It’s Been a Bad Week for Abortion

Greetings, Meteor readers,

This week last year, we sent you a newsletter grappling with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and it remains one of the hardest we’ve ever had to compose. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, we were grief-stricken, angry, and fearful of impending violence. “What is happening cannot fit in an easy tweet or cleverly worded Instagram post,” we wrote at the time. “Honestly, it can’t even fit in this newsletter.”

That truth still holds. Since then, we have witnessed children left to starve to death. Hostages treated as dispensable pawns. Women giving birth in the rubble of bombed hospitals.

We’ve also seen and been part of a larger awakening—about how connected we all are to what happens half the world away and about the difference our actions, our tax dollars, and our votes make. And while that awareness will not bring back the thousands who’ve lost their lives, it’s a better place from which to move forward than willful ignorance. Perhaps we can spend this next year looking for peace.

There is another way,

The Meteor

WHAT’S GOING ON

This week in abortion: It’s not great! Yesterday, Georgia’s Supreme Court reinstated that state’s six-week abortion ban. Judge Robert C. I. McBurney had overturned the ban last week on the grounds that it was not in line with the state’s constitution. But local Republicans immediately started filing appeals, and until they’re sorted out, the original ban will be the law of the land.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, ambling its way back to the bench for the start of a new session, has declined to weigh in on a case in Texas involving a federal emergency care law (EMTALA) that requires any hospital receiving Medicare funds to provide abortions in emergency situations. For now, the existing language in the state’s ban will remain unchallenged.

Why is it playing out this way? Because technically, Texas’ abortion ban already has a carve-out for emergency situations, making it EMTALA-compliant. However, as we’ve seen time and again (and as Amanda Zurawski can attest), those exceptions are so vague that, in practice, women often have had to be actively dying before a doctor grants an abortion—and sometimes, as in the case of Amber Thurman, life-saving care comes too late.

AND:

• A damning new report has found that the 2018 FBI investigation into sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was severely limited by the Trump administration. Despite Donald Trump saying on national television that he had authorized the FBI to run an independent investigation into the allegations, a report produced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) found the White House never actually did that and, instead, tightly controlled the agency’s investigation, even forwarding the FBI’s tipline messages directly to the White House. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford told The Meteor last spring that “the process was the most disappointing part” of coming forward. This report shows how right she was.

• Kamala Harris has been on a media blitz over the last few days, sitting for interviews with 60 Minutes, Howard Stern, and the ladies of The View, where she admitted “not a thing comes to mind” that she’d do differently than Joe Biden (except, she later clarified, welcoming a Republican into her cabinet). Whatever happened to “I am not Joe Biden”??

• In a first-ever report of its kind, a survey from the CDC has found that three percent of American high school students identify as transgender. While the good news is that more young people have the space and language to know themselves, the report also found that transgender and gender-questioning students face higher rates of bullying, sadness, and suicidal thoughts.

• Yesterday, Grammy award-winning singer Cissy Houston died at the age of 91. Houston, who was in hospice care and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, was an unmatched gospel and soul artist as well as the mother of the late, great Whitney Houston.

• Finally: Happy book birthday to Meteor founding member Paola Mendoza, whose new YA novel Solis is available right now and belongs in the backpack of every young person you know. Solis tells the story of undocumented immigrants forced into American labor camps in 2033 who become the subject of brutal experiments—and of the brave young women who start a revolution. (Wait, I thought it was supposed to be fiction…)

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