Pregnant woman can’t get a divorce, judge says
It’s not the child’s fault that mom got pregnant. The answer is, you don’t go around doing that when you’re not divorced.
- Judge Paul Bastine
At times we kid ourselves that we live in an enlightened society, where people are treated with respect and dignity. Our rights are respected, and the law fulfills it’s function as the force behind all that is good, right, and just. Yeah…whatever….
Somewhere in Eastern Washington lives a judge who apparently woke up one morning and decided that 15th-century England had things about right. Women were chattel, prized primarily for their domestic skills and their breeding capacity. Men were the breadwinners, and controlled their house and everything within it as if it was their absolute right…because it was.
SPOKANE √≥ A Spokane woman trying to divorce her estranged husband two years after he was jailed for beating her has been told by a judge she can’t get out of the marriage while she’s pregnant.
The case pits a first-year attorney who argues that state law allows any couple to divorce if neither spouse challenges it against a longtime family-law judge who says the rights of the unborn child in this type of case trump a woman’s right to divorce.
“There’s a lot of case law that says it is important in this state that children not be illegitimized,” Spokane County Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine told The Spokesman-Review newspaper.
Further complicating things, Shawnna Hughes says her husband is not the child’s father.
The judge argued that the paternity of Hughes’ child needs to be determined before a divorce is finalized.
But the bottom line, says Hughes’ attorney, Terri Sloyer, is that there’s nothing in state law that says a woman can’t get a divorce if she’s pregnant.
“We don’t live in 15th-century England,” Sloyer said. “I am absolutely dumbfounded by it.”
Hughes’ husband, Carlos, was convicted in 2002 of beating her. She separated from him after the attack and filed for divorce last April. She later became pregnant, and her baby is due in March.
Oh, right…how silly of me. Women are, after all, property. How could I have forgotten?
And since when does “illegitimizing” a child carry any stigma in this day and age? How long has it been since it was acceptable to attach the word “bastard” to a child born to a single woman? Surely we have moved beyond that medieval, misogynistic attitude? Or have we?
You’d think that the health and safety of a child would be paramount. If a woman’s husband is a criminal with a record of beating her, how does it serve the interest of the State or the child to refuse to allow that woman a divorce?
In this case, the woman in question has stated that the father of the child she is carrying is not her estranged husband, but rather her current boyfriend. Under Washington law, however, a husband is presumed to be the father of any child born up to 300 days post-divorce. Apparently, the fact that said husband is a criminal and a wife-beater is not enough for the state to prevent him from keeping his wife chained to him.
Truly, the law is an ass…and Judge Bastine is a DUMB@$$. I understand the concern for the best interests of the child, but does that interest really involve rescinding Ms. Hughes’ divorce from her abusive husband? Oh, right…I forgot; when you’re considered chattel, you have no rights….
