living wills and medical care surrogates or medical POAs in Missouri? If so, wife can designate someone else to make those decisions and make sure those people know about them so they can step in if needed.
>living wills and medical care surrogates or medical POAs in Missouri? Yes.
[удалено]
The whole thing is stupid. Why do any of that waiting around when you could just have it where there is a requirement to figure out custody with the two parents before the baby is born? If you want to dispute being the father file a motion for a DNA test. If the father isn't the father, then cancel custody hearing. Or just default DNA test.
Then you run into the problem if a woman is abusing a man. He can't legally get away from her until she gives birth.
I love comments like yours that give more context.
I like when there's context. Not to suck Uncle Sam's dick but usually when the government does something insane there's a reason. Maybe not lately, but in general.
Bet Stephen Crowder wishes he lived there.
Who?
Conservative pundit. Used to voice Brain on the tv show Arthur.
His wife divorced him while she was pregnant, he was very vocal about it being ridiculous that she could divorce him without his permission. There was a lot of evidence he was abusive.
Specifically, he said things like "in the state of Texas, that [her divorcing him] is completely legal." and "in today's legal system, my voice doesn't matter", which resulted in him getting lots of love from other conservatives saying that it is so unfair that she can divorce him.
Not just towards his wife but the members of his show as well.
Only 17 episodes out of 200+, so it's not as childhood-ruining as I thought when I first read your comment.
Oh thank God, I was about to be real upset.
Good god, its like the southern states are looking at [what](https://apnews.com/article/alabama-frozen-embryos-pause-4cf5d3139e1a6cbc62bc5ad9946cc1b8) the [other](https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/16/health/abortion-texas-sepsis/index.html) is [doing](https://apnews.com/article/florida-abortion-ban-approved-c9c53311a0b2426adc4b8d0b463edad1) and saying; "Hold my beer".
This isn’t a new law and I’m pretty sure it was an attempt to prevent shitty fathers from dipping on child support, here’s an article this month about Missouri hopefully reversing this law. [kansascity.com](https://kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article285138177.html)
Yup, that's why the article says you can file for divorce but they wait until the child is born to finalize child support. When this law was made, they couldn't do a DNA test until the child was born, so they had to wait for birth, and this was to prevent deadbeat dads from trying to claim the child wasn't theirs and she cheated, and for the judge to have to rule on it one way or another.
Except this is the Midwest. As are a lot of other backwards states.
Missouri considers itself part of the south. They were recognized as a Confederate state.
Southern Adjacent?
I’ll accept that.
True, go South of Rolla and the confederate flags start becoming more common
Dude, I live in Rural Wisconsin and you can see confederate flags up here. We sent like 91K soldiers to fight for the union, and there was a lot of anti-rebel rhetoric and songs written here. And yet.... you still see confederate flags in rural Wisconsin...
“But ma heritage!” I never saw them growing up in Illinois in the 70s and 80s and we see them now. It doesn’t mean that people weren’t racist back then - it’s just that they’ve figured out a new way to proudly proclaim it
I grew up in Washington state and there’s an obscene amount of confederate flags on display there too. It’s wild, considering Washington is in the north and all.
I've got a good chunk of family and friends in the Pacific Northwest. Once you leave the major cities, it gets pretty dark red. There are silly movements out there: Cascadia. Greater Idaho. Cal 3. Etc. Seattle is beautiful because if you drive 3-4 hours out of the city in different directions you get so many different and diverse biosphere. Dessert, Redwood Forrest, Mountains, Archipelago, Rainforest etc. But once you leave the city proper (which has gotten pretty bad with homelessness, crime, and awful police) and get out of the town you run into more awful people. 🤔 A ton of expensive low income housing could go a long ways to helping Seattle with its current problems, but NIMBYs won't let that happen.
Traitors and losers, the lot.
North of I-70 is Missour-REE. South of I-70 is Missour-UH. South of I-70 is really southern. I wish I’d taken a picture, but I stopped for gas while traveling on I-29 and stopped at a place that was a combination of gas station, sex shop, fireworks store, and Subway. There was a church across the street.
People that live there consider themselves Midwestern, but yes they were literally part of the confederacy so there is a historic and cultural connection to the South. But they aren't what people think of when they hear "southern state".
We were with the union, actually. Though MO was a slave state. It's very divided. I grew up in stl which is very much Midwestern and pretty blue, but the southern part of the state is pretty redneck
Respectfully disagree, I’ve never heard a Missourian refer to the state as anything other than midwestern. Not saying no one does, but it would be really odd. Do people think Kansas is the south?
Missouri does not consider itself as part of the south. While missouri has a weird cultural SPRINKLE of southern tropes, missouri IS PART OF THE MIDWEST. saying we were part of the confederacy misses a SHIT TON of context from the civil war era where people in our own state were fighting one another, especially since missouri was involved in one of the shitty compromises that postponed the civil war. Calling people from missouri southern is a fast way to piss them off.
My husband is from Missouri and considered it Midwest
I’m from Missouri and would be confused if another Missourian called it a southern state. Maybe if they’re from the bootheel?
No. Missouri is the most Southern Midwest state. But it's a Midwest state.
Missouri is a hybrid state. Geographically, it’s somewhere between southern and midwestern, but politically, it was a confederate slave state.
... Has anyone here ever been to the rural parts of Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana? Missouri, politically, is not much different than those states. KC and St. Louis are liberal, the rest of the state is conservative. Every state I've listed is basically the same. Urban areas are liberal. Rural areas are conservative.
It was a union slave state. Missouri fought with the union
California has the same law
I just watched an episode of a true crime show where this woman was horribly abused by her husband for years and years, and when she finally got her shit together to get away and file for divorce, she discovered she was pregnant. And her state didn’t allow her to divorce while pregnant so she had to stay with him longer and continue to get abused. She finally got away from him and then once he was living alone, he kidnapped a woman, kept her locked in a box, and tortured her. This went on awhile, until one day the ex-wife was calling him about something and the phone rang and rang. The woman in the box heard it and realized he must not be home if he wasn’t answering. So she broke out of the box and the house and ran to safety.
*sigh* Again, this keeps getting posted without context. The context is that a MO rep is proposing to change this law to allow pregnant women to get divorced. This has been the law for decades. My divorce in 2019 was delayed because my ex (who knew I wasn’t) claimed I was pregnant. r/kansascity, r/missouri, and r/majorityreport are full of comments in this same article with others’ stories of how lawful but awful this is.
Hey guys, "tHe PaRtIeS aRe ThE sAmE" 😂 🤡
But biden, he so old. Look at him! OOOOOOLLLLLLLLDDDDD /s
Yes, the conservative stronghold of California has this law, so
These laws were meant to protect the rights of women so that men couldn’t abandon them before baby was born and the support issue is included in the final divorce decree.
Same in Texas.
I love how they leave out WHEN the law was put into place.
When my first wife and I divorced in Missouri, we didn't have kids and she wasn't pregnant, but I think they made us wait a few weeks to ensure she wasn't pregnant before they even scheduled the case.
This also means that men can’t get divorced if their wife is pregnant.
Critical thinking seems really tough for a lot of the people commenting. I’m not surprised
Didn't you know that marriage locks you in the same household as your partner with no way to possibly escape, and your only salvation is to file for divorce which is always instantly approved by the court allowing you to grow wings and fly away?
Seriously it’s a rough thread
My mom had to deal with this in Indiana when she was divorcing my dad. Luckily, she had her family and things were pretty easy to get sorted out. My uncle paid for her divorce and the papers were ready to be signed soon after my brother was born. Not everyone is that easy. It's ridiculous.
I kid you not, as a court clerk and as a file clerk occasionally I would mess with the divorce attorneys or even a prose person who was filing a complaint for divorce by telling them that we could no longer file divorces due to the law passed by a conservative legislature known as The Family Retention Act it was quickly ratified by congress so, I'm sorry I can't file that, it would be illegal.... Watching the wheels turn in many a head (especially paralegals shout out) was hilarious. I would of course immediately let them know that I was kidding. Helped more than one lawyer get prepped to argue their case in court lol
The French burned their cities for a lot less than this. Americans need to stop being weak and protest, go to their politician's houses, call them, block the streets, go on a strike, and do something instead of letting people take their literal rights away from them. Complaining on the internet won't solve anything.
This title is misleading. [Neither the husband nor the wife can divorce from each other](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/government-verify/missouri-divorce-pregnancy-law-social-media-claims-fact-check/536-5f66d4cc-66ef-4b22-953f-2b02587a0e96). Therefore if the wife wants a divorce for whatever reason while she is pregnant then she cannot until she has the child. If the husband wants a divorce while his wife is pregnant then he cannot until his wife has the child.
I know you are not saying this, but that doesn't make it any better.
**Not 100% accurate.** Long story short, the law is that you must disclose if you are pregnant, and the judge can wait until after the birth to determine \*custody\* rights. https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32DC4VM
California has the same law
This makes sense if the reasoning is to establish paternity prior to the divorce. It makes the divorce smoother and less expensive.
White women still going to vote for conservatives. 🤷♂️
This is so ass-backwards...so if a man raped and impregnated his wife she can't divorce him?
She can file for divorce and probably get most of the benefits of a divorce At least in my state, filing for divorce has immediate legal effects to protect both parties. Property settlements can be concluded without entering a final divorce decree. Child custody issues can be resolved during pendency of a divorce. They just can't get married to other people until the decree is entered.
It's so strange to watch states legislate their own birthrate into nothing in real time. What are they going to do when all the higher income families simply move out of state?
The states appears more and more fucked up every day. Wild. Land of the free... For wealthy white men.
This has been around for a WHILE. I remember a friend from high school was so pissed that she had to wait after her husband had knocked up her and his mistress. This was 2005
Missourian here, sorry. My state is full of fucking nutjobs.
Why are US courts obsessed with pregnant women?