Missouri lawmaker Rick Brattin has proposed a billthat requires any woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy get written, notarized consent from the man who impregnated her. If the man doesn't want her to have an abortion and refuses to provide such consent, she cannot terminate.

"No abortion shall be performed or induced unless and until the father of the unborn child provides written, notarized consent to the abortion," the bill says.

If the woman is raped, she doesn't need her rapist's consent, but she needs to report the rape and, perhaps, get a conviction.

"Just like any rape, you have to report it, and you have to prove it," Brattin told Mother Jones. "So you couldn't just go and say, 'Oh yeah, I was raped,' and get an abortion. It has to be a legitimate rape."

According to the sexual violence support organization RAINN, less than half of all rapes are reported to police, and just 3 percent result in a conviction. An investigation, indictment, and trial can take several months, and may extend beyond the point where legal abortion is an option. As pregnancies progress, abortion also becomes increasingly complicated and more expensive; most women who terminate pregnancies try to do so as early as possible.

There is only one abortion clinic in Missouri, and women in that state also face 72-hour waiting periods, the longest in the country. This bill is just the latest effort from Missouri legislators to give men more power over women's reproductive decisions — last year, another Missouri lawmaker proposed a "consent-type bill" wherein a woman seeking an abortion was required to take home a printout of her ultrasound, which he said was a backdoor to spousal consent.

It's unlikely that the Missouri notarized consent bill would stand even if it passed. The Supreme Court struck down Pennsylvania's spousal consent law in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, saying requiring a husband's consent for abortion placed an "undue burden" on pregnant women. The specter of a woman in an abusive relationship having to ask permission from her husband was one reason, the Court said, that the law placed too much of a hardship on women's constitutional right to abortion. A recent study found that when women in abusive relationships aren't able to terminate pregnancies, they are more likely to stay in those relationships.

The proposed Missouri law is even broader than the one the Supreme Court struck down in Casey, requiring the consent not just of a woman's husband, but of anyone who impregnated her. Brattin, for his part, told Mother Jones that when it comes to abuse, he "hadn't really thought about that aspect of it." But, he asked, "What does that have to do with the child's life? Just because it was an abusive relationship, does that mean the child should die?" Women, he said, could get protective custody after the birth of the child.

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Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com.

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