Rav Ovadiya Yosef: Forcing husband to divorce moredes

 It basically says that while in previous times a moredes was just left an agunah but that in modern times there is a major problem of them going off the derech and so therefore we force the husband to divorce them before allowing the husband to remarry. This is not considered get me'usa since the husband doesn't have to give a get - if he doesn't want to remarry. There is no mention of public demonstrations and a major campaign in the secular press to pressure the husband.

Rav Ovadiya Yosef (Yabiya Omer 8:2.2): In previous generations the husband was given permission to take an additional wife if his first wife was declared to a moredes (rebellious wife). The first wife would remain an agunah for the rest of her life until she became an old lady with white hair as punishment for rebelling against her husband. An example of this is found in Shut Mishpat v’ Tzedaka b’Yaakov (2:36).... Similar cases are  found in other Achronim. Nevertheless our contemporary society has weakened and there is now a strong possibility that the agunah will deviate from religious observance because of her aguna status. This is a dissolute generation and people do not obey authority. And if the woman makes up her mind later to accept the get from her husband there is a clear concern that her husband will refuse to give her a get out of spite because he is already married to another woman and it is impossible to force him to give a get to his first wife and therefore she will just reject religion and go on a bad path. Because she is still married however, any children she subsequently has with another man will increase the number of mamzerim in the world. A possible solution is that before he can remarry he needs permission from the beis din and thus it is relatively easy to use that to influence him to deposit a get for his first wife with beis din. Only when he has deposited a get then can we give him permission to remarry according to halacha. After I thought of this, I saw that Rav Masas wrote in  his sefer Tevuos Shemesh (E.H. 30), “Even though in all the seforim of the Achronim concerning previous rabbinic courts (beis din), the beis din ruled that in the case of moredes she remained an agunah her entire life until she became an old lady with grey hair and the husband was allowed to marry another woman if he wanted – without first divorcing her. This was a common ruling and the first wife remained unable to remarry until the day that she died. However this approach was appropriate in previous generations when the spirit of Judaism permeated the people and there was no one who would dare do a serious sin – in particular not to openly transgress the serious sexual sins. But it is no longer true true in our day which to our great sorrow the spirit of individual freedom has become dominant and faith has weakened. We no longer have the power to have people properly comply with religious rulings and there is a great concern that people will go off the path of religious observance. There is no question that all our rabbis acknowledge that all efforts need to be made to have the get deposited with beis din...He concludes his words by saying that in the year 1950, all the rabbis of Morrocco gather together and they made a decree through the official rabbinical confederation – that no man could remarry until he divorced his first wife who was a moredes and had declared that she couldn’t stand living with him (ma’os alei). This decree was accepted and it became a regular occurence for the beis din to rule accordingly. This get that the husband was required to give before remarrying was not considered get me’usa ( a coerced get). That is because he had the choice of not remarrying and therefore he didn’t have to give the get. However with a moredes who simply wanted to afflict him and torture him and consequently refused to accept the get – there was no choice but to require that the get be deposited in beis din as we mentioned before....

The rest of this section was translated by Shaul Shapira in the comments section