This Makes Me Want to Vomit

The anti-abortion organization Texas Right to Life is actively recruiting men to take legal action over their ex-partners' abortions.

By Kylie Cheung  |  January 17, 2025 | 3:23pm
Photo: Getty Images AbortionPolitics
This Makes Me Want to Vomit

This month marks the 52nd anniversary of the now-defunct Roe v. Wade ruling, which anti-abortion activists are predictably celebrating by making everything worse. On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Texas Right to Life—the state’s most powerful anti-abortion organization—as well as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office are actively recruiting men to file lawsuits over their ex-partners’ abortions. Texas Right to Life’s John Seago smugly revealed these plans to the Post in November and has since made some deeply chilling progress.

In December, Texas filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against a New York doctor who allegedly mailed abortion pills to a Texas woman. The lawsuit holds huge implications, as it’s the first one to challenge “shield laws,” which states like New York, California, and Massachusetts have to protect providers who mail abortion pills to states with anti-abortion laws. According to the Post, Paxton’s office learned about the case “as part of a broader abortion law enforcement operation the attorney general has quietly created,” specifically recruiting male partners with intimate knowledge of their partners’ reproductive choices.

As anti-abortion officials try to crack down on people taking abortion pills they buy online, they desperately need plaintiffs who can challenge websites like Plan C Pills or other out-of-state abortion providers—so they’re seeking out these plaintiffs among aggrieved, abusive male partners. Lawsuits like this can subject women to incredibly invasive proceedings that could expose them to state policing and public humiliation. 

Per the Post, the unnamed Texas woman didn’t tell her partner about her medication abortion but asked him to drive her to the hospital, where a health worker told him she had been nine weeks pregnant. The man later found the abortion pills in their shared home.

Additionally, beginning next week, Texas Right to Life will roll out advertising campaigns on Facebook and Twitter to further recruit male partners, per the Post. The organization said their recruitment thus far has been successful enough that they plan to file several lawsuits on behalf of male partners in different appeals courts “in the coming months,” with the goal of landing a case before the anti-abortion Texas Supreme Court.

In 2024, Texas anti-abortion attorney Jonathan Mitchell represented at least three men trying to take legal action over their intimate partners for their abortions; one of the men, Marcus Silva, first filed a lawsuit in 2023 against his ex-wife’s friends for helping her have an abortion, but dropped the lawsuit in October. Mitchell’s two other cases remain active; attorneys for one of the women warned last year that if Mitchell has his way, “any scorned lover could harass or intimidate their ex … for simply receiving a false-positive pregnancy test.” 

“The men who are being recruited to sue over partners’ abortions—many of those men don’t care about abortion, they just want to control or punish their victim,” Sara Ainsworth, senior legal and policy director at the reproductive justice legal organization If/When/How, told Jezebel. She argued Texas anti-abortion activists are exploiting these men for their own vile political aims: “The men are then going to enter a process they may not understand, many will be rightfully publicly shamed—Marcus Silva’s lawsuit is probably the only thing you’ll see if you Google him for the rest of his life.”

In June, the National Domestic Violence Hotline published a survey of 3,500 domestic violence victims about experiences with reproductive coercion (when a partner tries to control one’s reproductive decisions) since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision; 5% (about 200) of respondents said their partners threatened to report them to law enforcement if they had abortions, while another 5% said their partners threatened to sue them. No state abortion bans currently punish those who have abortions. In 2023, the Hotline reported a 99% surge in calls about reproductive coercion within the first year since Dobbs. Most of the people experiencing criminal and legal threats over their pregnancy, who call our hotline, are also experiencing domestic abuse,” Ainsworth told Jezebel of callers to If/When/How’s Repro Legal Hotline. 

Seago told the Post that Texas Right to Life’s “strategy right now is to tell dads that if you’re the father of a child victim of an abortion, you have legal rights.” He continued, “Historically, fathers didn’t have legal standing. They were shut out of the whole thing, because [the law said], ‘It’s a woman’s right to choose.’” God forbid!

These lawsuits from abusers will “[force] survivors to weigh the risks of their abusive relationships against their access to abortion,” Farah Diaz-Tello, senior legal counsel at If/When/How, told Jezebel in November. “Pregnancy can be one of the most dangerous times in an abusive relationship. It’s disgusting that anti-abortion advocates would collude with abusers to punish their victims for trying to keep themselves safe.”

“Disgusting” is certainly one word for this behavior. I can think of about a dozen other words—and many, many words for what I believe should happen to men who would do this—none of which are appropriate for print.

If you or someone you know are experiencing domestic violence and seeking options to safely access abortion care, you can get support from If/When/How’s Repro Legal Helpline here or call 844-868-2812. 

 
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