How Texas Created A Deadly New Normal For Domestic Violence Victims
The leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide, most often by an abusive partner with a gun. And Texas is forcing victims to stay pregnant, while making it easier for abusers to get guns.
When Your Home State Also Becomes Your Abuser
The leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide, most often by an abusive partner with a gun. And Texas is forcing victims to stay pregnant, while making it easier for abusers to get guns.By Alanna Vagianos
Mar 1, 2024, 08:00 AM EST
|Updated Mar 5, 2024
ILLUSTRATION: JIANAN LIU/HUFFPOST; PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Gabriela Gonzalez had been dating her abusive boyfriend, Harold Thompson, for four months in the spring of 2023 when she got pregnant.
Police records show that Thompson had physically abused Gonzalez several times throughout their relationship, including when she was pregnant. Thompson strangled Gonzalez and “recklessly caused bodily injury” in a December 2022 incident, according to court records. She told her family she wanted to leave him, but she was terrified.
“He was so angry that she wanted to get away from him,” Mileny Rubio, Gonzalez’s sister, told a local Dallas outlet. “She would always tell me that she wanted to leave, but that she couldn’t.”
Gonzalez knew she couldn’t continue the pregnancy because she did not want to be tied to her abuser for the rest of her life. But she lived in Dallas, Texas, where by last spring, abortion had been banned for nearly a year. So she drove to Colorado ― at least an 18-hour journey there and back ― to get an abortion.
The day after Gonzalez returned, Thompson found out about the abortion and confronted her in a gas station parking lot. Surveillance video, described in a police report, shows Thompson put Gonzalez in a chokehold before she was able to shrug him off. That’s when Thompson pulled out a gun and shot Gonzalez in the head. The video shows Thompson firing several more bullets into Gonzalez’s body before fleeing. He was charged with murder and is awaiting trial.
Gonzalez, like so many other domestic violence victims in Texas, faced an increased risk of violence from her abusive partner and a higher likelihood he would kill her because of the state’s decision to loosen gun laws and completely restrict access to abortion. Her story reflects the three systemic crises converging in Texas that are creating a deadly new normal for women. Each has resulted from a deliberate policy created by right-wing state lawmakers.
The leading cause of death among pregnant and postpartum women in the U.S. is homicide, most often by an abusive partner with a gun. Pregnant and postpartum women are more than twice as likely to be murdered than to die from sepsis, hypertensive disorders or hemorrhage.
Experts tell HuffPost other states with abortion bans are also seeing an increase in domestic violence, but Texas stands out for a few reasons. The state was the first to severely restrict abortion in 2021, forcing women to stay pregnant nearly a year before Roe fell and exposing domestic violence victims to more violence with fewer ways to escape. At the same time, the Lone Star state has the largest rate of gun sales in the country and continues to have lax firearm restrictions. The state is so firearm friendly that gun rights groups chose it as the testing ground for a Supreme Court case that will determine if domestic abusers get to keep their guns.
In the last decade, the amount of women shot and killed by an abuser has nearly doubled in Texas.
Even though Gonzalez was able to get an abortion, her abuser still had access to a firearm. Women who travel more than 150 miles to get an abortion are more likely to experience physical violence from an abuser than those traveling less than 50 miles. Gonzalez, who leaves behind three young children, traveled at least 500 miles on the last trip of her life.
HuffPost spoke with a dozen people working in advocacy services in the state ― ranging from abortion funds and family attorneys, to shelter directors and hotline staff ― who believe that the state’s abortion bans coupled with its lax gun laws are fueling intimate partner violence. Survivors and advocacy workers are terrified that this new normal will lead to more dead women in Texas: The state has made it easier for a man to obtain a gun to kill his partner than it is for a woman to access abortion care.
Domestic Violence Victims Are Especially Vulnerable To Abortion Bans
For Holly Bowles, a sexual assault victim advocate working in Texas, the hardest part of her job is telling someone they’re pregnant.Bowles and her colleagues at SAFE Alliance, which is based in Austin, normally see people in the immediate aftermath of an assault. They serve around 6,000 Texans every year who have experienced emotionally and physically devastating violence. The nonprofit works with survivors of child abuse, human trafficking, intimate partner violence and sexual assault. Their hotline, which hears from around 2,000 callers a month, connects people to housing assistance, legal services — or to advocates like Bowles, who can support a victim through a rape kit exam or legal trial.
Around half of the survivors Bowles supports have experienced intimate partner violence, or are still in active situations. Most of the victims she sees can take emergency contraception after they finish the forensic exam, but for women in abusive relationships, some may already be pregnant from a prior assault by their partner. And they might not know it.
Recently, a staff member on Bowles’ team was sitting with a woman during a rape kit exam when the advocate had to tell her she was pregnant. “This was actually the fifth time I believe that her partner had gotten her pregnant intentionally so that she would stay,” said Bowles, who works as the director of SAFE’s sexual assault victim advocacy program.
Before Roe v. Wade fell in 2022, Bowles could connect victims with abortion clinics or even schedule an appointment for them. Now with a total abortion ban in effect in Texas, as well as a law criminalizing those who help people seeking care, Bowles has to tread extremely carefully.
“It’s very difficult to think about, in that immediate moment, what we can and can’t talk about,” she said. “We’re very limited in the things that we can do if someone does find themselves in that situation because of the laws in Texas.”
Protesters march while holding signs during an abortion rights rally on June 25, 2022, in Austin, Texas, after the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade.
SERGIO FLORES VIA GETTY IMAGES
Since the Supreme Court repealed Roe, calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline about reproductive coercion ― an umbrella term that includes when an abusive partner controls pregnancy outcomes, coerces someone into unprotected sex or tampers with birth control methods ― have doubled across the country.
Pregnant women were already more likely to be murdered by an intimate partner in states where abortion was restricted before Dobbs, according to a new study published in the Journal of American College of Surgeons. With 21 states now severely restricting or banning abortion altogether, “This problem is only going to be exponentially worse,” said senior author of the study Dr. Justin Cirone, a trauma surgeon and assistant professor of surgery at Wake Forest School of Medicine.
Millions of Texans are dealing with the repercussions of these bans, but victims of domestic violence are particularly vulnerable. An estimated 324,000 pregnant people are abused each year by an intimate partner, and research suggests that abortion access plays a critical role in reducing intimate partner violence.
For some victims, pregnancy can mean an increase in the severity of violence. For others it can actually initiate abuse in a relationship that was not violent beforehand often because of the financial and emotional stress pregnancy can create.
In Texas, specifically, calls citing firearms in situations of intimate partner violence have increased dramatically ( 47%) between 2022 and 2023. Adding a firearm into the mix increases the likelihood that the victim dies: Women are five times more likely to be killed in a situation of intimate partner violence if a gun is present.
The Supreme Court could make it even easier for domestic abusers to access firearms legally sometime this year. Following SCOTUS’ unprecedented reinterpretation of the Second Amendment in 2022, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a conviction of a Texas man, Zackey Rahimi, who was found with several firearms despite a previous arrest for domestic violence.
Under federal law, the protective order for domestic abuse against Rahimi stripped him of his right to possess the guns found in his home. The court of appeals overturned Rahimi’s conviction, ruling that the federal law violates people’s constitutional right to bear arms. The Supreme Court is set to make a decision in the case later this year.
Gun reform advocates and anti-domestic violence groups have worked tirelessly to close what many refer to as the “ boyfriend loophole” ― a statute in the Violence Against Women Act that has allowed unmarried partners who are convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to buy or own firearms. The Biden administration narrowed the loophole but did not fully close it, though many states have their own laws banning convicted domestic abusers from owning guns.
If SCOTUS sides with Rahimi, the consequences for victims of intimate partner violence will be deadly. “This [case] is essentially putting firearms into the hands of abusive partners and that equation means lethality for survivors,” Crystal Justice, the chief external affairs officer at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, told HuffPost. “Lives will be lost if the wrong decision is made in the Rahimi case.”
