New York Court Forces Woman To Testify About an Abortion

Slut shaming enters a high-profile divorce hearing because our society is awful.

Yesterday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lori Sattler ruled that Lisa Mehos, who is locked in a custody battle with her husband, banker Manuel Mehos, had to testify about having an abortion.

Why would Lisa’s abortion reflect on her fitness to raise her children?

Given that this is happening in New York rather than Mississippi, the argument is not the backward claim that she can’t possibly love her kids if she had an abortion. Rather, the argument is that she demanded custody of the kids over a weekend when she knew she was going to dump them off with a sitter so she could undergo a medical procedure.

Still, injecting the emotionally charged issue of abortion into the matter fits into an overall strategy of demeaning and vilifying a woman’s sexuality under a double standard that brushes past the transgressions of the father…

The Daily News explains the building blocks of an attorney’s despicable strategy:

The explosive topic was first raised last week by Manuel Mehos’ lawyer, Eleanor Alter, who discovered it after subpoenaing his ex-wife’s medical records. She used it in an apparent attempt to paint Lisa Mehos as a hypocrite for having asked to have custody of their two young kids over Easter weekend in 2012.

“[At] the time that she told him that he couldn’t have the children for Easter because he was an atheist, she was having an abortion,” Alter said, a court transcript shows.

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A divorced parent neglecting kids on the weekend he or she has them is a fair issue in a custody hearing. However, the children were left with their grandmother during Lisa’s procedure, and honestly visiting with grandma is not neglect. Which brings us to the real issue here. Eleanor Alter of Kasowitz Benson — who represented Mia Farrow against Woody Allen — is super smart, and knows how to get the best for her client. In this case that involves playing to reptilian impulses (or being “aggressive and innovative,” in Kasowitz-speak).

Alter said she should also be allowed to question Lisa Mehos about the procedure because “this is a woman who complains that she’s under great stress only caused by Mr. Mehos. I would be the first person to acknowledge that having an abortion, especially a two- to three-month late abortion, would be stressful.”

She said she also wanted to know whether the kids “were exposed to this man, how it all came about.”

“If this man was coming in the house, if she’s out of the house to see him, if it was date rape, that’s relevant,” Alter said.

So there’s a couple things to unpack there. First, check out the hysterical woman who’s troubled by all her lady business! See, it’s not the man who might have punched her a few months ago, it’s the ovaries.

Second, the abortion is just the setup for a thorough-going “slut shaming.” Could a divorced woman have a… boyfriend?!? Oh no! Alter adds the possibility of date rape because, I guess it’s supposed to be generous to imply that rather than have a consensual sex life, maybe Lisa was taken advantage of? Maybe?

The judge sided with Alter, noting that Lisa Mehos had previously testified she had never had any men over to her New York apartment. “I do find it to be relevant. The children were in her care at the time,” Sattler said.

Lisa Mehos, 38, then testified that she became pregnant after a one-time fling with a longtime friend at his place.

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If she’d already testified that she never had men over at her house, why the hell would the fact that she got pregnant suggest in any way that her prior testimony was unreliable? Can women only get pregnant at home now? If they’re in another bed, does the body have ways of shutting that whole thing down? “I watched last year’s Super Bowl” does not cast doubt on the testimony “I don’t have a TV in my house.” Unless you add in all kinds of aspersions about female sexuality that permeate society infecting men and women.

At the very end of the article there’s another little tidbit:

Lisa Mehos wasn’t the only one to be embarrassed in court — she testified that her ex-husband, who heads a bank in Texas, had tearfully confessed to her that he had cheated on her dozens of times with prostitutes.

I get that the Daily News is reporting on the controversy surrounding the forced testimony about an abortion rather than the trial as a whole, but it sure seems odd that a hooker habit doesn’t raise the same ferocity of “OH MY GOD HE’S AN UNFIT PARENT” as having one fling with a friend.

Judge’s decision to allow Lisa Mehos’ abortion to be used as evidence in New York custody case causes stir [New York Daily News]