Missouri Democratic state Rep. Ashley Aune has put forward a bill that would close an “archaic loophole” in a law that prevents a judge from finalizing a divorce if the woman is pregnant. Aune was unable to get any traction through the Republican supermajority, though she has been able to collect two Republican co-sponsors for it and House Republicans seem open to the idea of closing it. However, even if it makes its way through the House, getting through the Missouri Senate may be too tall an order.
According to the Kansas City Star, Freedom Caucus member and state Sen. Denny Hoskins was interviewed about the law and said that while he would be open to creating a carve-out exception for cases involving domestic violence, there is no need to fully close the loophole because the cases where it is a problem are “very rare and infrequent.” According to Hoskins, “Just because the husband and wife are not getting along, or irreconcilable differences, I would not consider that that would be a good reason to get divorced during a pregnancy.”
The state’s primitive divorce law has been revisited since Missouri’s abortion ban went into effect in 2022. Dan Mizell, a Missouri attorney, told The Riverfront Times that some parts of a divorce can proceed, but everything connected to the custody of the unborn child remains frozen. Critics of the law argue that on top of being somewhat barbaric, it doesn’t even follow the general forced-birther logic that a child is created at “conception,” since the law treats the pregnant woman as not actually having a child whose rights can be debated yet.
Others, like former Missouri teacher Jess Piper, point out that the law is the kind of simple sexism one would believe we left behind decades ago. When she got divorced, her attorney at the time told her not to get pregnant because “[t]he moment we become pregnant we lose rights.”
Aune recently told Fox4KC that she doesn’t see it making its way onto the Republican governor’s desk this legislative session since the Republican-led Missouri state legislature has been a chaotic mess. Freedom Caucus extremists spent the first weeks filibustering, and then state senators lost committee chairs (including the aforementioned Hoskins) as punishment from other GOP leadership.
So while Repuublicans were willing to debate and vote down Democratic-led amendments that would have made exceptions for rape and incest to the state’s inhumane abortion ban, making sure that women can get divorced—even from an abusive partner—might be a bridge too far for them.
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Simon Rosenberg from the Hopium Chronicles Substack is back to talk about the facts of the 2024 election cycle. The facts are: Things look bad for Donald Trump—and even worse for the Republican Party.
