The existence of agunot is the ugliest moral scar on the face of Orthodox Judaism, bar none. And each one of us who upholds halachah bears personal responsibility for mitigating the unintended yet devastating damage that it allows to occur. A couple of centuries ago, in a different time and place, this was easier to do. When a husband was tormenting his wife, or leaving her chained to a dead marriage, the local rabbinical court utilized various kinds of social, economic and even physical pressure to induce him to give his wife a get. But in our time and place, in which religious courts do not wield legal enforcement powers, and recalcitrant husbands can simply leave the social and economic orbit of the Jewish community, the old ways do not serve us nearly as well.
Rav Yosef Kanefsky, “Ensuring the Spirit of Halachic Marriage”, The Jewish Journal (11-17 April 2014), 13.