Momentum for Change Season 5, Episode 8: Changing Laws, Changing Lives with Representative Cecelie Williams

So the three different policies, of course, number one was to allow a dissolution of marriage while a woman is pregnant.

I know that there are a lot of situations where it may not be smart for a pregnant woman to get divorced, and it still is up to the people who are getting the divorce.

They could still delay, and that's fine.

But the choice needs to be with them, not with the court system.

And so for me, it was important that we don't make a medical situation a reason why someone can't find their independence.

And so that was my number one, was to make sure that we allowed pregnant women to get divorced in the state of Missouri.

The second one was...

I knew back in 24 that the tracking of violent offenders or those who have restraining orders on them, the repeat offenders, that the GPS monitoring of them, that had sunset.

It was only for 10 years.

And my goal was to bring that back and make sure that the sunset was either extended for another 10 years or removed in its entirety.

And I got some pushback in the house on that.

So we left it at 10 years, but when it went to the Senate, they removed the 10 years and then it came back to the house and everyone was fine with it at that point.

So it was, but that was one of them was, Knowing that if you're the person who you had the restraining order against, the ex parte against, that especially in rural areas, it would take about 45 minutes for an officer to arrive at your home after you called in for the violation of the restraining order.

Having the GPS, you know, where the person could get equipped with a GPS tracker, and then you would get notification that your aggressor is... could be violating the perimeter of, if it was a thousand feet or what have you, would provide, number one, if they continue to come forward and continue to violate, it would alert the authorities that this person was violating.

So, if you weren't able to make it to a phone, then there would already be a contact if the advance was still coming on.

And it could be, you know, this could be something super innocent.

Like say if you're at a county fair and you're both there and you don't know that your aggressor is there.

And as an aggressor, you don't know that your victim is there.

But you get the warning and then you start to retreat.

That's different than if you continue to move forward.

But it also held people accountable who initiated the restraining order to not, you know, that if they wanted to violate their own restraining order, then it would still alert that this was happening.

So that was something that was important to me, especially in rural areas.

And the third was the unlawful tracking of a motor vehicle.

And that Currently, in Missouri statutes, there's not anything that doesn't allow someone to track your vehicle for any reason at all.

And nowadays we know how easy it is.