State Rep. Cecelie Williams’ bill seeking to clarify a woman’s right to divorce her husband while pregnant was approved unanimously Feb. 12 on the House floor and is now in the Senate awaiting a committee assignment.
Williams, a domestic violence abuse survivor, is hopeful the bill will make it through the Senate and to the governor’s desk this year.
Williams, R-Dittmer, said a similar bill – prohibiting pregnancy status from preventing the court from entering a judgment of dissolution of marriage – was first proposed by other legislators two years before she became a state representative, but it didn’t go anywhere.
She said legislators didn’t realize the severity of the problem until she introduced it last year and shared her own story. She said she was devastated when her bill died on the Senate floor last year after an amendment was attached to it, but she knew she would refile the bill this year and make it her main priority.
“Last session, I went public with my story of abuse,” Williams said. “It wasn’t easy leaving my situation, having three children already and pregnant with my fourth. The abuse was just getting worse and worse. It really was my son … he was 6 years old and he said, ‘Mommy, I think we need to leave Daddy.’ And all of a sudden, things became a lot more clear to me.”
She said she was told she couldn’t get a divorce because she was pregnant.
“I ended up not filing until my son was 10 days old,” she said. “That was January of 2006. I filed for divorce and went through all the divorce proceedings. My husband was going to prison for a drunk driving accident while I was pregnant.”
She said he took a plea bargain and was facing five years, but 11 days before the divorce would have been finalized, he died by suicide.
“I didn’t even get divorced,” she said. “I became a widow so then I became financially responsible for his final expenses, with four young children I had at the time.”
Williams said Missouri’s policy against divorce while a woman is pregnant affects both women and men.
She said if a woman who is married has a baby, her husband’s name goes on the birth certificate, and he has to fight to get it off if the baby is not his.
“This bill protects men from being lawfully and financially responsible for a child they didn’t create while in a marriage with their wife,” Williams told her fellow legislators on Feb. 12 before the vote. “This bill protects unborn children, but most importantly, in my case, this bill will protect the lives of women and children who have been subjected to abuse. It is about offering survivors like me the chance to find safety to begin healing, and to reclaim the life that was stolen from them.
“No woman should ever be forced to stay in a dangerous, abusive marriage because the law keeps her legally bound to a man who does not care for her wellbeing. When voices have been silenced by violence, breaking that silence becomes an act of courage and an act of love for ourselves and others. I once was silenced; now I stand here to speak for those who still are (in a dangerous and abusive marriage).”
While legislators were voting on Feb. 12, a few walked up to Williams and hugged her. After the bill passed, unanimously, legislators applauded.
So far, the legislation has been first read in the Senate.
“It will go through Senate committee,” she said. “I’ll go and present it over in the Senate in committee and then after it gets out of committee, (state Sen. Jill Carter, R-Ganby) will take it from there. When it comes to the floor, I’ll be able to be over in the Senate the day that happens and watch it go through.”
“I really do think the bill will go through the Senate,” she added. “I think this has been such a priority, even for Democrats, especially with them filing a companion bill. This has such bipartisan support that it should (pass).”
She said Gov. Mike Kehoe mentioned her bill in his State of the State address earlier this year.
“So, he realizes the importance,” Williams said. “He and I talked several times last session about it.”
She said if for some reason it doesn’t pass this year, if reelected, she will refile the bill until it gets passed.
Williams, who went on to remarry and have three more children, said it will be like her independence day when her bill does become law.
“It’ll be my personal independence day,” she said. “I never got to tell my husband how I felt about everything he had done to me and how he affected me and how he made me unlove myself.”
A Safe Place
Holly Porter, director of A Safe Place, a shelter for domestic violence victims in Jefferson County, said she regularly works with survivors of domestic violence who face barriers such as lack of support, employment, transportation and income. She said disallowing a divorce when the woman is pregnant is another barrier.
Porter said domestic violence involves patterns of control and power and ways that an abuser can control a victim. She said a victim can be denied contraceptives, so she doesn’t have a choice in when she becomes pregnant.
“It’s kind of known that, until this bill is passed, if someone’s pregnant, divorce isn’t an option and that’s a good way to exert that control over a victim,” she said.
“If you’re in a relationship where the goal is to keep you controlled … you can do that through limiting contraception, forcing that partner to be intimate with you and then using pregnancy as a vulnerable state to keep you controlled. I think a lot of people don’t realize that’s a thing in the intimate partner violence world.”
A Safe Place, which is part of Compass Health Network, offers a 24-hour hotline at 636-232-2301.
“We’re here for any victim, male, female,” Porter said. “If you have a family member that is a victim and you just want to know how to help, you can call us, and we’re happy to give you resources and talk you through how to be supportive and a help to your loved one who’s experiencing intimate partner violence. We always have advocates here to answer the call.”