LW, you seriously need to detach. You've managed to embroil yourself in the politics and drama of your in-laws, and it's crazy-making. Detach. Limit your visits. Do not allow them in your house (or garage) without permission, and lock your doors, if your BIL is a thief. Take a step back. Support your husband when the family dysfunction makes him crazy, but Do. Not. Engage.

You don't say if you've involved yourself in the politics, or if you're just allowing them to make yourself crazy while (wisely) shutting your mouth. Either way, put some sort of mental/emotional barrier between yourself and the in-laws that drive you nuts. Envision them as an anthropology project--observe and listen and really try to understand the undercurrents. But. Do. Not. Engage. Not verbally, not emotionally. They are a research project. They're a drama you watch, not one that you participate in.

In the meantime, you have gotten another job, right? You do have other friends in the area that you depend on for a support network, right? You and your husband have a plan and a timeline about this whole moving thing, right? You both are looking for jobs in Colorado, right?

Because if you don't have a job, if you have no savings, if you have no plan for putting your in-laws at a physical distance, then all you're doing is creating more drama for yourself and your husband. Which is cool if that's the kind of shit you like, but if you're telling the truth and it really does drive you crazy, then you're being counterproductive.

Plus, you have situations like the one in my town. There are two major medical providers (both private, both non-religious), and both of them contractually require that their physicians do not perform abortions. Which means, despite the fact that my city is the biggest in the state, with the most medical providers concentrated here, that the local abortion clinic still has to fly in doctors to perform abortions.

I don't know if such contract provisions are common in private hospitals or not, but there's another reason for the drop in providers. If you can't work for the medical networks in your region, and you don't have the funds to set up your own, out-of-network clinic, well, you're not going to be performing abortions if you want to work and pay off your massive student loan debts.

Why are so many people--men, mostly--assuming that she lied to her husband when she told him about the pregnancy? Or is the mere fact that there were two possible fathers means that she's a slutty mcslut slut and therefore a liar? (Oh, suuuure it's not about how many men she slept with; you're just convinced that she's a liar because of it).

Or do you mean by not telling her daughter that she's not 100% certain that the man who raised her is her biological sperm donor that LW has committed some heinous offense? Would you seriously tell your child that? Really?

We don't know what she told her husband at the time. We don't know if she had good reason to believe that now-hubbie was the father. We don't know what she did nor did not tell him about her daughter's possible parentage. Perhaps he was hesitant to get hitched *because* he knew that some other guy might be the father? Or you all could be right, and she's either a stupid or conniving woman who trapped a poor, poor dude into 19 years of marriage and fatherhood.

(Additionally, stop the goddamn whining about child support. Sure, it sucks, especially if the child isn't biologically yours. But child support doesn't come close to covering half of the financial costs of raising a child, and does absolutely nothing for a single mother who has to shoulder the burden of parenting by herself. Take some frakking responsibility for your own reproduction and wrap it, clip it, or keep it in your pants.)

Ladies, your maiden name was passed on to you through the same patriarchal channels as your husband's, right?

Yes. It does not mean, however, that our names are any less our own. Is your name less your name because it was your father's and your grandfather's?

As we're sadly lacking in time machines, our current situation means that most women in the U.S. have names that were passed down patrilinearly. That doesn't invalidate the need to re-examine why, exactly, it is women and only women who are expected to sacrifice their names and identities into the family.

(And if I misread you, accept my apologies.)

...if a gentleman's name is not worth taking, why would she regard that gentleman as worth marrying?

You realize that this makes no sense, right? Actually, this whole thing of being hurt because your wife didn't take your last name doesn't make sense. You obviously didn't sacrifice your name to show your commitment to your marriage, so why are you hurt that your wife didn't make a sacrifice that you yourself did not make?

I'm married. I love my husband. I did not take his name, nor will I. I'm strongly attached to my own name--I like it; it sits comfortably with me. If my DH had been a whiny, insecure dude who felt "emasculated" or "hurt" by my keeping of my own damn name, I wouldn't have married him.

Seriously. Just because a woman gets married doesn't mean that her husband has some right to slap his name on her like a piece of luggage. If having one family name is so important to you, then the dude can change his name to hers.