The Next Front in the GOP's War on Women: No-Fault Divorce

So she should be stuck with this asshole for the rest of her life?

Their unironic answer is yes. These people are religious fanatics and/or raging control freaks who want the privilege of deciding how everyone else lives.

What do you expect? They don't view women as anything more than brood mares

This is exactly what it would look like - https://www.thereset.news/p/exclusive-video-reveals-steven-crowder

Controlling narcissists lose their shit when their partner files for divorce and dares leave that perfect situation

Modern conservatism is about using the power of the state to enforce a rigid social and economic hierarchy.

That's one of the many lies they tell to try and appear like reasonable people.

I'm baffled by America sometimes. The man is CLEARLY in the wrong, like he is being such a piece of shit on camera, but republicans are like: yeah poor guy, his wife left him, we should prevent that!!

Man. Pud is a word I haven't heard in a long time yet it seems like it should be timeless since there will always be people like this in the world.

They're already in support of child marriages.

They will try to push legislation and cultural norms that pressure women indirectly into marriage. They will try to make being a single woman less pleasant of an experience. Shame them culturally, cutting funding for single mothers, making childcare more expensive, making workplaces more hostile for women to work in, etc.

Many of these things are already in the works by conservatives, they will continue pushing them forward.

Think about the alternative. A woman is trapped in a marriage and the only way out is to prove she's being abused or her husband gets his mistress pregnant and it's publicly known.

Is that better for the children?

There's a reason that no fault divorce became a thing.

No, it’s a bad thing because without no-fault divorce laws someone could very easily be trapped in an abusive relationship with no recourse.

Researchers who tracked the emergence of no-fault divorce laws state by state over that period found that reform led to dramatic drops in the rates of female suicide and domestic violence, as well as decreases in spousal homicide of women. The decreases, one researcher explained, were “not just because abused women (and men) could more easily divorce their abusers, but also because potential abusers knew that they were more likely to be left.”

We’ll just ignore this, then?

It is very easy to end up in a relationship that makes you miserable and your partner treats you badly. But this won't be always the case in the beginning of your relationship. It may come 5 or 25 years later. Then what?

This is one of many situations in which I would say: before we start trying to reduce something by restricting it, have we tried all (or any) options for reducing it by giving people better options.

Also, to be frank, I don't understand why it's my business your yours if third parties get in and out of marriages flippantly. I don't expect others to get married in my faith tradition, why should it matter to me if they get married by an Elvis impersonator every Saturday night?

If it's about kids, the solutions should be about helping kids with divorced parents. Because keeping those particular parents from getting divorced is doing those poor kids no favors.

You say that like unmarried people can't have kids and people who don't have kids can't get married. Yknow, exactly like crowder the situation at hand?

You say that now, but next they'll be coming for premarital cohabitation and eventually we'll be back to fathers literally selling their daughters as brides as chattels through the mechanism of arranged marriages they can't terminate.

I feel like you are a troll, but I'm going to bite anyway. Your personal feelings, opinions, or desires based on anecdotal evidence (!=) justification for public policy decisions.

If you and your hypothetical spouse wish to stay together even if you no longer love one another due to what you perceive to be a moral (and/or) contractual obligation in order to potentially benefit your hypothetical children, then that is your prerogative.

However:

• Not everyone that is married has children, can have children, or wants to have children. In this case you are FORCING two adults to stay legally bound in a relationship that they are no longer consenting to.

• There is ample research that forcing an abused person to stay bound to their abuser increases the likelihood of them being murdered by an order of magnitude.

• You are making a claim that an abused party should easily be able to prove abuse, and this is neither true or relevant. Emotional, verbal, or psychological abuse can be incredibly difficult to prove as an example.

• I'm assuming you would not support legally requiring an employee to stay in a workplace where they were subject to harrasment, manipulation, lopsided power dynamics, or other toxic behavior against their will. So the same standards should apply to breaching the contract of marriage.

Lastly, why the fuck would you think your personal opinion on marriage should have any bearing or impact on the way in which I choose to live my life? This is the same tired argument that was used against gay marriage, and let me put it to you as politely as I can:

There is no fucking chance that I am going to see the hard fought rights of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters taken away without a fight, and there is no fucking chance I am letting the psychotic ambitions of Republican megalomaniacs trample on the hard fought rights of everyday Americans to pursue life, liberty, and their own happiness.

Hi Steven!

You're mistaking a perfect world with the world that we live in.

Breaking up with your girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/etc. and divorcing them in the US are nowhere near the same thing. The financial aspects alone can and often do ruin lives.

I agree that people don't take marriage as seriously as they should... but if you genuinely value some nebulous term like 'sanctity of marriage' more than protecting women from abusive partners, you need to give your head a wobble.

It always used to make me laugh that the horrid county clerk who refused to sign gay marriage certificates, claiming she was trying to respect the sanctity of marriage, respected that sanctity so much that she'd married 5 times.