The motherhood mandate, p.27
The Motherhood Mandate, page 27
At that moment, Allison woke and started fussing. Rylee bit her lip, watching helplessly as Sam pulled the baby out of her carrier and settled her on his lap to face the judge. She blinked back tears. Sam had dressed her in that adorable Dolce & Gabbana red rose outfit she’d sent for the court hearing. It was perfect!
“Ah, you’re awake, Ms. Williams Maxwell,” the judge said, leaning forward to talk directly to Allison. “Do you have anything to add?”
In response, Allison spit out her pacifier and yawned.
Judge Olson laughed. “Alright, then,” she replied. She turned her attention back to the group. “Based on the feedback I’ve received, this settlement goes into effect today, October 8th, 2029. Both parties are expected to meet with Ms. Williams Maxwell’s guardian ad litem, annually, to make any necessary changes to placement and financial support until she has reached twenty-one years of age. So, ordered. Case closed.”
Rylee closed her eyes in relief, listening as people started to gather their things to leave. She swallowed, taking one last look at Allison. “Thank you, Your Honor,” Rylee said. The video abruptly ended.
She stared at her computer screen for a moment. She couldn’t sort out what she was feeling. She wasn’t free. No. Some part of her would always be tied to Sam. First steps. First words. First day of school. Endless parent-teacher conferences. Graduations. Allison’s wedding. The inevitable grandchildren.
Rylee stood up and walked over to the window. Her second-floor room overlooked the courtyard, and she watched as other students walked along the cement pathways on their way to class.
She took a deep breath. She had to be strong. Fight for what was hers. Network her ass off so that she could give Allison the life she deserved. No one, not even Sam, was going to get in her way.
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There are two sides to every story...
Curious about Sam's experience with the Wisconsin Individual Family Education program and Rylee's pregnancy? Here's the first chapter of The Fatherhood Mandate.
Sam stood on the rocky beach, watching the small waves lap against the monochrome shoreline. It was late August, but the wind coming off Lake Michigan was a bit chilly. Probably should have brought a jacket, he thought as he shoved his hands deep into his front pockets.
He kicked at the pebbles that littered the beach, then pulled his phone out of his back pocket to check the time. 8:10 am. It was too early for this shit.
Sam shaded his eyes as the sun momentarily poked through the somber clouds, then slid the phone back into his pocket and glared at the horizon. Of course, Rylee was late. She was always late.
He sighed. Rylee was the kind of girl that you could love one minute and hate the next. Bright blue eyes that just drew you in. Long black hair and a saucy smile. Curves in all the right places. She knew what to say, when to say it, and what it took to get her way.
And that was the problem. Rylee always got her way.
Not this time, Sam thought as he kicked at the sandy pebbles at his feet. No more meaningless late night texts. No more screaming fights over some imagined insult. No more scheduling and rescheduling his life around her ever-changing wants and needs. It was over. Done.
He heard her cuss as she stumbled across the damp rocks and pieces of driftwood that littered the beach, her complaints almost lost in the mindless hiss of the surf as she slowly made her way across the deserted beach. He ignored her.
“Sam, I’m cold,” Rylee said when she finally reached him. That telltale whine warned him she was already in a mood. “Can’t we go someplace else?”
Sam felt her tentatively reach for him. He pulled away and shoved his hands into his front pockets again. “Just tell me what you want, Rylee,” he said, eyeing the darkening clouds that threatened rain out over the lake. “We broke up. It’s over. There’s nothing more to say.”
“It’s really chilly out here,” she whimpered. “I can’t talk when I’m freezing to death!”
She sniffed as if she was holding back tears. He turned and one look was enough. Melodramatic expression. Bloodshot eyes. Blotchy skin from crying.
That was the last thing he needed that morning. “Let’s go,” he muttered. He grabbed her arm and forced her to walk toward the trail that threaded its way through the woods surrounding the beach behind them.
Sam felt her stumble over a small piece of driftwood and glanced down. Soft leather flats peeked out beneath a long dress that were more at home on a riverboat cruise than on sandy terrain. No matter how many times they’d been to Tietjen Beach, she just couldn’t take the hint and wear sensible clothes.
He released her arm as they slowly made their way through the overgrown trail to the stairs. Wild grapevines, goldenrod, and assorted weeds crowded the entrance to the limestone steps and made it almost impossible to reach the rough, wooden handrails as they climbed.
They approached the top of the bluff. Sam headed for one of the benches that used to overlook the beach below. Now, trees and small brush huddled against the hill, creating an almost impenetrable view.
He sat down. “Tell me what’s going on,” he asked as gently as he could. Sometimes it was easier to just go with it.
Rylee slumped onto a nearby bench. Almost on cue, tears started rolling down her cheeks. “We can’t break up, Sam,” she whispered. She brushed her long, black hair away from her face. “I need you.”
Sam turned away, staring at the clouds that randomly filtered through the foliage around him. It was definitely going to rain. He could smell it in the air.
“Rylee, it’s over.” Sam ducked his head, staring at the sandy ground. “You broke up with me. We’re done.”
“No!” Rylee stood, fists clenched, as she screamed at him. “You don’t understand. We made a mistake!”
Sam leaned back and wearily looked up at her. “How many times do we need to break up before you finally accept that it’s over, Rylee?” he asked, lightly mocking her. “Two more times? Five?” He searched her face for any bit of understanding. “Breaking up was your idea.” He paused for emphasis. “Both times!”
Rylee screwed her eyes shut and turned her face to the sky. “I was wrong,” she whispered. She opened her eyes and wiped her face with both hands. “Things have changed, Sam.”
“What things?” Sam demanded. “I’m really tired of this, Rylee! Tell me what’s going on!”
She sat down and slumped against the bench, covering her eyes with one hand. “It doesn’t matter, Sam,” she told him. “I’m probably worried about nothing.”
Sam sighed as he stood up. “Fine,” he growled. And, with that, he walked away, trying to ignore the quiet sobs behind him. He had better things to do than to deal with the drama queen.
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Author's Note
April 13, 2024
The novel The Motherhood Mandate is set in a dystopian future in the year 2028. A place where pregnant women who are either unmarried or, in the midst of a divorce, are detained if a fetal heartbeat is detected. Where the State of Wisconsin takes the idea of personal responsibility to such an extreme that pregnant women have been reduced to 'fetal host' status. A place where society is ill-prepared for the consequences imposed by the state legislature and the United States Supreme Court.
So, how did we get here? Our story begins the moment that women in the United States lost their right to self-determination.
On June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that made access to abortion a federal right in the United States. This decision dismantled over fifty years of legal protection, paving the way for individual states to restrict or outright ban a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
Justice Alito delivered the High Court’s opinion1. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’”
Prior to 1973, abortion had been illegal in 30 states and was only legal under specific circumstances in the remainder. Justice Alito pointed out that common law had long recognized abortion as a criminal offense, in at least some stage of pregnancy. Common law as early as the sixteenth century declared that abortion was a crime, at least after ‘quickening’—i.e., the first movement of the fetus felt in the womb.
Other federal rights that relied on the Fourteenth Amendment were also put in jeopardy by the ruling, including interracial and same-sex marriages, as well as religious and gender-related discrimination.
Following the Supreme Court ruling, Wisconsin abortion clinics halted elective abortions2. Many of them relocated over the border in neighboring states, as women who needed abortions traveled across state lines to receive them. Planned Parenthood launched a mobile abortion clinic initiative to cut down travel time, and the costs associated with seeking abortion care.
Governor Evers called a special session of the Wisconsin State Legislature on October 4, 2022. He requested that the legislature create a pathway to repeal Wisconsin’s 1849-era criminal abortion ban. In response, Wisconsin’s Senate convened for 15 seconds, long enough to gavel in and adjourn without taking action.
Milwaukee County circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz’s election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Spring 2023 tipped the Court to a 4-3 liberal majority. However, the election of conservative Dan Knodl3 handed Republicans a supermajority in the state senate. This injected a high degree of uncertainty into state politics, as this would allow Wisconsin’s senate to impeach state officials, including a state supreme court justice. By early 2024, the Comstock Act – enacted by Congress in 1873 to ban the mailing of 'lewd' materials – was raised as a viable dissent in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) v. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) case before the U.S. Supreme Court. 4If successful, this lawsuit will effectively ban the use of misoprostol in the United States.
These events are the foundations that The Motherhood Mandate is built on. From here, we move into the dystopian future that may come to pass. History may diverge as the story unfolds.
In this universe, the state legislature declined to repeal or amend the 1849 Wisconsin Criminal Abortion Statute, which had been in place shortly after Wisconsin had been admitted to the Union as a state. The statute5 reads in part:
Any person, other than the mother, who does either of the following is guilty of a Class E felony:
(a) Intentionally destroys the life of an unborn quick child; or
(b) Causes the death of the mother by an act done with intent to destroy the life of an unborn child. It is unnecessary to prove that the fetus was alive when the act causing the mother’s death was committed.
A series of lawsuits were made against the state and individual legislators, claiming that the statute clearly stated abortion was legal before sixteen to twenty-four weeks of gestation when movement could be felt. Others pointed out that the statute allowed medicinal abortions, as the mother could voluntarily ingest medications that would end her pregnancy. The medications prescribed for this, mifepristone and misoprostol, are generally considered to be safe to use up to the eleventh week of pregnancy.
Due to legislative inaction, the legal question of abortion remained in place until the 2024 election. In response to retaining a veto-proof supermajority in both Assembly and the Senate, Republicans replaced the 1849 abortion bill with one that declared life began at conception and outlawed abortion if the pregnancy was viable. This included pregnancies due to rape or incest. Once a fetal heartbeat was detected, there were very few options available to protect the life of the mother.
In December 2024, a video captured a prominent pro-life state legislator’s daughter as she was transported by ambulance to Illinois to undergo a life-saving abortion following an unexpected complication late in her pregnancy. The video went viral and prodded the legislature to take action. The law was amended to include that ectopic pregnancies and specific instances where the embryo or fetus is determined to not be able to survive to be medically necessary.
It’s important to note that according to this legislation, the health and safety of the mother were secondary considerations. Women were routinely denied cancer treatment until after they had successfully delivered their babies and women died because care was delayed until their life was confirmed to be in danger. In addition, it did not include severe birth defects that would result in the newborn dying after birth.
Section 1 of the state constitution was amended to reinforce the state law that life began at conception: All people are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; to secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.
By early 2025, the legal age of ‘adult’ was standardized to occur at age twenty-one. Legally, anyone under the age of twenty-one was no longer allowed to vote in local or state elections, or allowed alcoholic beverages, to purchase tobacco or CBD products, or even marry without parental consent.
A measure to raise the age of consent for statutory rape from age sixteen to eighteen was introduced. It was a difficult law to pass, but the need to protect children was heavily used in advertising and media talking points.
Wisconsin’s birth rate began to increase, straining the already shaky healthcare system. This especially impacted the poorest residents, who were unable to afford to travel outside of the state for abortions. More fathers found themselves taken to court for child support, but the standard guidelines remained paltry: only 17% of income for one child, 25% for two children, and 29% for three children. As child support did not cover all of the costs of raising a child, the number of fatherless families applying for FoodShare Wisconsin and other state support programs dramatically increased around the state.
Various tax measures were considered—and rejected—in response to the increased pressure on the state budget. Instead, the legislature passed a series of measures in early 2027 which were designed to reaffirm the core principle of ‘personal responsibility’. These included:
Act 292, also known as The Unborn Child Protection Act, which had been originally designed to allow pregnant individuals to be detained if they were suspected of substance abuse, was amended to allow unmarried, pregnant women to be taken into custody to determine if they posed a risk to their embryo, provided that a fetal heartbeat was detected.
Unborn citizens gestated by an unmarried woman, or one who was suing for divorce, automatically became a ward of the state. This was designed to prevent women from traveling outside of the state for an abortion.
Child support guidelines were replaced with one that called for each parent to contribute half of all offspring’s reasonable expenses until age twenty-one. The exception was if either parent was convicted of rape, domestic violence, or was deemed to be a risk to the life and safety of the child. In this case, the convicted parent was responsible for 100% of their offspring’s reasonable expenses.
The Wisconsin Individual Family Education program, which had been a voluntary program designed to facilitate an unmarried couple’s transition to parenthood, was made mandatory under most circumstances. This included couples that were in the process of divorcing and those that were pursuing adoption after their child was born.
The ‘No Means No’ initiative changed all rape charges to state felonies. No misdemeanor charges remained in state statutes. Rape kits were required to be processed within seventy-two hours, or three calendar days, of the reported event and the state’s attorney general was required to provide a quarterly report on the progress the state made in securing rape convictions.
Conservatives felt that these measures were a good start, but didn’t go far enough. A new bill was introduced to codify the idea that every child was entitled to have a father and a mother. Backers knew that they couldn’t force unwed couples to marry, but felt that cohabitation during the child’s first months of life might improve marriage rates.
Under the new law, unmarried couples were required to live together from the third trimester of pregnancy until the child was six months old. Courts could wave this for several reasons, including but not limited to a history of physical or emotional abuse, where rape is suspected but not reported, and in very limited child support and custody cases. In all things, the child’s needs were placed above the needs of the parents.
The state was immediately sued, and the case was fast-tracked to the Supreme Court. In anticipation of the conservative majority prevailing, staffing for family courts around the state greatly increased and the number of guardian ad litem positions tripled.
In May 2028, SCOTUS declined to hear the case and Wisconsin began immediately enforcing the new laws. And this is where The Motherhood Mandate begins.
