The turning point for Destonee was a car ride.
She describes a scene of emotional abuse: Pregnant with her third child, her husband yelled at her while her older two kids listened in the car. “He would call me awful things in front of them,” she says. “And soon my son would call me those names too.”
She made up her mind to leave him, but when she went to a lawyer to file for divorce, she was told to come back when she was no longer pregnant.
Destonee requested she be identified by only her first name. She says she still lives with abusive threats from her ex-husband. She couldn’t end her marriage because Missouri law requires women seeking divorce to disclose whether they’re pregnant — and state judges won’t finalize divorces during a pregnancy. Established in the 1970s, the rule was intended to make sure men were financially accountable for the children they fathered.
Advocates in Missouri are now pushing to change this law, arguing that it’s being weaponized against victims of domestic violence and contributes to the contraction of women’s reproductive freedoms in a post-Roe v. Wade landscape.
“In Missouri, it feels as though they have really closed down every door in terms of reproductive autonomy,” says Kristen Marinaccio, an attorney and expert in divorce law who has examined these kinds of laws in Missouri and other states. She says beyond the legal and financial ties of marriage, there is powerful emotional weight to legally terminating a marriage. “You might just think, well, it’s a piece of paper,” she says, “but that piece of paper that tells you you’re no longer in this horrible marriage is really freeing for a lot of clients.”
After hearing stories about survivors unable to leave marriages, state Rep. Ashley Aune introduced House Bill 2402. It would allow pregnant women to finalize divorce in Missouri.
Aune says that the law has gone unexamined for too long and that policymakers need to give women the right to leave a dangerous or even life-threatening situation. “How can you look that person in the eye and say, ‘No, I think you should stay with that person,'” says Aune, a Democrat. “That’s wild to me.”
Hellbound and Down 