Zug

As currently written, the hurdles the bill creates could serve as a disincentive to marriage — or, at least, traditional marriage — agued Marcia Zug, a University of South Carolina School of Law professor whose research focuses on immigration law, reproductive rights, federal Indian law and marital law.

"If you want to be cynical — there a lot of policies attacking women — the way it struck me, almost, was a kind of return to coverture," Zug said in a phone interview, referencing the colonial legal practice that held women had no legal identity of their own.

Marcia Zug, a professor of marital law at the University of South Carolina School of Law, told Salon that she expects more of this kind of legislation to arise in the years to come because of their spread.

"It's not being looked at as a crazy thing," Zug said of some ultraconservative state lawmakers' approach to the legislation.

Zug said the bill's "extreme cruelty" grounds is what most alarmed her because of its vagueness and implication that non-extreme cruelty would be insufficient grounds for divorce.