Opinion | Gun and abortion laws have made Texas a woman’s nightmare

As if that weren’t enough, gun owners in Texas, including domestic abusers, have simultaneously become more empowered because of the state’s “permitless carry” laws — and because of a federal appeals court ruling striking down a law that prohibited people under domestic violence restraining orders from having guns. Advocates have hypothesized that pregnant women in Texas and their unborn children would be more likely to die at the hands of the men in their lives.

These fears became a fatal reality last week for 26-year-old Gabriella Gonzalez, who was allegedly killed by her boyfriend, 22-year-old Harold Thompson, after returning to Dallas from Colorado, where she had obtained an abortion.

According to law enforcement, surveillance video from a parking lot shows Thompson trying to choke Gonzalez. Shortly afterward, officers have said, Thompson is seen pulling a gun and shooting Gonzalez in the head, then shooting her several more times after she hit the ground. Gonzalez died at the scene. Thompson was arrested and charged with murder. He is being held in the Dallas County jail without bond.

This is a tragedy that anyone who knows anything about domestic violence might have seen coming. Gonzalez’s family said they had previously reported Thompson’s controlling and violent behavior to the police. A May affidavit, in which Gonzalez is described as “the victim,” states that he had beaten his victim, given her a black eye and threatened to harm her and her family.

In an interview with Dallas’s NBC station, Gonzalez’s mother said that the family had filed a report about Thompson’s abuse with local police in March and made multiple attempts to reach authorities, but that the police never contacted them. Gonzalez’s sister, who witnessed the killing, said Thompson was “angry” that Gonzalez had “wanted to get away from him,” and that Gonzalez had “wanted to leave, but she couldn’t.”

According to research published in 2021 by the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, “homicide during pregnancy or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy exceeded all the leading causes of maternal mortality by more than twofold.” In a 2014 study published by BioMed Central, physical violence decreased when women had access to abortions and increased when women were denied them. There is not much definitive research into why men kill pregnant female partners, but common threads are that men feel jealous or less important to their partners, or fear loss of control in the relationship.

A review of data by the Texas Council on Family Violence found that in 2021, Texas had “the third highest number of intimate partner homicides in the last decade,” with 204 people killed; 169 of those victims, or more than 80 percent, were women, and 75 percent of those women were killed with a gun.

Proponents of relaxed gun laws like to argue that people, especially women, should carry firearms to protect themselves from violence. As an enthusiastic gun seller told me in Fort Worth last year, “You can’t rape a .38.”

Perhaps more women are buying this argument — gun sales to women have risen in recent years. But those who argue that guns are an effective self-defense mechanism rarely seem to imagine husbands and boyfriends as threats. Or men who rape their wives and girlfriends.

Are pro-gun advocates, especially men, going to tell pregnant and postpartum women that they have a God-given right to kill the men in their lives who abuse them? Never going to happen.

Men are allowed, even encouraged, to train to take others’ lives in the name of self-defense. But we punish women disproportionately for defending themselves against men. Women charged with killing their abusive male partners are subject to significantly longer prison sentences than men.

Until recently, women in Texas, in certain circumstances, had some hope of protecting themselves by terminating unwanted pregnancies. Now, that option is unavailable. The Gonzalez case is one example of how, under the new laws, women in the state have become more defenseless and endangered — in essence, more at risk of being killed.

In a dream world, if Texas and other so-called pro-life states wanted to reduce abortions, they would stop producing men willing to beat, rape and kill their female partners. But of course, that’s a fantasy. Given the reality, Texas could at least stop granting such men easy access to guns. It could offer pregnant women more resources to leave abusive situations. It could have police departments that take domestic violence cases seriously and that do not leave frightened families to fend for themselves.

Perhaps, if she’d had the ability to terminate her pregnancy secretly in Texas, or if police had responded sooner, Gabriella Gonzalez would be alive today.

But as I said, that’s a dream world. For pregnant and abused women, Texas will only continue to be a nightmare.