Ye Olde Abortion Ban Hits Arizona
  April 11, 2024 Greetings, Meteor readers, I’m in for Shannon today, so you’ll have to wait until next week for your sports (and the results of our March Madness bracket, which she very much wants to announce personally). Today, we’re talking about that Ye Olde Arizona abortion ban in the Grand Canyon state, what O.J. Simpon should be remembered for, and a few weekend reads. Fare thee well, Samhita Mukhopadhyay  WHAT'S GOING ONHistory lessons: On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court revived a zombie law from 1864 that would ban nearly all abortions in the state. The law stipulates that “a person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance” for the purpose of abortion could be prosecuted unless the pregnant person’s life is at risk. The current Attorney General of Arizona, Kris Mayes, has courageously said she will not prosecute people under what she has called a “draconian” law. Meanwhile, former gubernatorial candidate/current Senate candidate/die-hard election denier/Trump superfan Kari Lake, who enthusiastically endorsed this law during her governor bid, appears to be trying to distance herself from it. (I wonder why?) In trying to make sense of the resurrection of a law written before slavery was abolished or women had the right to vote, we talked to our resident abortion storyteller, historian, and host of “The A Files,” Renee Bracey Sherman.  A PROTESTOR AT A WOMEN'S MARCH RALLY IN ARIZONA (PHOTO BY MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES) The Meteor: What is something about Arizona law and its roots in the Civil War era that you feel the average person is not fully grasping? Renee Bracey Sherman: I think many people are upset because we can see how different society is today from how it was in 1864. Black people were not considered full humans. There were laws against interracial marriage. Most of us couldn’t own property—in fact, we were property in the eyes of the law. Anyone can look around and see that we should not be using this standard to regulate our society—let alone medical care—so it feels outrageous. But Arizona is not the only state like this. When Roe was overturned, several states automatically reverted to their abortion bans from the 1800s. That part isn’t new, and people live under those laws now. What feels surprising for Arizona is that unlike Michigan, which took the opportunity to repeal their outdated laws, or Wisconsin, which is currently challenging theirs, the Arizona State Supreme Court thought [the law] could be implemented now. It’s like they didn’t look outside and check the temperature of our nation. They ignored the clear message from the last few elections that people want access to abortion. You noted that by today's standards, the original law would technically ban second- and third-trimester abortions, but it's being used to ban abortion completely. How is it possible that the law isn't being interpreted as it was written but can still be revived today? Courts are made up of people who make decisions—sometimes bad ones. They don’t have to follow the historical accuracy of the law. Everything is based on their interpretation. Not to mention: language changes. Regina and I talk about these language changes on our podcast. What we consider an abortion today—the intentional termination of a pregnancy—and when [that abortion] is possible is because we now have the ability to detect a pregnancy earlier than we did 160 years ago. But back then, [abortion laws] generally referred to the ending of a pregnancy after “quickening,” or the moment when the pregnant person could feel the fetus move, which is during the second trimester. So, one could argue that the law should only be applied to later abortion, but again, it’s up to the Court’s interpretation. And that doesn’t help us because a ban on any aspect of abortion is a ban for all of us. This is why abortion should not be left up to the courts and must be decriminalized and available for everyone throughout pregnancy. What happens next for Arizonans? What can we do to fix all of this? The advocates on the ground are doing a lot right now. They have two weeks to challenge the State Supreme Court’s ruling before it goes into effect. Abortion funds and clinics are trying to care for as many patients as they can and figure out whether they would like to continue providing care in defiance of the State Supreme Court’s ruling. State legislators are looking to try to repeal the ban but so far have been unsuccessful. The Governor and Attorney General are looking at all of the options they have at their disposal. Advocates are currently gathering signatures for a statewide ballot measure protecting abortion in the state constitution, so we’ll see how that plays out over the summer and into November. And, of course, all of this is complicated by voter disenfranchisement, which Regina and I talk about in our podcast interview with LaTosha Brown. But at the end of the day, while these are important fixes, it’s not addressing the larger issue that abortion decisions and care should not be left up to the government, courts, or popular vote to decide. As we rebuild, we need to envision a way to protect abortion access for everyone that isn’t dependent on a few judges and their inability to understand historical context or society today.  O.J. SIMPSON IS SHOWN DURING TESTIMONY IN HIS CRIMINAL TRIAL FEBRUARY 9, 1995. (PHOTO BY LEE CELANO/WIREIMAGE) O.J. Simpson’s real legacy, as told by bell hooks: There is going to be a lot of ink spilled about the passing of football star O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted of killing his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman almost 30 years ago. Simpson’s low-speed car chase and subsequent trial was a cultural flashpoint: Would a black man accused of killing a white woman be able to win in our racist criminal justice system? This was the narrative invoked by legal mastermind Johnie Cochran to convince the nation that a man who had allegedly abused his wife was not her killer. But Black feminists didn’t fall for it: bell hooks said to Charlie Rose in a 1995 interview that she hadn’t watched the trial, but while America made it about race, at its core, Simpson’s trial was also about upholding the patriarchy. “Once this becomes entertainment, once the cameras focus on O.J. Simpson,” she said, “people will forget that at the heart of this is both male violence and male violence against women.”  AND:
 WEEKEND READS 📚On babies: Women are having children later. What does it mean? (TIME) On throuples: Three literary stars found love together. And now they are having a baby. (New York) On feminist history: In light of O.J. Simpon’s death, writer Moira Donegal re-upped this must-read Andrea Dworkin essay on Nicole Simpson’s murder. (Evergreen Review)  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend?
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Before Caitlin Clark and Dawn Staley…
  April 8, 2024 Hey there, Meteor readers, Happy Monday! We're bringing you a short and sweet send today to start your week off right. Our offices will be closed tomorrow in observance of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan (and also Shannon's fast). Happy eclipse, Samhita Mukhopadhyay  WHAT'S GOING ONA terrific run: A historic season of college women’s basketball came to a close yesterday when South Carolina’s Gamecocks emerged victorious in an undefeated (39-0!) season over the Iowa Hawkeyes. You’ve probably seen the numbers: Twelve million viewers watched last week’s match between Iowa and LSU, with its infamous (and media-invented) rivalry between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. As The New Yorker reported over the weekend, that game had more viewers than any Major League Baseball game, almost every college basketball game, and any game in the NHL from the last year. “More people watched the women play…than watched any regular-season college football game last year, except for Ohio State versus Michigan,” Louisa Thomas wrote. And all that happened not because of some tremendous new influx of marketing money but despite a longtime lack of investment in women’s sports. Iowa’s Caitlin Clark—who broke the record as the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer and was all over your TV with her ads for Nike, Gatorade, and State Farm—had something to do with the viewership, of course. South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, winning her third title yesterday, thanked her personally in her emotional victory speech, saying, “She carried a heavy load for our sport, and it’s not going to stop here on the collegiate tour. When she’s the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft, she’s going to lift that league up as well.”  But this was not a one-woman show—far from it. Staley herself is a GOAT: as a player, as a coach, and as a voice for diversity on the court. Last week, she said she believes trans women should be allowed to play the sport. (Nonetheless, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics voted today to ban transgender women from competing.) She also issued a powerful call for racial justice in the summer of 2020, writing, “People are mad because NOTHING HAS CHANGED.” Beyond Staley and beyond Clark, there were thousands of other reasons this season shone: the players of NCAA hoops and the audiences who are truly ready for them. This generation of viewers grew up playing sports (or seeing their sisters and daughters do so)—they get it, marketing budgets or not. Like the T-shirts say: Everyone watches women’s sports. And while you’re watching, we have an incredible story on the In Retrospect podcast this week. It’s about the 2007 Rutgers women’s basketball team, which 17 years ago this month had a Cinderella season, powering their way to the Final Four in an extraordinary triumph. But instead of being celebrated, they were attacked by popular radio host Don Imus, who used racist slurs to describe them. (That kind of racism is alive and well, as the conversation this season about Angel Reese reminds us.) Hosts Susie Banikarim and Jessica Bennett revisit the 2007 season with two women who were there: former Rutgers captain and WNBA star Essence Carson and journalist Jemele Hill, who reported on the story in real time. Hill told them, “To see how it went from people celebrating them to them just being degraded in the next moment—it was disheartening, to say the least. I just really felt for those young people because they had achieved something really, really spectacular, and it just felt like the moment was stolen from them.”  THE 2007 RUTGERS TEAM AT A PRESS CONFERENCE IN NEW JERSEY HELD IN RESPONSE TO DON IMUS'S COMMENTS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) AND:
 KRISTIN DAVIS, SARAH JESSICA PARKER, CYNTHIA NIXON, AND KIM CATTRALL IN SATC PROMO IMAGE FROM 2000 (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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Let's Give Angel Reese Her Flowers
  April 4, 2024 Evening, Meteor readers, Remember a few newsletters ago when I promised I’d stop hammering everyone with my basketball opinions? I lied! In today’s newsletter, we’re giving Angel Reese her flowers. Plus Rebecca Carroll talks to model Cameron Russell about her new book and impossible beauty standards. Untruthfully yours, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONBigger than basketball: Watkins. Clark. Bueckers. Reese. Over the last month, these women have been at the center of conversation about the future of women’s basketball and just how bright and exciting it is. They’ve been called icons, broken scoring records, and, in the case of Angel Reese and her LSU Tigers teammates, derided as villains. Reese, a 21-year-old Black woman from Baltimore, Maryland, announced in Vogue yesterday—after LSU’s exit from the tournament Monday—that she's entering the 2024 WNBA draft. Reese is one of college basketball’s best players, but despite that, she has been made out to be this year’s Big Bad, partly due to her media-invented rivalry with Caitlin Clark. (Monday’s rematch between Clark and Reese brought in over 12.3 million viewers) Reese has been subject to scrutiny that goes beyond her in-game performance—every word she utters is overanalyzed—and sometimes overshadows her role in LSU's climb to the Elite 8. There is a palpable hatred that follows her—one that she says has resulted in death threats that began in 2023 when the Tigers won the NCAA Championship. Why are so many people hostile towards this young basketball player? I’ll explain it in the simplest terms possible: They hate her 'cause they ain't her. Angel Reese is talented; she’s a workhorse; and pardon my French, but she is so fucking entertaining to watch. She is an artist. She is a showman. But Reese is not hated for those traits. People hate her because she knows she is good and is unapologetic about it. Ahead of the Iowa game, Reese placed her signature crown on the bench for all to see and crowned herself when stepped on the court. Boss shit. She is a Black woman who does not dull her shine and people simply cannot abide by that energy.  ICONIC. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) The day after LSU’s loss, sportscaster Emmanuel Acho delivered an entire monologue about Reese crying at the post-game conference, saying on air, “In sports, you can’t act like the big bad wolf, then cry like Courage the Cowardly Dog.” He followed it up with a tweet saying his analysis was meant to be “gender neutral and racially indifferent.” But the premise of that argument is that Reese is a “self-proclaimed” villain who switched up her persona because she lost. It’s an argument without legs. Her villain persona was entirely invented by the media—specifically the LA Times article that referred to LSU as “dirty debutantes” and America’s “basketball villains.” (The reporter has since apologized for the article.) Once that article came out and Reese was being peppered with questions about it she said, “If that’s what you want me to be, I guess I’ll take that.” Acquiescence is not self-proclamation. Moreover, Acho willfully ignored everything behind Reese’s tears: The loss, the year of death threats, the end of her college career—all of that had to be bottled up simply because “villains don’t get empathy.” The hatred and language aimed at Angel Reese cannot be divorced from her race or gender simply because it’s more convenient to view her as a character. Especially because sports media wouldn’t apply that same language to Caitlin Clark who is just as brash and unapologetically talented as Reese. Black women have always been subject to a different degree of scrutiny than white women playing the same sport. Reese already explained this to us last year: “I don’t fit the box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood. I’m too ghetto. Y’all told me that all year…So this is for the girls that look like me. For those that want to speak up for what they believe in. It’s unapologetically you.” And two years before that, even Paige Bueckers (who is white) spoke up about the mistreatment of Black women by sports media. Sports villains are not uncommon or inherently evil, it’s normally just part of the storytelling. Kobe, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan—they all had a villain era. But Reese’s treatment goes beyond just Villain of the Day. It is shaped by the same assumptions that are made about Black women and women of color in any field they excel in—constantly having people belittle your greatness to make you easier to stomach. Despite the racism and misogynoir they’ve faced, though, the women of this year’s NCAA Tournament have given us an incredible month and I’m sure this weekend’s Final Four and Championship games will be appointment television. And when it’s all over, and the confetti clears, we’ll be turning our eyes to the WNBA draft (April 15th!), where Angel Reese is projected to be a top-ten pick. I hope when she’s chosen she brings her crown and that million-dollar smile. AND:
 IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDERReclaiming Our BeautyOne model's coming of age in a broken systemBY REBECCA CARROLL  CAMERON RUSSELL (VIA GETTY IMAGES) We live in a beauty-obsessed culture—and nowhere has that been made more clear than in the modeling industry, which for decades promoted the image of thin, white women as the definitive standard. But behind every image is an actual person navigating a workplace where objectification is a part of the job. Cameron Russell started modeling when she was a teenager. After a few years, she saw tremendous success—booking campaigns with Victoria’s Secret and H&M and doing runway work for Prada and Chanel. She began to use her voice early on with a widely publicized TED talk in 2013. Then, in 2016, Russell and Chinese-English model Áine Rose Campbell co-founded the Model Mafia, a collective of models whose unifying mission is to create “a more equitable, just and sustainable fashion industry and world.” Russell’s work with the collective would prove to be preparation for her role in the #MeToo movement. After allegations of sexual assault emerged against Harvey Weinstein in 2017, a model friend texted Russell about her own experience of sexual abuse on the job. Russell offered to post her friend’s text on Instagram without identifying details—and that post launched a domino effect, as hundreds of similar stories from fellow models flooded Russell’s DMs and inbox. She posted many of them under the hashtag #MyJobShouldNotIncludeAbuse, and, almost overnight, became an outfacing public envoy for a reckoning in fashion. Soon after, she resolved to write her own story. In her new memoir, How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone, Russell reflects on her deeply personal evolution in the industry and her choice to get loud about its all too often seedy underbelly. Rebecca Carroll: I want to start with an experience you write about after one of your first modeling jobs as a teen. Your mom asks you how it went and then says, “Were you your charismatic, confident self?” I wonder what that meant to you then and what it means to you now? Cameron Russell: I grew up feeling—and I only identified this retroactively as a feminine labor—that being charismatic and likable was a necessary skill that [my mom] wanted me to have. As a child, I felt very much connected to voice—my ability to tell stories and to be in conversation with people. When I started modeling, no one really wanted to hear me talk. You go to a casting and they’re like, “No, actually, we don’t really want to hear about your day.” A lot of women’s work—which I include charisma, agreeability, and grace—is supposed to be something that we are and not something that we do. Your story is also very much about a social consciousness awakening. In your TED Talk, you talk about how hard it was to unpack “a legacy of gender and racial oppression.” When did that unpacking begin for you? I was a fairly thoughtful, politicized, and aware teenager when I arrived in this industry. The awakening or the consciousness shift that happened was to come into an understanding of how change is made and also move away from being heavily invested in certain ideas of success. In the book, you talk about reading memoirs by other models because you wanted to see what happens when a model finds herself and is no longer “a doe-eyed teen.” As a transracial adoptee, this reminded me of what we call “the fog,” which is the moment we realize for the first time that we have been deprived of our origin culture and community. It’s both enraging and freeing and a call to action. What were the most liberating and intentional actions you took after finding yourself? One piece that felt so liberating was reading Iman's memoir and just finding this very clear, concise, and complex read of her own position in fashion as complicit, as harmed, as racialized, as colonized—all these really complex things that she articulates very simply. The narrative that I had been fed for many years was that every casting agent and every media outlet would say, “Oh, you're so exceptional. You have beauty and brains,” which actually serves to make you very lonely and reinforces a winner-take-all system that is reliant upon gendered exploitation of labor from top to bottom. In reading Iman’s memoir, I was able to see I'm not alone. Your husband is Black, and so your children are Black. One of your kids is a daughter who is going to grow up to become a Black woman, and she will face the white standard of beauty, and the white gaze that was and is so pervasive in the modeling industry. How do you hope to help her think about these things? Femininity, as I have experienced it, [is] complicated. It has been so commercialized, I always [think], “Ugh, that performance of gender feels so yucky to me.” But actually, why? It can be beautiful. It can be beautiful to be adorned; it can be beautiful to be all the different things that we associate with feminine beauty when they're not in the context that I learned them. And so I hold that for her. She's only two and a half. We were at Target the other day, and all she wanted to do was to be in the bow aisle. So she wanted the beads for her hair, she wanted the rainbow elastics. We got home, and she said, “I want 10 bows. I want four blue beads.” And so, I am adoring her adoration of her own body, beauty, and expression. That’s really lovely. And finally, towards the end of the book, you say that you need to believe that you are better than the conditions that made your success possible. What does that belief look and feel like for you on a daily basis? The question is how we can be in a trusted community with each other at this moment. We need to make decisions to move with less urgency, to move with community, with care, and to put attention, focus, and resources on projects and relationships that feel generative and that are present solutions.
 Rebecca Carroll is a writer, cultural critic, and podcast creator/host. Her writing has been published widely, and she is the author of several books, including her recent memoir, Surviving the White Gaze. Rebecca is Editor at Large for The Meteor. FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend?
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The Abortion Provider Treating Texans in Kansas
  April 2, 2024 Evening, Meteor readers, Last night was an incredible spectacle of athleticism and sportsmanship. Of course I’m talking about the most anticipated rematch of the year: LSU vs. Iowa. Both teams fought to the bitter end, but unfortunately for LSU (and baller-turned-meme Hailey Van Lith), Caitlin Clark’s three-pointers could not be stopped.  NOTE HAILEY IN THE BACKGROUND, MARVELING AT ANGEL REESE LIKE THE REST OF US. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) In today’s newsletter, reporter Susan Rinkunas talks to abortion provider Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi. Plus, a look at the new abortion ban coming out of Florida and a little good news for Olympics fans. From my busted bracket, Shannon Melero  ACROSS STATE LINES“I’m Here As Long As I Can Be”Texas abortion provider Ghazaleh Moayedi, D.O., provides care for her neighbors—but she has to leave the state to do itBY SUSAN RINKUNAS  A TRAVELING HERO (IMAGE COURTESY OF DR. MAOYEDI) After Ghazaleh Moayedi graduated college, she got a job working on the administrative side of Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion clinic in Austin, Texas. She respected the providers who chose the work—many of whom had witnessed illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade—but also thought the patients deserved doctors who looked like them. “I didn't have the language for it at the time,” she says “But I noticed these doctors, older white men, didn't reflect the people that we were taking care of. I knew that we needed new doctors.” So, she went to med school and became an OB/GYN and complex family planning specialist in Dallas in 2018. Less than two years later, Texas lawmakers enacted abortion bans, first during the height of the pandemic, and then via the 2021 bounty hunter law known as Senate Bill 8. A few months later, Roe fell, and now Moayedi travels to Kansas to provide abortions—often to other Texans. I talked to her about what she’s doing to care for people after they return home, and her message for people living in Democratic-led states who think they’re safe from abortion bans. Susan Rinkunas: When did you start traveling to provide abortion care? Ghazaleh Moayedi: I started traveling to Oklahoma in 2020 [after] Gov. Greg Abbott shut down abortion care in our state under the guise of COVID restrictions. Abortion doctors traveling is common—but never from a state like Texas to somewhere else. That is the novel piece over the last few years. It's always a doctor who lives on one of the coasts traveling to a restrictive state. That was a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, crap. In order to take care of Texans, I'm gonna have to start traveling.’ I started working at a couple of clinics there, in addition to the clinics I was working at in Dallas, and did that until Oklahoma shut down—it was about a month or so before Dobbs. Now, I am traveling to Kansas and working in a clinic there. You’ve said it’s surreal to be a Texan leaving the state to care for other Texans leaving the state. Are you commiserating with patients? Do they know you're from Texas? I usually ask people when I make small talk when I'm doing an ultrasound. Like, “Where are you coming in from?” And people usually say Texas, then I ask where. “Oh, where in Dallas? I'm from Dallas, too, that's why I'm asking.” I can just see people's faces change. When I say, “Did you eat at that place? That place is really good,” I can see the light coming from people. It's a moment for us both. We're like, “Yeah, this is bullshit. It's totally bullshit that we're both here.” I had a patient who was like, “I wish you could have just done my abortion in the closet at this restaurant that we both knew.” During a fall trip to Kansas, two of my patients were on the same flight I took. I've still been really processing that in and of itself, that we're all on this flight together, how just stupid, pointless, [and] inhumane this is.  WHAT'S GOING ONSunshine state of mind: Oh, Florida, you never miss an opportunity for mess. Yesterday, the state’s Supreme Court upheld a six-week abortion ban, which will go into effect on May 1. Abortion seekers in the South who have used Florida as a sort of abortion haven over the last two years will now be thrown into a greater state of chaos and desperation than ever before. Last year, 84,052 abortions were performed in Florida—about 7,000 of which were for out-of-state patients. The sliver of good news: The Supreme Court also ruled in favor of allowing Floridians to vote on Amendment 4 in November; that amendment would protect abortion rights through the state’s constitution, voiding the six-week ban entirely. And although Florida will always find a way to Florida, abortion does have a stellar track record when it comes to the ballot box. (Cue DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win.”) If you’re reading this from your Golden Girls-esque lanai in Florida, learn more about Amendment 4 here. AND:
 ONE OF THE TARGETED VEHICLES FROM WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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How the Media Excludes Trans Voices
  March 28, 2024 Buona sera, Meteor readers, It is the official start of Easter weekend, with today being Holy Thursday for Christians and Thirsty Thursday for everyone else. Either way, wine is encouraged. No matter what the next few days bring you, we hope this weekend is a great one. In today’s newsletter, we take a look at how the media continues to fail trans people. Plus, a little bit of good news and our weekend reading list. Xoxo, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONPanic! at the Times Disco: A new report from Media Matters and GLAAD has found that over the last year, The New York Times “excluded the perspectives of trans people”—referencing a failure to quote them—“from two-thirds of its stories about anti-trans legislation.” The study comes more than a year after Times leadership received two separate letters from staff members and LGBTQ advocates and organizations charging the paper with contributing to “a deadly anti-LGBTQ culture war.” According to the report, 66% of the articles covering the aggressive anti-LGBTQ legislation sweeping the nation did not quote a single trans or gender non-conforming person, but 18% of those same articles did cite misinformation from anti-trans activists “without adequate fact-checking or additional context.” Media Matters cited as an example this piece on North Dakota banning trans girls from girls’ sports teams, which didn’t ask any of the banned players how they’d been affected. The issue, of course, isn’t just about the Times’s journalism; it’s about the too-common framing of trans people as politically controversial entities rather than as members of communities everywhere. And those community members are under attack like never before: Last year, according to the ACLU, 510 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced by legislators in nearly every state. (The only states which did not see bills introduced were New York, Delaware, and Illinois.) Of those bills, 84 were signed into law, doing everything from restricting bathroom use to eliminating gender-affirming care. Against that backdrop, reporting on anti-trans laws while omitting the people and families who know first-hand what they do is a dangerous act of dehumanization. You can read the full report here. AND:
 AID PACKAGES FALLING FROM THE SKY IN SOUTHERN GAZA. (IMAGE VIA GETTY)
  CLICK THE LINK ABOVE TO GET YOUR UNIQUE SHARE CODE TO SEND TO A FEW FRIENDS. IF FIVE OF THEM SIGN UP FOR THIS NEWSLETTER, YOU GET A METEOR TOTE!  WEEKEND READING 📚On the road: In an effort to woo environmentally conscious voters, both Republicans and Democrats are talking more about electric cars. But climate journalist Emily Atkin says we’re in for a wild ride of EV misinformation. (Heated) On education: Who the heck is Baby Olivia, and why is she in our classrooms? (The 19th) On “self-creation”: Photographer Rahim Fortune has beautifully executed the daunting task of capturing the lives, landscape, and character of the rural south. (The Atlantic)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
What the SCOTUS Hearing Could Mean for Mifepristone
  March 26, 2024 Evening, Meteor readers, It was a brilliant weekend for basketball but not so brilliant for my bracket. Congratulations to this week’s top three participants in the Meteor’s March Madness bracket challenge: Marsha, Em, and my husband. In today’s newsletter, Samhita Mukhopadhyay speaks to Dr. Beverly Winikoff and Dr. Lisa Haddad of the Population Council, a research nonprofit with a special relationship to the Supreme Court’s mifepristone case—oral arguments for which were heard today. Plus we congratulate a history-making Englishwoman and check in on Diddy. Crossing my fingers for The Sweet 16, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON
  TODAY AT SCOTUSThe Abortion Pill on TrialOne of its key researchers says Mifepristone was tested "with three times or more rigor" than other drugs.BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY ACTIVISTS OUTSIDE OF THE SUPREME COURT LAST SPRING IN SUPPORT OF THE ABORTION PILL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the first abortion case to come before the court since it overturned Roe v. Wade. The case, brought by the extremist group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM), is challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—specifically the FDA’s 2016-2021 policies, which expanded access to the safe and effective abortion drug mifepristone, initially approved in 2000 and now the most common abortion method across the country. AHM’s main argument? That the FDA did not adequately study mifepristone’s safety risks. (We explain it more in-depth here.) The implications of this decision could be disastrous. As Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO at the National Women’s Law Center, told us, “Banning mifepristone would upend abortion care not just in the conservative states that have been racing to ban it—but in all 50 states, no matter their laws.” But the case itself is farfetched, argues Dr. Lisa Haddad, the medical director for the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research, the nonprofit research center that led clinical testing on mifepristone more than two decades ago. In fact, she points out, over 5 million people have successfully used it since then. With the case now before the court, we spoke to Dr. Haddad and Dr. Beverly Winikoff, who worked at the Population Council for 25 years, where she was Program Director for Reproductive Health and Senior Medical Associate at the Council, which was the team that led clinical trials on mifepristone overseas. Now she serves as president of Gynuity Health Projects. Samhita Mukhopadhyay: You worked with the organization that facilitated the FDA approval of mifepristone—what are you feeling right now? Dr. Beverly Winikoff: I feel like I'm charging into the skirmish. I'm getting girded up. Can't these people ever go away? But it is very, very encouraging to see how everyday people understand that this is a highly political, not a scientific discussion. Dr. Lisa Haddad: I feel very frustrated and a little bit beaten up. And while I’m inspired by some of the voices speaking up in support of mifepristone, I see this trend in reducing access for women, and I'm scared that the science and the excellent evidence that supports this as a way to improve health outcomes will be overlooked and minimized. It's a slippery slope. BW: I think in the end, it'll be okay because of the politics—the FDA is there to do a job, and it has always done it quite well in protecting the public. And this is an attack on the FDA. When you look at it that way, there are many people who are on our side, including big pharma—because if this happens, they have no [incentive] to be able to put money into new drugs because somebody could come up and decide that they don't like that drug and they can [sue to] override the FDA, and that would be chaotic in the pharmaceutical world. It's not just abortion; it's every drug that gets approved. I think the politics of it is much bigger than abortion. That’s a good point. Can you walk us through what we need to know about the FDA approval of mifepristone? Was it the standard approval process or was it a long, hard-fought win? BW: It was cover-your-ass time the whole way along by the FDA. That was it. That was the theme. So, every single thing was done with three times or more rigor than any other drug I've ever heard of. But that's okay because the drug is very good and very safe. We also got the FDA staff to be very excited about it. People were really very interested in making sure it got through. When we did the final studies, we had several thousand people, and it performed very, very well. We were very attached to this product because it seemed safer and more effective than you could expect. So people were very excited about it because it had the potential to be a workaround for some of the political stuff of having to go to a clinic. You were doing it at home.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
How can sterilization without consent be legal?
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No images? Click here  March 21, 2024 Yeehaw, Meteor readers, I assume we have all seen Beyoncé’s cover art for her next album, “Cowboy Carter,” which drops on March 29. As a country music lover myself, I can’t wait. In the meantime, may I entertain you with a song from Tanner Adell, another country artist whose music really spins my spurs?  In today’s newsletter, we introduce you to disability rights activist and Ford Foundation officer Rebecca Cokley, who is shedding light on the forced sterilization of disabled people—a practice that’s still legal in many states. Plus, the death of a gaming icon, Joe Biden cancels more student loan debt (not mine 😞), and a weekend reading list. Your wannabe buckle bunny, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON
 "AN UNEQUIVOCAL RIGHT TO BODILY AUTONOMY"Reproductive Justice for All of UsRebecca Cokley on how to stop the violence disabled people experienceBY SHANNON MELERO PARADE GOERS AT NEW YORK’S FIFTH ANNUAL DISABILITY PRIDE PARADE. (PHOTO BY ERIC MCGREGOR VIA GETTY IMAGES) “It is better for all the world if…society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” That sentence, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1927, was the defining sentiment behind the seminal Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell—a case which allowed states to continue the practice of forcibly sterilizing those it deemed unfit to reproduce, namely people of color, the physically disabled, and those considered to have mental “deficiencies.” In the specific situation behind Buck v. Bell, the plaintiff was Carrie Buck, a young white woman in Virginia who was forcibly sterilized for her “feeble-mindedness” under that state’s Eugenical Sterilization Act. It would be easy to dismiss that ruling and Holmes’ words as a relic from another time if the practice of forced sterilization hadn’t lingered so long after that case. Over the course of the twentieth century, roughly 70,000 Americans (mostly women of color) were forcibly sterilized—a practice activist Fannie Lou Hamer famously labeled the “Mississippi appendectomy.” And while the work of activists like Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, founder of the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse, brought some change in the 1970s, forced sterilization is still a painful reality: As of 2022, there are 31 states where the practice can be authorized by a judge and/or performed on a disabled person without their consent. Rebecca Cokley—the preeminent activist and program officer of disability rights at the Ford Foundation—encountered this situation firsthand while giving birth to her daughter in 2013, and she shared the story onstage at Free Future 2023. As she was undergoing a C-section, Cokley recalled, her anesthesiologist said to her OBGYN, “While you’re down there, why don’t you go ahead and tie her tubes? Because kids like her don’t need to have kids.” Cokley’s OBGYN refused and, as Cokley put it, almost “jumped over the drape to beat him to a pulp.”  But for many disabled people in America, that kind of support is non-existent. Instead, they’re left at the mercy of a medical system that, by design, excludes them. A 2023 study published in The Lancet found that “32% of health care professionals hold explicit preferences for non-disabled people over disabled people.” And as Cokley explains, the practice of forced sterilization is part of a larger pattern of disabled people—”especially women and girls”—being denied bodily autonomy: "You’re never told your body is yours and you have the right to say no,” she points out. “You’re never given ownership over your body.” Other advances have helped safeguard the rights of disabled people in certain areas—from the educational reforms of Thomas H. Gallaudet in 1817 to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Cokley and others want to ensure that reproductive justice, and the rights of all people with disabilities to have children how and when they want, is on the table, too. “We have an unequivocal right to bodily autonomy, and to make these choices,” she says. Cokley also notes, “Every policy recommendation moving forward on reproductive health, rights, justice, must include a disability lens. So when hearing about people having to travel across multiple states to access [abortion] care, I want the public to think. ‘So what would that mean if you're disabled and say, don't have access to accessible transportation, or need other assistance?’" You can watch Cokley onstage at Free Future 2023, in conversation with Catalina Devandas, the UN’s first Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and human rights advocate Maryangel Garcia-Ramos, here. (Their session begins at 2:25:25.)  This series is a collaboration between the Gender, Ethic, and Racial Justice - International program at the Ford Foundation and The Meteor.  WEEKEND READING 📚On the ground: Over a thousand Gazan children have survived unfathomable violence and been medically evacuated to surrounding countries where they live as refugees and amputees. One reporter asks: What will the rest of their lives look like? (The New Yorker) On rising stars: USC’s Juju Watkins is ready to steal the spotlight during this year’s NCAA Tournament. As the kids say, she’s got the rizz. (The Washington Post) On family trees: The unexpected way some people are discovering the prevalence of incest. (The Atlantic)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their unique share code or snag your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
Facing 10 Years of Prison for Smoking Weed
 March 19, 2024 Greetings, Meteor readers, It’s last call for any of you wanting to participate in our March Madness challenge! Just click the button below to join our group and share your women’s bracket. And don’t forget, the best way to support women’s sports is to watch: Most games will be available on ESPN2 or ESPNU, but UConn v. Jackson State and Iowa v. Holy Cross—featuring Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark, of course—will be on ABC. In today’s newsletter, I promise not to speak further of basketball. Instead, Samhita Mukhopadhyay walks us through Oprah’s weight loss special. Plus, a new book for your TBR pile and a princess sighting. Ball is life, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONOprah is done with the fat shaming…again: ICYMI, Oprah has another special out about weight shame and drugs like Ozempic. Released yesterday on the heels of her decision to step down from the Weight Watchers board and share with the public that she herself is on a semaglutide (the much talked about class of drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro), the show was an effort at busting common myths around obesity. As someone who’s written about the topic, I thought I’d break down the good and less-good coverage: The good: She emphasized one of the most groundbreaking shifts in thinking that has come thanks to the popularity of these new “obesity meds”—the understanding that weight gain is not solely connected to your willpower. People often discriminate against and hate fat bodies because they believe fat people lack the personal control not to be fat, and, for this reason, deserve the shame and admonishment we as a society dole out to them. In developing drugs that address physiological components, science is confirming what fat activists have long said: Some of our bodies are just different, and the only path forward is to accept that.  But here’s where the special missed the mark: Rather than rethink what our hatred of fat bodies means for society and medical institutions—something that would be groundbreaking for Oprah to do—she purports that one of the only ways to eradicate this stigma is to become unfat, most notably through the help of this new class of drugs. (The special features several weight loss “success” stories of people whose lives changed dramatically by taking a semaglutide). But why is being fat something that needs to be solved? It’s great that Oprah is undoing the shame we feel around our decision to take these drugs—but perhaps it’s also okay to just be fat. (FWIW, I believe Oprah knows this truth; it’s just not an easy one to get across in primetime.) The only people who should really feel shame are those who continue to perpetuate the idea that the only way to live a healthy, happy life is to be thin. For more on how Oprah has contributed to how we talk and think about weight loss, check out this episode of In Retrospect about her lifelong, public battle with her weight and what it’s meant for the culture. At the top of her special, Oprah admits she gave in to the pressure to apologize for her weight and refuses to do so anymore. I’m happy for her. But what would it look like to embrace such an attitude without also recentering thinness? AND:
 ONE WOMAN'S FIGHT“This Isn't Speedy or Fair”Lauren Smith’s waited over four years for her day in court.BY NEDA TOLOUI-SEMNANI  LAUREN SMITH HAS BEEN SEPARATED FROM HER YOUNGEST CHILD FOR FIVE YEARS. (IMAGE VIA THE METEOR) Four months ago, I wrote in this space about Lauren Smith, a 32-year-old mother who lost custody of her youngest child in 2019 after she and her infant tested positive for THC, a cannabinoid substance, at delivery. Smith was arrested six months later and charged with felony child neglect for using marijuana while pregnant—a charge which, in Greenville, South Carolina, carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. When we published the article, Smith’s trial date was set for the week of February 19, 2024, which was, rather poetically, five years nearly to the day after she had delivered and lost custody of her youngest daughter. The child has been living with her paternal grandmother since she was three days old. But weeks before the trial was set to start, Smith learned her court date would be pushed for a third time. It is now scheduled for the week of April 22. “Isn't everybody due a speedy, fair trial?” Smith told me earlier this month. “This isn't speedy or fair.” The latest holdup comes after the Greenville County solicitor's office entered more than 125 pages of new documentation into discovery. This is called a “document dump,” a legal maneuver in which one side enters hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pages of new documentation within weeks of trial in an effort to overwhelm the opposing side. (This is the second time the prosecution has used this delay tactic. The first was last May when they entered several hundred additional pages of documentation as discovery.) Despite the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to a fast trial, Stuart Sarratt, a former Greenville County public defender familiar with the Smith case, says, “South Carolina essentially does not have any kind of right to speedy trial.”  PHOTO BY NILO TABRIZI Neda Toloui-Semnani is an Emmy-winning journalist and the author of They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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Young People Are Two Times More Likely to Identify as LGBTQ+
  March 14, 2024 Evening Meteor readers, My child has been making little paintings of animals for the last few days, and I’ve decided to retire as a writer and live off of what is sure to be her prolific career as an artist. So I guess this is goodbye. I’ll remember to invite all of you to her opening night at The Met.  "THE LAST PENGUIN" BY THE ARTIST KNOWN ONLY AS V In today’s newsletter, we congratulate all the people who told Gallup they were queer. Plus, how Olivia Rodrigo is setting the standard for politically minded artists, and our weekend reading list. Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONWe’re here, we’re queer: Yesterday, Gallup released the findings of a major 12,000-person 2023 survey on sexual orientation and gender identity, revealing a sharp increase in young adults identifying as queer over the last few years. “LGBTQ+ identification in the U.S. continues to grow, with 7.6% of U.S. adults now identifying as…some other sexual orientation besides heterosexual.” This is a notable uptick from just four years ago, when just 5.6% of adults identified as LGBTQ+. So: Who’s most likely to say they’re LGBTQ+? First of all, young people. According to the data, Gen Z and millennials are twice as likely to identify as LGBTQ+ than older generations.  And the rise is also being driven by women. Among Gen Z respondents—the group who most self-identified as LGBTQ+—women were almost three times as likely as men to do so (28.5% of them did, vs 10.6% of men). The report also includes an important note: “The gender differences reported…do not account for the nonbinary population.” We’ll have to wait for further surveys to understand how the roughly 1% of Americans who consider themselves nonbinary identify. This is exactly the kind of data that rankles conservative lawmakers, and they’re likely to use it as a prime example of the degradation of core American values (life, liberty, and the pursuit of heteronormativity). But given the documented consequences of being unable to live life on your own terms—from depression and loneliness to suicide—the fact that so many young (and youngish) people are identifying as LGBTQ+ suggests tremendous progress in how comfortable they feel. Previous research suggests Gen Z is better equipped with “a language of gender” and peer support than previous generations were. So while extremists might see these numbers as proof of the “gay agenda,” they can also be seen as proof of societal progress—which couldn’t come at a more urgent time, considering the dark cloud of violence towards LGBTQ+ teenagers stoked by fearmongering adults like Moms for Liberty, Libs of Tiktok, and more. And the death of Nex Benedict, a transgender teenager in Oklahoma who died in February after a physical altercation at his school, shows just how fatal that violence can be. (An early autopsy report has ruled Benedict’s death a suicide, an outcome that is all too common among transgender youth—no doubt connected to the rise of anti-LGBTQ legislation, schools that don’t punish bullies, and more) Against that backdrop, a question for all of us: Now that we know so many young people are queer, what are we doing to protect them? If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts you can reach a counselor via The Trevor Project by clicking here or texting 678-678. AND:
 FRIENDLY REMINDER!As I mentioned on Tuesday some of us at The Meteor will be cobbling together our limited knowledge of the inner workings of women’s college basketball and making official NCAA brackets. But wouldn’t it be more fun to do it with our readers? Selection Sunday is THIS weekend so put your women's bracket together and send a PDF of it to [email protected]. As the tournament progresses, I’ll track everyone’s picks until there’s only one bracketologist left standing. That lucky duck (get it? DUCK! Yes, I am placing Oregon high on my bracket don't judge me.) will get a fabulous Meteor tote and bragging rights. The cut-off for sending in your brackets is the evening of March 20, we're closing up the party after that. May the three-pointers be ever in your favor.  ME TO MY COWORKERS IF I WIN THIS THING  WEEKEND READING 📚On not calling the cops: In 2020, a young girl in New Orleans reported that she had been raped by a friend and then pressured to complete a rape kit. But shortly after that horrific day she was sexually assaulted again and this time her assailant was the police officer who escorted her to the hospital for that first rape kit. (The Washington Post) On the lookout: The internet wildfire surrounding Catherine, Princess of Wales, has shed light on a larger issue of how the general public can feel such strong ownership over one woman’s body. (The Atlantic) On knowing thyself: “The moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies.” (Intelligencer)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
Your Body, Your Gender Pay Gap
  March 12, 2024 Greetings, Meteor readers, This weekend, while all the cool kids were watching the Oscars, I was baking bread. Not to brag (she says before bragging), but it is the best loaf I’ve made since I started learning how to bake bread a week ago. Maybe those “tradwives” were on to something? Just kidding! Katie Britt is still our collective sleep paralysis demon.  In today’s newsletter, we connect a few dots between the gender pay gap and abortion access. Plus, an update on Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and, of course, that “missing” princess. Live from my kitchen, Shannon Melero P.S. This Sunday is Selection Sunday for the Women’s March Madness tournament, and if you’re making a bracket this year, there’s a fun challenge for you at the end of this newsletter.  WHAT'S GOING ONThere are no coincidences: Today is Equal Pay Day, the date that marks how far into the next year a woman will have to work to make as much money as a man in a similar position made the previous year. On average, for every dollar a non-Hispanic white man makes, a woman will earn 84 cents. Other factors that lower this number include race, parental status, full-time versus part-time employment, and geography. And when you go state by state, a pattern emerges. Take, for example, the five states with the largest pay gaps: Utah (73 cents), Louisiana, Alabama, New Hampshire (all at 75 cents), and Idaho (76 cents). What else do all of these states have in common? If you guessed abortion restrictions, then you are correct. Louisiana, Alabama, and Idaho have total bans, while Utah imposes extreme restrictions, and New Hampshire criminalizes abortion after the 24th week of pregnancy. Coincidence? I think not. But there are a few ways that the rollback of bodily autonomy plays into the larger economic status of women across the country.  It’s partly simple cause and effect. The ability to have children when and how you want feeds financial independence: In the 1970s, when birth control became more accessible, women were able to slowly ascend the ranks of the workforce and get into higher-paying jobs; our paid labor now accounts for a quarter of America’s GDP. Of course, many other factors contribute to the wage gap, too—including the amount of time women spend on unpaid labor, institutional racism, the lack of social safety nets for parents, and the conservative backlash to women entering the workforce. But those factors are often worsened by the same conservative state legislatures passing abortion bans: In other words, the people passing the bans are often the same people refusing to lift the minimum wage for working families who do have babies. Still with us? And when governments are unable to see reproductive rights as a factor in economic stability, they’re willfully ignoring the financial hurdles that millions of women face and facilitating a return to the 1950s ideal of housewives and heteronormative families. Anne Boleyn once said of her stepdaughter, “She is my death and I am hers.” And that’s how it is with reproductive justice and economic progress—the death of one is the death of the other. As policy analyst and researcher Asha Banerjee wrote in a report for the Economic Policy Institute, “The states banning abortion rights have, over decades, intentionally constructed an economic policy architecture defined by weak labor standards, underfunded and purposefully dysfunctional public services, and high levels of incarceration…we find that, generally, the states enacting abortion bans are the same ones that are economically disempowering workers through other channels.” AND:
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 FRIENDLY COMPETITION 🏀So about that fun challenge I mentioned up top! Like countless others this weekend, I will be cobbling together my limited knowledge of the inner workings of women’s college basketball and making an official NCAA bracket. But wouldn’t it be more fun to do it together? It would! Here’s how we’ll be doing our Meteor community March Madness. Put your bracket together, and send a PDF of it to [email protected]. As the tournament progresses, I’ll track everyone’s progress until there’s only one bracketologist left standing. That lucky duck will get a fabulous Meteor tote and bragging rights. The tournament begins March 20, so you’ve got until midnight that evening to send me your brackets. May the three-pointers be ever in your favor.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Subscribe using their share code or sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
