Why is a Pro-Life Leader Helping an Abuser Terrorize His Ex?

Just kidding we know.

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

A few months ago in Texas, a man sued three of his ex-wife’s friends for $1 million each after those friends helped her obtain an abortion. The man, Marcus Silva, claimed that the abortion was a wrongful death. He was represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the man who wrote the Texas abortion bounty law, which offers a $10,000 payout to anyone in the US who rats out anyone else who “aids or abets” an abortion in the state.

Marcus Silva, it will not surprise you to learn, is an abusive ex husband. He’s using the legal system to continue to control, punish, and publicly shame a woman who decided she no longer wanted to live under his thumb, and to control, punish, and publicly shame her friends down, too (this effort at isolating a woman from her friends is a pretty common abuse tactic). And one of the leaders of the “pro-life” movement — the man who wrote laws ready-made for abusive men to isolate, control, and punish women — is his lawyer, representing and enabling Silva’s pattern of abuse.

Pro-life leader uses anti-abortion law to represent an abuser and perpetuate his abuse of his ex wife: This should be a scandal.

The heartening news is that two of three women Silva is suing are refusing to be shamed and are fighting back by suing him in return. And in the course of their lawsuit, some damning information about Marcus Silva is coming out:

Ms. Silva claimed that Mr. Silva had a history of emotionally abusive behavior. In her texts to her friends, she recounted that he burned their wedding photos and threatened the family dog. Ms. Silva told her friends once that she called the police because he was harassing her.

She filed for divorce in May 2022, but continued living with Mr. Silva.

In his suit, Mr. Silva says he only recently learned of his ex-wife’s abortion. But in a police report he filed on July 18, 2022, he stated that he found the text messages on July 12, searched her purse the next day, and found an abortion pill. He put the pill back. The abortion took place on July 14. Mr. Silva waited to confront Ms. Silva about it.

“So now he’s saying if I don’t give him my ‘mind body and soul’ until the end of the divorce, which he’s going to drag out, he’s going to make sure I go to jail for doing it,” Ms. Silva wrote to her friends on July 23.

And from Slate:

By the time she finally filed for divorce from her husband in May 2022, Brittni Silva, a Texas mother of two, had allegedly already called the cops on him at least twice. According to people who knew the couple, Brittni’s husband, Marcus Silva, was mean and manipulative: When Brittni was at work (Silva was unemployed), he would accuse her of staying out for too long, of having an affair. When she was home, he would berate her, following her from room to room. He demanded to look through her phone, and when she refused, he would do so anyway. According to women who were there, in April 2022 Silva got extremely drunk at a work party for Brittni. In front of her co-workers, the witnesses say, he called her a slut, a whore, and an unfit mother. He told her she was worthless.

A man who burns your wedding photos, threatens your pets, berates you, calls you ugly slurs, tells you you’re worthless, and tries to jail you for divorcing him is an abuser, and a dangerous one. People who demand women give men their “mind body and soul” are abusers — and that demand, by the way, isn’t so different from the one made by the anti-abortion movement: That women give over their bodies against their will; that they cede their own desires and ambitions and moral codes in the service of someone else.

Marcus Silva figured out that his wife (who was in the process of leaving him) planned to have an abortion because he took her phone and went through it, and saw texts between her and her friends. He then found the abortion pill in her purse — but instead of throwing it away, he put it back, so that she could proceed with the abortion and he could use the legal system to punish her. As Moira Donegan and Mark Joseph Stern write in Slate, that act “confirms something that has been clear from the start: This case is not about avenging the ‘murder’ of a ‘baby.’ It is about transforming Texas’ draconian abortion laws into a tool of spousal abuse.”

Anti-abortion laws that allow any person to sue anyone else for “aiding or abetting” an abortion are ready-made for use by abusive men; there really is no other use for them. It’s worth considering who would actually make use of the Texas law that Marcus Silva’s lawyer Jonathan Mitchell penned. When you think about who would actually file one of these suits, the answer is clear: Abusive partners or ex partners looking to control, humiliate, or punish a woman who left them and those who helped her; abusive misogynists who want their personal disapproval and desire to control, humiliate, and punish those who act in a way they dislike to translate into a $10,000 payout; perhaps abusive parents looking to control, humiliate, or punish an adult child. There is no use of the Texas abortion bounty law that is not for the express purpose of punishing, humiliating, and controlling women and those who help them. There is no use of the Texas abortion bounty law that isn’t a classic abuse tactic: Isolate women so that there’s no one they can ask for help. This is what abusive partners do. It’s what the Texas law does, when it threatens a woman’s friends or loved ones with bankruptcy or jail time for supporting her at her most vulnerable.

The Texas abortion bounty law was written not just to allow for misogynist abuse, but to guarantee it. There is no other use of the Texas abortion bounty law — there is no way to apply this law without aiming to control, humiliate, punish, and publicly shame women and the people who help them.

It’s no shock that one of the first high-profile Texas abortion cases involves both the man who wrote this abusive law and an abusive ex husband trying to make use of whatever legal tools he has at his disposal. What is stunning, though, is how flagrantly Jonathan Mitchell, one of the highest-profile abortion opponents in Texas, is embracing misogynist abuse and men who abuse their wives. This is not a case Mitchell was assigned or had to take — this is a choice. He took it because he thinks what Silva is doing — using the law to continue to abuse, control and punish his ex wife — is righteous and “pro-life.”

Mitchell has been directly involved with a slew of attempts to criminalize abortion in Texas and nationwide, far beyond the abortion bounty law. He’s trying to bring back the Comstock Act, an 1873 law penned by a tyrannical little prude named Anthony Comstock, that made it a crime to send “immoral,” “obscene, lewd or lascivious,” or “indecent” information through the post. It included a ban on contraceptives, under which Margaret Sanger was arrested for running a birth control clinic, just in case you’re wondering where this is all headed.

For clarity, Marcus Silva is suing under a wrongful death law, because Texas’s abortion ban was not yet in place when the abortion happened. But I assume Mitchell has taken this case because he wants to open up as many legal avenues as possible to exact a high cost for abortion — to intimidate, abuse, control, and punish women who have abortions, and to do the same or worse to the people who help them.

And I suppose when you look at the ideology behind the “pro-life” movement, that’s what it is: An attempt to use the law to intimidate, abuse, control, and punish women. I’m just surprised they’re not even trying to be a little bit subtle.

xx Jill