A Texas man who sued his ex-wife’s friends for helping her obtain an abortion informed the court that the two sides reached a settlement, forgoing the need for a trial that would have tested his argument that their actions amounted to assisting in a wrongful death.

Attorneys for Marcus Silva and the three women he sued last year filed court papers this week stating they had reached an agreement. Two of the woman countersued Silva for invasion of privacy but have also dropped now those claims, according to court records.

“This case was about using the legal system to harass us for helping our friend, and scare others out of doing the same,” Carpenter said. “But the claims were dropped because they had nothing. We did nothing wrong, and we would do it all again.”

  • EndOfLine@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    “He has engaged in disgracefully vicious harassment and intimidation of his ex-wife,” the opinion read. “I can imagine no legitimate excuse for Marcus’s behavior as reflected in this record, many of the details of which are not fit for reproduction in a judicial opinion.”

    If only somebody could have predicted that mysogynist legislators weaponizing the legal system would enable abusers. /s

  • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    two sides reached a settlement

    He’s going to fuck himself and they’re going to forget he exists?

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    23 days ago

    Brittni and Marcus Silva divorced in February 2023, a few weeks before Silva filed his lawsuit. The defendants alleged in their countersuit that Silva was a “serial emotional abuser” in pursuit of revenge and that he illegally searched Brittni’s phone without her consent.

    Sounds like a class act.

  • sygnius@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    So he sued her friends, why didn’t he try using the ex-wife that actually had the abortion? Sounds like a real piece of shit guy.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      This is actually the way the law is written. Anyone who aids in any abortion, from the clinic performing it to the Uber driver taking her there – is now subject to being sued by random tattletales. The women themselves are not subject to the same thing.

      They did it this way on purpose. They didn’t want the optics of the State going after these people so they specifically made it so that the State AG would not be involved in all. It would just be a bunch of private busybodies looking to get all into other people’s business.

      • Billiam@lemmy.world
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        23 days ago

        It’s not just the optics, it makes it nearly impossible to have a judge remove the law at all since the state isn’t a party to any of the suits. That’s why this bullshit law was written to civilly penalize aiding abortions, not criminalize them.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    23 days ago

    What other situations exist where someone is obliged to keep another person inside their body?

      • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        In Mississippi, a person can be convicted of sexual battery of a spouse when they are living together only if he engages in “forcible penetration against the victim’s will”.[40][citation needed] This excludes, among others, situations where the victim is “rendered incapable of knowing or controlling his or her conduct, or incapable of resisting an act due to the influence of any drug, narcotic, anesthetic, or other substance administered to that person without his or her consent”.[41]

        So just get them drunk I guess.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      None, of course. And yet at the same time, you need to grant express written permission to have your organs harvested after you die.

      Women in Texas have more rights over their body when they’re dead than when they’re alive.