Wait—The Men's Rights Movement is WORKING??

Join Simone and Malcolm Collins as they dive deep into the evolving landscape of men’s rights in America. In this episode, they explore the recent legislative changes that are reshaping divorce laws, custody arrangements, and the broader conversation around gender equality. Discover how states like Kentucky are pioneering 50/50 custody laws, the impact of these reforms on divorce rates, and what this means for families across the country. The discussion also covers the controversial Texas Heartbeat Act, examining how new legal mechanisms are empowering men to seek recourse in abortion-related cases. Simone and Malcolm break down real-world lawsuits, the nuances of legal standing, and the cultural implications of these shifts. Beyond the headlines, the episode highlights additional victories for men’s rights, including employment discrimination cases, changes in alimony and child support guidelines, and the ongoing fight against paternity fraud. The hosts also tackle tough questions about cultural norms, legal fairness, and the future of family law. Whether you’re interested in legal reform, social commentary, or just want to hear a lively debate on some of today’s most pressing issues, this episode offers thought-provoking insights and plenty of engaging moments.

As this was a Simone-outlined episode, rough notes are below for more links/jumping off points. The episode transcript can be found below them. Happy Halloween!

Episode Outline:

Kentucky Divorce Laws

* ARTICLE: Divorce Plunged in Kentucky. Equal Custody for Fathers Is a Big Reason Why. A law setting 50-50 shared custody as the state’s standard was hailed as a victory for fathers, but critics say it puts mothers and children at risk:

* https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/the-equal-custody-experiment-41e1f7a6 // https://archive.is/OjJhT

* “In 2018, Kentucky became the first state to pass a law making equally shared custody the default arrangement in divorces and separations. Four other states—Arkansas, West Virginia, Florida and Missouri—have since passed their own versions of Kentucky’s custody bill. Around 20 more are considering or close to passing similar laws, according to an analysis by the National Parents Organization.”

* “The law has become a model for other states, not least because Kentucky’s divorce rate has plummeted. Between 2016 and 2023 it fell 25%, compared with a nationwide decline of 18%”

* Some suggest “that parents are increasingly likely to stay together because they realize they’ll be in regular touch regardless, so “they might as well work it out.” He added that he’s heard stories of couples who decided not to break up because of the presumption of shared custody, and years later are glad they stayed together.”

* Critics:

* People are not leaving abusive partners in order to protect their children

* However “if one parent is subject to a domestic-violence order, the presumption of 50-50 custody is automatically overturned.”

* Other benefits for fathers:

* Less child support: “Recently, Kentucky’s legislature decided that parents who spend more time caring for their children should pay less in child support.”

How are things going in Arkansas, West Virginia, Florida, and Missouri?

* The legislative change was too recent for us to know whether divorce rates are dropping, too.

* No signs yet marriage is down: There is little direct statistical evidence so far indicating a significant change in marriage rates in Arkansas, West Virginia, Florida, or Missouri immediately following the 50-50 custody law changes.

How this compares to efforts in China

* while U.S. reforms focus on creating a fairer system with less incentive for adversarial breakups, China’s policies focus on slowing or preventing divorce by regulation and delay. Both have reduced divorce rates, but China’s approach also appears to discourage marriage and childbearing—an effect not seen in the U.S. with current shared custody laws.

* New laws in China promote joint custody as a default option, unless a parent is found unfit, paralleling the U.S. shift toward shared parenting, but enforcement of custodial rights remains inconsistent.

* Since 2021, China requires a mandatory 30-day “cooling-off” period for couples seeking an uncontested (mutual consent) divorce. Either party can withdraw during this time, halting the process.

* The cooling-off period did lead to a notable drop in the official divorce rate: China’s crude divorce rate fell from 3.4‰ in 2019 to around 1.8‰ in 2023, but marriage rates declined as well, and the birth rate continued dropping—suggesting more people now avoid marriage entirely, possibly to sidestep the difficulty of divorce.

* U.S. states implementing 50-50 custody as the legal presumption—such as Kentucky, Arkansas, and others—have seen substantial drops in divorce rates relative to national trends, but with no documented drop in marriage rates or sharp fertility declines yet noted.

Men Suing Over Abortions: The Texas Heartbeat Act

* The Texas Heartbeat Act enables “any person,” including estranged partners, to sue those who “aid and abet” abortions post-cardiac activity, with men in several cases leveraging this law to pursue litigation against women’s friends, providers, and, potentially, their families.

* As the WSJ reported: “The law’s unique aspect is its enforcement mechanism: it relies on civil lawsuits brought by private citizens, rather than government action, allowing them to sue anyone who performs or facilitates an illegal abortion.”

* SOURCE: Men suing over their partners’ abortions; can this make men/women more serious about relationships?: https://archive.is/DLZJ9 // https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/the-men-suing-over-their-partners-abortions-b2e7a9ce (mostly in Texas, which allows parents to sue for the wrongful death of an unborn child.)

* Some lawsuits and threats of legal action serve as leverage in divorce or custody disputes, or to exert control over personal relationships.

* Texas law does not allow rapists to sue their victims if they abort, but does permit fathers and other family members to seek civil damages over an abortion of their biological child

Recap of lawsuits

There have been several publicized cases where men have used the Texas Heartbeat Act (SB 8) to file lawsuits against women or their associates for obtaining abortions without their consent:

Marcus Silva v. Ex-Wife’s Friends

* In Galveston, Marcus Silva sued his ex-wife’s friends for “wrongful death” after they allegedly aided her in obtaining abortion pills.

* Silva sought $1 million in damages from each friend, alleging their actions facilitated an abortion after Silva’s ex-wife became pregnant during divorce proceedings.

* The suit was dropped without any damages paid, but it set a precedent for potential litigation by men claiming harm from abortions performed without their knowledge or consent.

* The ex-wife herself was not named in the suit; she provided text evidence suggesting Silva threatened the lawsuit to exert control during their divorce.

Jerry Rodriguez v. California Abortion Doctor

* In 2025, Houston man Jerry Rodriguez sued California physician Dr. Remy Coeytaux for allegedly mailing abortion pills to Rodriguez’s girlfriend, resulting in the termination of two pregnancies Rodriguez claims were his.

* Rodriguez accuses the doctor, not the woman, and seeks damages as the father of the unborn children, aiming to set a national precedent for similar claims by fathers using SB 8 and federal law.

* The case cites both the Texas Heartbeat Act and the old Comstock Act, testing cross-state liability for abortion access.

Collin Davis Inquiry in Brazos County

* In a case highlighted by CNN, Collin Davis sought a court order to depose a woman who traveled to Colorado to terminate a pregnancy after discovering Davis was the father.

* Davis claimed potential wrongful death and demanded records, aiming to explore legal liability for out-of-state abortions under Texas SB 8, though no damages or direct civil suit against the woman herself was reported.

Other instances of men fighting back?

Beyond the 50-50 custody law advancements, there are several clear, concrete outcomes from men’s rights advocacy in the United States covering custody, divorce, and employment law:

Successful Lawsuits on Employment Anti-Discrimination

* Supreme Court Ruling on Equal Standards (2025): The Supreme Court unanimously held that men and majority-group employees cannot be held to a higher standard of proof than other groups in employment discrimination lawsuits. This ruling set a nationwide precedent for fair and equal treatment in Title VII claims brought by male employees.

* Reverse Discrimination Lawsuits: There are multiple seven-figure employment law settlements involving men who won claims of being disadvantaged or terminated during diversity initiatives or due to gender. Example: In 2024, a white male executive won a significant sum for being replaced by less-experienced women under a corporate diversity plan, although punitive damages were limited by the court.

* EEOC Enforcement Actions: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has represented male workers in gender discrimination suits, leading to company settlements and revised internal HR policies ensuring men receive the same protection as women regarding layoffs, promotions, and pay.

Broader Legal and Regulatory Outcomes

* National Center for Men Litigation: This group has supported and occasionally won cases regarding paternity fraud, reproductive rights (such as notification before adoption), and opposition to male-only draft registration, influencing ongoing policy debates at the state and federal levels.

* Changing Alimony and Child Support Guidelines: Some states and court decisions have resulted in more gender-neutral alimony and support awards, reducing the gender gap in post-divorce financial obligations.

Opportunities for Further Reform

Paternity Fraud

* How Common is Paternity Fraud in the USA?

* General Population Estimates: Most current studies and genetic analyses suggest that the rate of paternity fraud (misattributed paternity) in the general U.S. population ranges from 1% to 5%.

* A 2023 scientific survey published in ScienceDirect found that about 5% of 23,196 FamilyTreeDNA users discovered an unexpected biological parent, highlighting how common such surprises have become.

* Court-Ordered DNA Tests: In cases where paternity is legally disputed and DNA testing is ordered by courts, the exclusion rate is much higher, between 12% and 30%—but these figures reflect a more selected group (suspected cases) and not the overall population.

* Older and High Estimates: Some reports—often cited in media or by advocacy groups—suggest “as many as 30% of DNA paternity tests nationwide turn out negative,” but experts warn these numbers are inflated by testing samples heavily biased toward suspected cases, not the wider population.

* Punishments

* In most jurisdictions, paternity fraud is generally treated as a civil matter rather than a crime, but exceptions exist (for example, Nevada classifies it as a gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to 364 days in jail and a $2,000 fine).

* Knowingly misrepresenting a child’s paternity may, in some states, constitute fraud and be subject to criminal penalties such as fines or imprisonment.

* Criminal convictions are still extremely rare, given the burden of proving deliberate intent to defraud

* How men get screwed over

* In many cases, the defrauded father must contest paternity within a certain legal time frame; after this window closes, it may be impossible to pursue reimbursement or terminate support.

* Courts often weigh the child’s best interests, sometimes maintaining support and visitation even after fraud is uncovered, if a strong parent–child relationship exists.

Episode Transcript:

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m so excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to talk about men striking back

Speaker 4: that didn’t

Simone Collins: come across, so they striking back. Yeah. Well, they’re, they’re fighting for their rights and, and they’re finally making progress. All right. Men have been basically. Wait, men’s rights is actually making progress.

Now. Can you know that like that’s the crazy thing is that for the past 15 years, the concept of men’s rights has basically been like. Men being angry about the fact that they don’t have any rights. I guess it, this might have been how it was for like women’s rights for the longest time of like, well, ain’t that cute?

You guys are so disgruntled about your lack of rights. It’s never gonna change, sweetie.

Malcolm Collins: No. And I love what they would always then say, they’d be like, well, that’s actually a. Feminism issue. Don’t you understand it? I’m like, well, then how come the feminists never fight for it? And they’re like, oh, once you’re in cages, then we’ll fight to l loosen the, the, the what do they call that?

The zip ties? [00:01:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. I just, basically, I, I, I was operating under the assumption that nothing would ever change, but things are actually starting to change.

And this is big. It’s huge. And so what we’re gonna do is look at two major areas where finally the dam is beginning to break. And I think momentum is only gonna build from here. We’re gonna start with, divorce laws in various United States states where by the, the new default is the new default.

Shocking men get 50% of mater of, of, of custody in divorces. Which is.

Malcolm Collins: So are you gonna talk about like what states this is happening if if’s actually happening and not just like in the law?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. And it, it’s, it’s also just crazy to me that, that like isn’t always the default, like the assumption that like, well of course each parent shares custody by default.

Right. Unless there’s a good reason not to. But no, that wasn’t the case and it’s being resolved. It’s started with Kentucky and now it’s, it’s happened in more states. We’re gonna look at sort of what’s going on there. And then we’re also going to look at the Texas [00:02:00] Heartbeat Act which is this really interesting form of what you could call vigilante based.

Law Justice which has both made it harder for groups to use like a Supreme Court case to take out because it’s based on individual action. You, I’ll explain more What Explain the law.

Malcolm Collins: Your,

Simone Collins: it allows, it allows men or allows anyone to, to sue. In relation to the, we’ll say wrongful termination of a a, a baby’s an unborn baby’s life after they have a heartbeat.

Like if they didn’t consent to it and if they felt that they were damaged by it. So, okay,

Malcolm Collins: so who, what men can do this? What men in relation to this, the,

Simone Collins: the men who. We’re the fathers of the baby,

Malcolm Collins: so the fathers of the baby. But I thought also like parents can, can sue sometimes too. No,

Simone Collins: but parents can be liable.

Friends can be liable, doctors can be liable. So all sorts of people can get sued. Oh,

Simone Collins (2): mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And then we’re also gonna go through some additional [00:03:00] little wins in like other little signs of hope. That not just in these areas, but in other men’s rights adjacent areas. We’re seeing successful pushback and momentum building.

And then at the end, I’m gonna highlight an area of for improvement that I find to be. Important that many people in the comments of our videos have said, Hey, like, please highlight this issue of the men’s rights sphere which we’ll see if you can guess. So let’s get into it, starting with the Kentucky Divorce Laws.

And, and just so you know, there’s a really good. Wall Street Journal article talking about this titled Divorce Plunged in Kentucky. Equal Custody for Fathers is a big reason why a law setting 50 50 shared custody as the state’s standard was, has was hailed as a victory for fathers, but critics say it puts mothers and children at risk.

So basically what happened in Kentucky, and this is important because it happened in 2018, so we have enough time to see what has happened since this legislation was passed. But Kentucky in 2018 became the first state to pass a law making equally shared custody, [00:04:00] the default arrangement in divorces and separations.

And since that happened, four other states, so this is Arkansas, West Virginia, Florida, and Missouri have passed their own versions of this, this custody bill in around 20 more states. Keep in mind there are only 50 US states Yeah. Are considering or close to passing similar laws according to analysis by national parents organization That is.

Big, I mean, if this quickly, we’re already getting to, right.

Malcolm Collins: So how quickly did the first one go to passing to 20 states? Being, considering it now?

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, it’s 2025 now, and that was 2018, so like six years. Seven Yearsish. That’s, yeah. Like this is pretty, it’s, it’s fast. I mean, from a, from a legislative standpoint, it’s kind of like.

Malcolm Collins: Are we seeing a changing in outcomes though? Like do you see any We are.

Simone Collins: Oh, we’re, and I’m also gonna compare sort of this, this change in outcomes to China. ‘cause we did do an episode on like China trying to reduce divorce rates and increase fertility rates through [00:05:00] regulatory shifts akin to this. And I think you’ll also find that quite interesting.

But let’s just start with what happened. In, in Kentucky. And what’s interesting is since ‘cause now in Kentucky we have enough data the divorce rate plummeted. Between 2016 and 2023, it felt 25%. Whoa. So it’s not just outcomes are

Malcolm Collins: changing divorce rates. When you make women responsible, they stop getting divorces.

Yes. 20% reduction. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Just because 50 50 custody law. So it’s 25% Now that this is tempered by the fact that there has actually been a nationwide decline in divorce of 18%. Mm. So, you know, we’re talking about a marginal 7%, but that’s, that’s huge. Meaningful. That’s huge. And this is, this is above and beyond men just getting equal custody, which is huge for them.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it shows how many women just viewed [00:06:00] divorce as a, I don’t have to do anything and I get, you know, a check for the next 18 years. Right. Yeah. Because one of the things about equal custody is I’m pretty sure it’s like way harder to get a good

Simone Collins: alimony. Yes. So, yeah. That it, it, that kind of happened actually a little bit after this legislation was passed.

‘cause again, men have no rights. Ha ha. It’s, nothing’s gonna ever could change. But, but fortunately recently, Kentucky’s legislature did decide that parents who spend more time caring for their children should also pay less in child support. So, to be fair, in these divorces, men still often are saddled with child support.

Yeah. However, at at least now the state’s like, oh. Wait a second, you have 50% custody. What’s going on here? Yeah, and I’ve actually seen this show up organically. In like financial audit interview, YouTube channel shows where mothers who are used to getting child support are complaining about this.

Malcolm Collins: So, yeah.

So they’re [00:07:00]

Simone Collins: freaking

Malcolm Collins: out. Mm-hmm. They’re like, what? Mm-hmm. I, well, what am I supposed to do? Get a job?

Simone Collins: They’re like, and now my child support’s gone down because my husband. You know, has 50% cus so this is 100% showing up like in the wild naturally. I, I think that that’s really,

Malcolm Collins: that for tism, this is something we should push much more.

I think forced equal custody and forced no child support when there is equal custody because there shouldn’t be child support and equal custody cases.

Simone Collins: I mean I, I get, I get child support in the event that a woman like completely. Career doesn’t drop.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I agree. Like she, she went into the marriage to be a homemaker and never had a job.

Yeah. I, I get that even in equal custody. Yeah. But I, I think that the, the sort of the worst you make divorce, the less divorce we’re gonna have. Right. And,

Simone Collins: Kind of, but we’ll see a comparison there. Actually, I’m just gonna jump to it because we should, we should compare how this. How this is, is, is related to China.

So while this reform, obviously is, is focused on first and [00:08:00] foremost creating a fairer system like this legislation wasn’t passed with the knowledge that it was going to reduce divorce rates. It was just. It was, it was, it was creating an A system that incentivized less adversarial breakups. Mm-hmm. So there’s like less money spent on lawyers, less fighting, less people just divorcing to try to get a bunch of stuff out of their partner.

And in contrast, China’s policies, which we did go over in an episode a while ago. Yeah. Focus more on slowing or preventing divorce by regulation and delay?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, no. I remember I

Simone Collins: thought it had a positive effect. It had a negative effect. So both have reduced divorce rates, but China’s approach also appears to have discouraged both marriage and childbearing.

Which is an effect that is not seen.

Malcolm Collins: Why is it, I don’t understand how this could affect marriage and childbearing. The, the Chinese policy?

Simone Collins: Well, so the Chinese policy is different since 2021. Chi China requires a mandatory 30 day cooling off period for couples seeking an uncontested. That is to say mutual consent, divorce.

Yeah. And either party can withdraw during [00:09:00] this time, which halts the process. And the cooling off period did lead to a drop in divorce. But honestly, it’s lower. So their divorce rate fell from 3.4% in 2019 to around 1.8% in 2023. I think that’s lower. I think our

Malcolm Collins: legal change is much better.

Simone Collins: So, but then at the same time, marriage rates declined as well, and the birth rate continue dropping, which suggests that more people now are just avoiding marriage entirely, possibly to sidestep the difficulty of.

Divorce and there has been no measured decline in marriage or birth rate. So I’m gonna push back on this,

Malcolm Collins: the pause here. Uhhuh, I suggest people watch our video on, nobody wants to marry Chinese women anymore. There has been a Chinese cultural change around women where there, I mean, there’s that too in like woke women in the United States.

Yeah. And they’re just, nobody wants to marry them anymore. And so I don’t think, I, I think that that’s what we’re seeing is an increasing degradation of what [00:10:00] it means to be like a male in dating in China, and that’s leading to the lower marriage rate. In, in terms of the divorce rate changes.

I mean, contrast the implications on the decision. And China is just giving you time to cool off if you have like a hot head. But in the United States, there’s many women who get divorced and just feel like it’s nothing but positives for them. They get to oh 100%. They get to the guys who are dating to help support them.

They get to I have their old partner have paid them a ton of money every month or something like that. Yeah. And they get full control over the kids. So, you know, they don’t even have to worry about like, any sort of compromises they were making in terms of child rearing, you know, they want to transition them.

Just go ahead. Which, which happens a lot in these cases. Well, yeah. And there has

Simone Collins: been, I, I forget exactly where this happened, but wasn’t there legislation in some states that. Would actually put your odds of getting any custody at risk if you were documented as fighting a child’s transition?

Malcolm Collins: Well, that was a true, everywhere there was a common divorce tactic [00:11:00] is the mom would try to convince the kid that they were trans, or at least question the thing.

And if the dad was not a hundred percent on board, it was very easy to get custody taken away from him. Mm-hmm. And I would argue. That a huge chunk of child transitions come from that specific scenario because it is so common in court cases. Mm. Which of course, think about it from the perspective of like a sociopathic mom, right?

Like, well, if I can convince him they’re trans and the dad, or even just to question things and the dad is like, no, she’s just doing this as a tactic in court or something. You know, which is what a, a sane dad would do. It’s easy to win that particular case. Exactly. But I think that like women just had it so easy and now they’re like, oh, this is hard.

Now why didn’t this leading to a reduction in divorces in the United States? Because I think that this is a mindset that women often adapt long after they get married. I think very few women in the United States go into a marriage with the intention of eventually getting a divorce. I think that they are expecting.

Even if the guy’s like Rich or something, they, they [00:12:00] expect him to die. They don’t like him that much. They, I think very few are like, okay, I’m just gonna go in. I’m gonna wait till I can get a divorce and then I get the sweet alimony payment or anything like that. They think things are gonna work out, so they do not consider the implication of the changed laws, the changed laws just make it easier for their group of divorced friends to tell them how great it is to be divorced.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s not, at least the people interviewed in the Wall Street Journal article covering this. Don’t cite that exactly. They, in terms of like these, these are lawyers and stuff who are talking with their clients about it, many of them are choosing to not get divorced because they’re like, well, if I have to share custody 50 50 anyway, I’m basically seeing my partner all the time and I might as well just work it out.

So it’s even a little bit scaled back from that, like if we’re talking about the acts of reasonable people, which is sometimes the case in divorce, right? They, they’re just like, ugh. Like if I can’t just walk away entirely, very conveniently, I might as well. [00:13:00] Work this out. And I think that’s, that’s meaningful and interesting and I, I think a lot better for kids to have a father.

But the, of course, the critics are, are concerned that people aren’t leaving abusive partners in order to protect their children. Like, oh, my husband hit me. I can’t let him have half custody because he’ll hit my kid. And there were cases in which, mothers were subject to domestic abuse, but because the children were not abused, the, the children still got, like, were with 50 50 custody.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think that’s fine.

Simone Collins: And, and, and the law. I just wanna point out that, that, that if one parent is subject to a domestic violence order, so this is even from a mother, the presumption of 50 50 custody is, is automatically overturned. So it really depends on the case. And I think that the, these cases in which women are like, but I was abused and now I have to share custody.

Are not actually representative of what the law actually says. And I think it’s really similar to [00:14:00] how things like the don’t say, don’t say gay legislation was framed where it was framed as, oh, you literally can’t mention the concept of same sex attraction when it really was something very different.

Malcolm Collins: So we have an episode on this.

It’s quite old at this point. I only remember it had like a, an outline of a body on like the floor or something. And it was something, ‘cause I didn’t wanna put it in the title, like, stop. You’re not allowed to talk about or the, the woman question or something. And in this one we go into domestic violence and Oh, yeah.

I, I would say it is, it is really not a good sign for the woman if there is domestic violence in the house and the woman is the only one who’s subject to it. And the kids are not like, that shows that it’s not that the guy has a bad temper or something like that. Because in the episode I pointed out, there’s been instances that I know of.

Where domestic violence happened.

Sorry, and I’ll, I’ll put this here so I can replace what I said earlier so no one clips me outta context. But what I’d say is sometimes domestic abuse is not as cut and dry as we make it out to be.

[00:15:00] Societally speaking.

Simone Collins (2): Hmm. Okay. And

Malcolm Collins: what, what I paired this with in that episode was the statistics around domestic abuse between female, female couples male, male couples and male female couples. And if you look at male female couples versus female, female couples, it’s way higher in female female couples

.

I decided to go look at the actual statistics just to make sure I was getting this right and yes, what I remembered is accurate. , If you’re looking at overall violence in relationships, , for, Women, it’s 35%, , are subject to it in heterosexual relationships. And for men it’s 29%. , What you’ll see is male, male, gay relationships have lower than either of those rates at 26%.

And female, female have much higher than either of those rates at 43.8%. Uh, what’s really interesting is that bisexuals in mixed relationships. Have some of the highest rates of abuse, , with 61.1% in women and [00:16:00] 37.3% in men. , Now if you look at physical violence here, you see, , for, . Females in a relationship, it’s 29.8%.

For males in a relationship, it’s 26.3%. , Male. Male. It’s lower than either of those 24% female. Female. It’s way higher than either of those at 36.3%. And then again, for bisexual relationships, it’s much higher than either of those at 55.1% for women and 27% for men. So, , it seems that the more women you have in a relationship, the more, , abuse is going to be had within that relationship.

The other takeaway I’d have for this chart, which may be worthy of another episode later to dig more into this, is that bisexual people are extremely abusive, , with, , both bisexual men and women, but particularly bisexual men being, , so, so like actually comically abusive. Over half of them, well over half of them, 61% are abusing their partner, , with physical violence, [00:17:00] 55.1%.

, And then for severe physical violence, 49.3% of women who are married to a bisexual man have been subject to severe physical violence. That’s wild.

Malcolm Collins: And the, the male, male couples are sort of all over the place. I’ve seen ones where it’s lower than heterosexual relationships and I’ve seen one where it’s higher than heterosexual relationships, so I can’t easily judge on that. Mm-hmm. But it does look like broadly or sort of average male. Male is lower domestic violence.

Female. Male is medium domestic violence female. Female is very high domestic violence. Yeah. Which seems to say that the key inciting factor is the female.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Not, not a great look. But in general, laws just haven’t really kept up with a lot of these things, and it’s, this is just huge. I just, I had no idea that it had already spread to more states.

So this is, this is really notable and hopefully will lead to much better outcomes for kids. And [00:18:00] lower, lower burdens on, on men who are being unfairly treated in this case. Mm-hmm. But let’s switch to men suing over abortions and the Texas Heartbeat Act. ‘cause this is also fascinating. So in short, the Texas Heartbeat app enables any person, including estranged partners, like you know, completely no contact ex-boyfriend to sue those who quote unquote aid and abet.

Abortions post cardiac activity. So once you have a heartbeat with the baby and men in several cases have leveraged this law to pursue litigation against women’s friends, providers that is disabled American, how they

Malcolm Collins: target their friends. This is fascinating. So like, yeah, I’m gonna go.

Simone Collins: I’m gonna go into some lawsuits to give you some examples, but basically the, as the Wall Street Journal reported on this quote, the law’s unique aspect is its enforcement mechanism.

It relies on civil lawsuits brought by private citizens rather than government action, allowing them to sue anyone who performs or facilitates illegal abortion. End quote. What I like about [00:19:00] this, what I think is really elegant about this, is I see this as a really cool tool of cultural sovereignty. Where it’s not like this state is going to sue and persecute you for getting an abortion.

It’s more like, okay, well within our culture, this is not cool and I’m gonna go after you for it and I’m allowed to,

Malcolm Collins: so explain how this works because it’s not the state. Okay. So it’s not like the state says abortion is illegal. It’s like, it, it’s, it is illegal from the perspective of the individuals involved in the case, specifically the father being wronged.

And so the father is the only one who’s allowed to sue in these cases.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like there have been cases, for example, where, let’s see if I have this listed here. ‘cause I read about, this was really interesting.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Sorry. Hold on.

Okay. I didn’t put it in my notes, but there was a case basically of, of a doctor who, in a newspaper, in a newspaper editorial, admitted to performing basically like an illegal abortion or whatever, [00:20:00] like without a father’s consent on a woman in defiance of this act as like a legal act of protest.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. So, so now in Texas you need the father’s consent to get an abortion.

Oh,

Simone Collins: hold on. Let me just pull up the actual thing.

Malcolm Collins: Editorial.

Speaker 4: Hold on, hold on, hold on. Just gimme a moment because I, I wanna, I wanna get the facts straight on this.

Simone Collins: An interesting example is the Dr. Allen Braid lawsuit. Dr. Allen Braid, a Texas physician publicly admitted to performing an abortion in violation of SB eight. That’s the Texas Heartbeat Act in a Washington Post op-ed as an act of civil disobedience, anti-abortion activists try to sue braid under SB eight, but a Texas judge ruled in December, 2022.

That the plaintiff lacked legal standing to sue because he suffered no personal injury from the abortion. So again, this is an example of a law that only can be essentially enforced or like where someone can only be held li liable if they are violating basically a couple’s cultural sovereignty [00:21:00] or one member of the couple’s cultural sovereignty.

Malcolm Collins: The AI. Whether or not people other than the father IE the father’s parents are allowed to sue under this law, or the girl’s parents are allowed to sue under this law. Ooh. Okay. Yes. And then also ask, does the, does this mean that doctors in Texas have to ask the consent of the father?

Speaker 4: Hmm. Okay. So

Malcolm Collins: ask those two questions and let me know the answer.

Simone Collins: Per the Texas Heartbeat Act, can anyone, aside from the aggrieved, father of the aborted child, sue people who aided the abortion?

Under the Texas Heartbeat Act, practically any private citizen, not just the agreed father, may bring a civil lawsuit against anyone who performs. Or AIDS and abets, an abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected. The law is intentionally brought and does not require the plaintiff to have any direct connection to the woman, the pregnancy, or the family involved.

The only statutory exclusions are that the state or local officers cannot sue and that the suits cannot be brought against the woman who obtained the abortion herself. Oh, interesting. [00:22:00]

Malcolm Collins: However, so the judge was sort of acting out outside of the bounds of the case by, by saying that’s, and that the parents could sue, even the girls’ parents could sue.

Yeah, that’s really interesting. Although, no,

Simone Collins: no, no. It says however, while the law deputizes private citizens to sue courts have ruled. Okay. So yeah, this is, this is like sort of a precedent based pushback. Courts have ruled that some plaintiffs may lack constitutional standing. Oh. So they’re using the constitution.

As a pushback on this constitutional standing. If they cannot allege a concrete and personal injury, judges have discretion to dismiss cases where the plaintiff is not personally harmed. Though the statute still allows nearly any third party to file suit, the constitutional issue of judicial standing remains hotly debated.

In summary, anyone regardless of involvement, can file a suit under SB eight except for government actors and the woman herself. Oh, okay. That that means that the woman who got the abortion can’t sue like her provider. Oh, it’s not that the woman is, is has immunity. They’re not all [00:23:00] claims will necessarily succeed if the court’s standing requirements are not met.

So yeah, I mean that makes sense. The Constitution is one of those things we’re like. Y you don’t mess with it. Right? So, but I still think that this is super, super cool as a form of legislation because you know how we are, we’re like, don’t use laws to impose your culture on everyone. Allow people to like basically enforce their own culture.

But this still gives people of specific cultures a legal mechanism for recourse. Because sometimes you, you need that. You know, like if other, other, if you don’t have that, you’re gonna have like honor killings and stuff, right? Yes. Right. And this enables us to maintain civil, civil stability while also not imposing the same laws on everyone.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and I I will note that I totally understand from a guy’s perspective, it feels very unfair that the woman gets to unilaterally decide whether or not the baby is kept when and women are always like, but it’s in her body. She’s the one that suffers. And it’s like [00:24:00] bra. A man suffers much more over the course of his life with child support than a woman suffers over pregnancy.

The, well, that’s assuming

Simone Collins: that the woman like gives the. Baby up for adoption. If that’s the baby she doesn’t want, my stance on it is if, if a woman wants a, an abortion and a man doesn’t, then the man has to accept full custody and pay the going rate for surrogacy. That, that, that seems to, I don’t entirely fair, I don’t great with

Malcolm Collins: surrogacy because they had consensual sex.

So if a woman wants to, the, the woman

Simone Collins: may very well have been on birth control. There are so many cases of women who go on birth control.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But then I think that that’s still the, the, the, it it, it’s not surrogacy, you could say the full cost of the birth at the hospital. That seems fair.

Simone Collins: No, no. I think full cost of surrogacy is fair.

How, how is that fair? If it’s al sex, it’s really expensive. If it was consensual sex. But the woman was on birth control. She clearly didn’t consent to get pregnant and it’s, it should be on men equally. They both consented to have [00:25:00] sex though. Yeah, but, but the woman didn’t consent to get pregnant.

Malcolm Collins: This is the potential consequence of sex, regardless of whether or not you’re on birth control.

This is, this is what can happen from sex. Accepting an UN risk, you are consenting to get pregnant when you have sex.

And I note here that even if you do take Simone’s original, I, I think I convinced her here perspective on this. , The man then if sex consent to sex isn’t consent to children, the man then is not consenting to children and should be able to demand an abortion, , of the woman if she got pregnant when he was on birth control, which I just think is absurd.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean, I guess

Simone Collins: the chilling effect of this, which I mean many women pointed out when Dobbs. Happened. Yes. And it was like the united, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Then

Simone Collins: I’ll be, it was like, then I just am not gonna have sex.

Which you’re like, and yeah. That’s a good answer. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That not being such alu. No, but I want you to go to the second question I wanted you to ask ai in relation to this, which is, do doctors generally in Texas now proactively get the husband’s [00:26:00] consent or the, the male partners consent? Oh. Because it said that he like intentionally did this, so I’ll let you ask it.

Simone Collins: Following the Texas Heartbeat Act. Do abortion providers in Texas now by default. Ask for paternal consent before proceeding with abortions.

No abortion providers do not ask for paternal consent before proceeding with abortions, even following the Texas Heartbeat Act and subsequent state restrictions Under current Texas law, abortion is nearly prohibited except in cases of medical emergency, but consent requirements pertain only to the pregnant patient and in the case of minors.

Parental consent. So the answer is basically no. But let’s go through some interesting lawsuits because this shows who can be sued and it’s not always a woman. So we have some notable cases, Marcus Silva versus ex-wife’s friends. In in Galveston. Marcus Silver sued his ex-wife, Silva sued as ex-wife’s friends for wrongful death after they allegedly aided her in [00:27:00] obtaining abortion pills.

Silva sought 1 million in damages from each friend, alleging their actions facilitated an abortion after Silva’s ex-wife became pregnant during divorce proceedings. And what was she doing? Sleeping with him during divorce proceedings, but, okay, wait,

Malcolm Collins: explain this to me. So she, the, the woman who was getting divorced was her husband got pregnant during the divorce.

Mm-hmm. And then she had an abortion after that. Mm-hmm. And she was sued for that?

Simone Collins: No, she wasn’t sued. Her friends were sued. He, he sought 1 million into damages from each friend. How much did, did he get, did he win? No. So the suit was, was actually dropped without any, any damages. Paid, but it did set a precedent for potential litigation by men claiming harm from abortions performed without their knowledge or consent.

Hmm. And, and while the ex-wife herself was not named in the suit, she did provide text evidence suggesting that Silva threatened the lawsuit to exert control during the, the divorce, but also like they were up to some, [00:28:00] both of them shenanigans. I mean, who’s, you don’t, you don’t sleep with the enemy when you’re getting divorced.

Don’t do it. If you’re getting, if you’re sleeping together. Work it out. You know, like you, you don’t get to, and typically yes, you can have your cake and eat it too, but like, this is one of those cases where I’m like, dude. This is on you. So we also have Jerry Rodriguez versus California Abortion Doctor in 2025.

A Houston man named Jerry Rodriguez sued a California physician named Dr. Remi Coto, allegedly for, oh, well four allegedly mailing abortion pills to Rodriguez friend. So keep in mind like, because abortions are basically not an option in Texas right now. Mm-hmm. This is a California doctor mailing. Oh, so they were able to

Malcolm Collins: stew a California doctor?

Mm-hmm. Did they do it successfully?

Simone Collins: So by the way, this, this resulted in the termination of two pregnancies. That Rodriguez claims are his. So this, this, this happened a lot. [00:29:00] So just, just for context Rodriguez accused the doctor, not the woman, and seeks damages as the father of the unborn children aiming to set a national precedent for similar claims by fathers using SB eight and federal law.

The case cites both Texas Heartbeat Act and the Comstock Act testing cross states. I, I think it’s still going on. Liability for abortion access. I’ll ask if it’s ongoing.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5: Was resolved. Settled? Is it ongoing?

God, I want my finger back. Okay.

Simone Collins: My gosh. There’s a lot of news coverage on it. It is ongoing as of September, 2025, which is when we’re recording this.

I know we filmed this episode a while ago, so, , that date might have surprised you. , But I went over to see as of this morning, if any information had come out on the case yet. And no, I.

Simone Collins: So we don’t know. We don’t know yet what’s gonna happen. Again, this stuff is new. This is a new wave, and that’s why this is so exciting. And then we have Colin Davis inquiry in Brazos County.

In a case highlighted by [00:30:00] CNN, Colin Davis sought a court order to depose a woman who traveled to Colorado to terminate a pregnancy After discovering Davis was the father. Burn. Davis claimed potential wrongful death and demanded records aiming to explore legal liability for out-of-state abortions under Texas SB eight, though no damages or direct civil suit against the woman herself was reported.

So this is also showing a rise in people, basically trying to go after women who are crossing state lines via mail or physically to get abortions of children that are theirs. Yeah. But again, anyone can sue over this as long as a court thinks that they’re being, well, I think my

Malcolm Collins: wider thing on abortion, if people are like, what are your thoughts on when it should be?

Like, should states have the right to make this illegal? Mm-hmm. I absolutely do think states should have the right to do this. But I think at a federal level, that’s quite something different to me. I’d think at a federal abortion ban, I would be pretty opposed to I mean, well, I, I

Simone Collins: wanna highlight, because this came up in the comments of our video that ran today [00:31:00] on Harems and polygamy.

Banning abortions is not gonna increase the birth rate. All right.

Malcolm Collins: Did people say that that would increase the birth rate? Yes. Study. People still

Simone Collins: believe this. I don’t know why people are, if you look at

Malcolm Collins: a map of Europe and you look at a map of the fertility rate of each individual country, the more restrictive abortions are within a country, the lower fertility rate it is, it’s almost one for one.

Simone Collins: Yeah, guys. Yeah, we, we may not be the hugest fans of abortion, especially after. Basically a a a a, an infant can feel pain, you know, like it’s clear that they have a working brain and nerves. No IMM doesn’t because we think that’s gonna solve the fertility crisis, gee whiz people.

Malcolm Collins: But what I would say is that I think that states banning abortion is completely practical.

It’s a cultural thing because that’s just enforcing their own cultural system. Mm-hmm. And there’s varying cultural systems and beliefs around when life begins. And it