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.
Lack of empathy. In their minds it will never be them who is tricked into an abusive marriage or will need the abortion or get sick or hurt and need assistance or want things people twll them they shouldn’t. Those are the things that happen to the dumb and immoral people do and to their mind those people deserve to struggle as consequences for their sins. They are comfortable feeling that they are counted among the narrowly defined righteous and they will never waver… Because deep down they know that if they let go of that comfort of feeling absolutely resolute they are the model on which the rest of womanhood should aspire to be then they have to reckon with all the pain they caused to people.