Slut-shamed In a Courtroom
  April 18, 2024 Evening, Meteor readers, Tomorrow is a big day for a large portion of the population. Of course, I am talking about the release of Taylor Swift’s “Tortured Poets Department.” To prepare, I have broken up with my husband so I can really feel all of the feelings Taylor wants me to feel. It’s going to be great.  In today’s newsletter, Neda Semnani examines the “slut puppy” case the Supreme Court is deciding whether to take. Plus the pro-Palestinian protestors who just lost their jobs and some recommendations for your weekend. “All’s fair in love and poetry,” Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON
  THIS WEEK AT SCOTUSNow Brenda Andrew is on death row, and the Supreme Court could weigh inBY NEDA TOLOUI-SEMNANI  A PORTRAIT OF BRENDA ANDREW PAINTED BY EMILY DAVIS ADAMS The U.S. Supreme Court will decide this Friday if it will hear the case of Brenda Andrew, the only woman currently on death row in Oklahoma. The Andrew case is the second Oklahoma capital punishment case vying for the court’s attention this term, and it has potentially far-reaching ramifications—not just for the state, but for the rights of women and queer people everywhere. The background on the case is this: Andrew, along with James Pavatt, her former partner, were found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2001 shooting death of Andrew’s estranged husband, Rob, but the jury rejected the state’s charge that Andrew would be a “continuing threat to society.” Nonetheless, both Andrew and Pavatt were sentenced to death. Throughout Andrew’s 2004 trial, her sexuality, her dress, her demeanor, and, ultimately, her behavior as a wife, mother, and Christian were dissected and condemned. In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court, a former federal judge, 17 law professors, and four domestic violence advocates argue that the Andrew case was rife with gender bias that unfairly prejudiced the jury against her. “At a time when women’s rights generally are on the chopping block—also the rights of queer people and civil rights of minority communities—we've got a case that's at the extreme end of what it means when we dehumanize these communities when we strip people of their humanity,” says Nathalie Greenfield, a lawyer with the non-profit firm Phillips Black, which filed the writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court on Andrew’s behalf. She argues that if the Supreme Court does not review the case, the justices would sanction using “assumptions, stereotypes, and tropes about people who dare to transgress perceived norms,” especially when it comes to gender, race, and identity.  BRENDA ANDREW AS A YOUNG WOMAN (IMAGE COURTESY OF PHILLIPS BLACK) The trial transcript, for example, reveals that witnesses were encouraged to describe Andrew's appearance in detail, from her dresses (“very tight, very short, with a lot of cleavage,” said one) to her make-up choices (“gothic”), and also to say whether they thought those choices were appropriate. Prosecutors also waved Andrew’s underwear in front of the jury and called her a “slut puppy,” one of the last things members of the jury heard before they began to deliberate. “There [were] just so many recorded instances of gendered evidence being presented every single day [of the Andrew trial],” says Greenfield. “And a lot of this was about her appearance and her extramarital affairs. The focus was on the fact that this was a woman who was transgressing gender norms by not being this chaste Christian wife.” Oklahoma is a particularly deadly state: It has executed 124 people since 1976, when the U.S. lifted its moratorium on capital punishment. (Only Texas has killed more people.) Of these, just three were women—two of whom were prosecuted by district attorney Bob Macy, who is considered the second deadliest prosecutor in United States history. He’s responsible for 54 death sentences—more than any other prosecutor who was practicing law between 1980 and 2001. He resigned in 2001 after evidence of prosecutorial misconduct was found in 18 of those 54 cases, resulting in three exonerations. However, his shadow still stretches over Oklahoma’s justice system—and Macy’s assistant district attorney and protege, Fern Smith, was a prosecutor in the Andrew case. According to transcripts, Smith repeatedly asked witnesses to describe Andrew’s dress, opine over Andrew’s behavior, and state whether or not Andrew was, in Smith’s words, a “good mother.” This isn’t the first time a case Smith has prosecuted has been challenged. She has been repeatedly accused of failing to disclose exculpatory evidence—evidence that could be favorable to the defendant—and even of destroying evidence. In fact, she was accused of prosecutorial misconduct by name in the case of Richard Glossip, the other Oklahoma capital punishment case that will be in front of the U.S. Supreme Court this year. The Supreme Court has already delayed deciding whether to hear Andrew’s case twice. Tomorrow, they could do one of three things: agree to hear it, decline to hear it, or “vacate and remand,” which means the Supreme Court could return her case to the appellate court to reconsider without hearing an oral argument. Since Andrew was sentenced, she has been the sole woman on death row; consequently, she has served the majority of her sentence—more than 16 years—in solitary confinement. According to the United Nations, prolonged solitary confinement, or more than 15 days without meaningful human contact, is defined as torture. In February 2020, Andrew was moved to the general population, where, according to her lawyers, she thrived. She got a job and joined a quilting circle. In January, two days after her attorneys filed the writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court, Andrew was returned to solitary. She wasn’t given a reason.  BRENDA ANDREW, SECOND FROM LEFT, AND MEMBERS OF HER QUILTING CIRCLE (IMAGE COURTESY OF PHILLIPS BLACK) “The gender bias is just so finely woven into the trial that you can't extricate it,” argues Jessica Sutton, another attorney with Phillips Black. “It's unique in that way. However, the real issue implicates the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. We have to ensure that trials are fundamentally fair. We want to make sure that, for the ultimate punishment, we have a reliable trial, a reliable process, a reliable conviction, and sentencing. What the prosecution did is undermine every aspect of the entire trial.”  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?
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SCOTUS Just Made Protesting Much Harder
  April 16, 2024 Evening, Meteor readers, Before we get any further away from the afterglow of March Madness, I must congratulate our top bracketologist, Em, who is getting a brand-new Meteor tote. They had this to say about their unexpected victory when I contacted them with the news:  In today’s newsletter, we dig into a ruling targeting protest organizers, talk more basketball, and share a warning about the importance of oxygen. Looking forward to the regular season, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON Freedom of assembly? Not for everyone: If you’re a protest organizer in Mississippi, Texas, or Louisiana, your life got a lot more complicated last Friday after the Supreme Court declined to hear a lower court case out of Louisiana: Mckesson v. Doe. The case is super layered, so let’s break it down. The question at the heart of the case, which was first heard in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, is whether or not a protest organizer can be held financially liable for the actions of an attendee who does something illegal. The organizer named in the suit is DeRay Mckesson, the famed blue-vest-wearing Black Lives Matter activist (and podcast host) who organized a protest outside a Baton Rouge police station in 2016. During the action, a police officer was struck by a rock thrown by an unknown person who was present. There is no evidence that Mckesson himself injured the police officer; the accusation is that he created an environment that allowed for the officer to be injured. In the eyes of the conservative Fifth Circuit, Mckesson is financially liable for the illegal actions of this unknown assailant. But the legal logic to justify that is…loose. Under a 1982 court ruling in the case of NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware, protest organizers can only be held liable if evidence finds that they incited illegal activity through speech or authorized illegal action by attendees. But adhering strictly to that ruling would have let Mckesson off the hook, so the Fifth Circuit—with six Trump appointees—went further by adding an extra (intentionally vague) rule to the list of ways organizers can be found liable. According to this court, “The First Amendment does not apply ‘where a defendant creates unreasonably dangerous conditions, and where his creation of those conditions causes a plaintiff to sustain injuries.’” Because Mckesson’s protest blocked access to a police station and a public highway (a very common tactic in direct actions), he created “unreasonably dangerous conditions” and is therefore liable. As one judge on the Fifth Circuit who wrote a dissenting opinion on the ruling noted, the decision would unfairly make organizers liable for “the unlawful acts of counter-protesters and agitators.” Without action from SCOTUS, the ruling won’t be overturned, and any future organizer in Texas, Mississippi, or Louisiana will face great financial risk for anything that happens at their protest. While this doesn’t all-out ban protesting, it certainly makes it much harder to organize. The move couldn’t come at a worse time. Protestors have taken to the streets over abortion rights, trans rights, and climate change over the last year, and just yesterday, protestors in California, Oregon, and New York blocked major roads to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. If you’re organizing a protest over any issue and want to know your rights, learn more here. AND:
 CLARK AND WNBA COMMISSIONER CATHY ENGELBERT (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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Christine Blasey Ford, In Her Own Words
  April 12, 2024 The author of a new memoir on retaliation, recovery---and the survivors who reached out to herBY CINDI LEIVEFive and a half years ago, psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford raised her right hand before the 21-person Senate Judiciary Committee and became, despite her best attempts otherwise, a public figure. Her testimony that then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school—that he had covered her mouth so violently that “I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me” and laughed while doing it—riveted the country in one of those moments that felt like history even as it was happening. On one level, we all know what happened next: Kavanaugh railed angrily, protestors took to the streets, and after a brief delay, he was confirmed while the sitting president mocked Dr. Ford ruthlessly. But what happened next to the woman at the center of the hearings—and what led her to that day? Those are the questions Dr. Ford answers in her new memoir, One Way Back, an account of everything before, during, and after her testimony.  DR. FORD BEING SWORN IN FOR HER TESTIMONY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) I’ve known Dr. Ford for a few years, and thus have had a glimpse of the dual role she plays in mid-2020s America. To me—and I’m guessing to most of you—she’s a hero, someone who respects the integrity of this country’s highest offices so much that she sacrificed her own privacy, comfort, and security for them. To the radical right, though, she’s a target—so much so that death threats (“I want to see you three feet under, six feet under…” she says) have been a constant in her life, and she’s had to hire security to protect her family. After she appeared alongside Professor Anita Hill on The Meteor’s podcast Because of Anita two years ago, I got a call from a political operative hissing ominously, “She was told to keep her mouth shut.” I’m so happy she hasn’t. Her book is full of secrets and grief and Capitol Hill betrayals, but also sun and surf and heavy metal and the voice of the actual human behind that blue suit and raised right hand. We talked by phone two weeks after her book came out. Cindi Leive: You once told me that when you thought about writing a memoir about testifying, you thought of those kids’ books that can be read two ways—like you read it in one direction, and then turn it upside down and it’s a different story. What were those two ways that you thought about your own experience? Christine Blasey Ford: I think for the first two or three years post-testimony, I was torn between two books I could write: One would be why you must do this, with all the benefits [of coming forward about assault], and the other would be why you should never do this—about all the forces that are working against you, and all of the costs. For a long time, I was in a place of experiencing the retaliation and costs. That's why I chose not to write for so long. I knew that my first attempt would not be helpful to anyone. I think it was at the five-year mark that I began to feel that it was part of history, not part of current events. For me personally, it felt like it was enough in the rearview mirror that I could try to write something that honored that, yeah, this is life-changing, and there was a cost, but there's also a bunch of benefits that you don't really see while you're making the life changes. You and I met through a project focused on the more than 100,000 letters you got after you testified. And I remember you saying at first that you thought to yourself, Why are they writing me? Didn't they see the end of the movie? Meaning—that [Kavanaugh] was confirmed anyway… The first letters I read were [written] during the week of the paused investigation between the hearing and the vote, where [the FBI] was going to supposedly look into things a little deeper and do an extended background check. And those letters were really hopeful—and I felt bad for them considering how it ended [with no extensive investigation and a swift confirmation] because their hopes had been raised. And then, with the letters that came after, I just felt like, “I bet a lot of this mail is people who are feeling sorry for me.” I felt like I had missed a game-winning field goal or made an own goal in a game. [Laughs] But then, when I really looked through the letters…yes, people felt bad for me, but that's not really why they were writing. There was an amazing benefit happening for survivors watching the testimony: They wrote that they were inspired to make more clarified decisions about whether they wanted to come forward or not about their own assault or they wanted to share it with someone else. And I grapple with the fact that all of that came because I didn’t get my way that the hearing be kept private. It was televised, and even though it turned my life upside down, it benefited so many people. Wait, pause on that. You write that you didn’t actually realize it would be televised…you thought, “Maybe it'll be on C-Span, but who the hell watches C-Span?” [Laughs] I mean, I was walking down the hallway like, “Oh, it's a work day. No one's going to watch this. My friends are all really hard workers, and they have class and they have responsibilities. I'll catch them up on it when I get back.”  MILLIONS OF PEOPLE STOPPED TO WATCH DR. FORD'S TESTIMONY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Cut to me sobbing in front of my television in Brooklyn, along with practically every other woman in the country. Right. During my first break, I really realized the magnitude of people who were watching it because I looked at my phone and had more text messages than I had ever collectively received. “Good job!” “You're doing great!” [Laughs] I was like, “How do they know?” But if it had gone the way you had anticipated—like, one camera for the archives somewhere in a basement—then these 100,000 people wouldn't have been able to make meaning in their own lives…And that process of “meaning-making,” I learned from you, is an actual psychological phenomenon. I didn't understand it until my student at the time—Elizabeth Michael, who's now a doctor of psychology—explained it to me: People change their emotions and cognitions based on hearing or viewing someone else's experience. And I still was in a pretty rough patch in my life, so I wasn't really understanding…so she placed it in the context of television and movies. If you're watching a TV show and you're relating to some character, there's this small shift and identification and validation that's happening about your own thoughts and feelings. It starts to open up something in your own mind to think about. I'm wondering if you want to share a couple of the specific letters that moved you… All of the things that people made by hand or knitted—almost every day, I could wear an item of clothing, whether it's socks or gloves or a shirt or a scarf, or blankets, that people made. The simple thank you’s were beautiful in their own right—and then there were 10-page letters from people sharing what they had been through themselves. And also the offers! Like Otis from Texas, offering his truck for my family to move in, and people from all over the country saying, “You can come stay at our place. We have a cabin!” Like, who would open their door to a stranger? A lot of people, apparently. You’ve said that survivors in their 70s and 80s wrote you to say that they'd never talked about their own experiences before. What was it like to read those letters? I felt for them—and I felt like I could have easily been one of them and gone the rest of my life without really talking about this. I was on a different path once the Supreme Court was in play—I felt the value of that institution was more important than me. But those letters were really hard to read at the beginning. Then I adapted, and I feel like I have a new role, which is to be a recipient of those stories and to honor them. That’s also what happens to me any time I go out in public: People come up to me and want to tell me what happened to them. They’ve identified me as a safe person to speak to about their story. At first, that role was really overwhelming. And now, it's an honor. I'm honored to be that person.  DR. FORD SIGNING HER MEMOIR FOR A READER AT A GATHERING IN LOS ANGELES. (PHOTO BY MAYA JOAN) You and Anita Hill have a lot in common. And you talked about this when you were on the Because of Anita podcast two years ago, but part of your common experience is that in both of your cases, Congress failed to do a full investigation. And in your case, we later learned that the FBI had received 4,500 tips at the time of the hearing and shared them with the White House, at which point nothing happened. First of all, how have you let go of being, like, so damn angry about that? Because it's hard for me to even say those words aloud and not be pissed. That was really quite something. And the public didn't learn about [the failed investigation] until, like, two years after the testimony. But we sort of knew that right away. So it was, for me, bundled up in the grief immediately after the vote and the FBI not coming to interview me and my corroborators. And the logistics involved—where the executive branch is overseeing the FBI, so they're the ones deciding whether they want to look at those tips or not. The process was the most disappointing part about it. The outcome was less disappointing than the process. You write that you've moved into the phase of “radical acceptance,” but how would you like to see the process work for people who might come forward with information that should be heard in the future? I'm concerned that people won't come forward, given the process that they've witnessed. I think in the workplace and in other settings where you have H.R. and Title IX and other protections, it's maybe a little bit safer—a little bit more defined, at least. And in [most] workplaces, you're not allowed to retaliate. And so I think that, at minimum, we need to make sure that there's no retaliation against people for speaking up in a government setting. I think we're better than that. One of the most moving scenes in the book is during the summer of 2018 when you’re deciding how to come forward with what you know about [then-nominee Kavanaugh]. And your older kid is kind of intuiting what's happening but doesn't totally know…. He was noticing my behavior was a lot different at the beach that summer—I was talking to my friends excessively, and we were very serious and focused rather than relaxed. We were on a very tight timeline: The president had said that there was going to be a nominee selected in one week, and when Brett was on the shortlist that week, I was certainly just behaving differently. And kids pick up on these things, so he asked about it a few times. I kept it as simple as possible and said, “Someone that I know from high school who did something really bad to me is being considered for a really important job by the president, and I need to let him know.” When I first told him, he said, “Well, that's really nice.” He said it with a tad of confusion. And then, the next day, he came back to me and had thought about it, and he said he probably had an idea of what might have happened to me and that he was really sorry. What a loving response. That’s what you’d want to hear from anyone. He’s a great kid. I'm really lucky. And in my mind, it was like, “Oh, now I can go forward. He's okay with it.” What you went through in 2018 left such a long shadow over the last five years for you. And I'm curious: What are the moments where you feel like you can be liberated from thinking about all of that and just be you? Minimalism is now my new way of being, and I've just found that really helpful—to reduce the complexity of life, for now. That's where I feel like I can be myself: outside or in the ocean or just among a small group of friends. So not in the mosh pit at a Metallica concert? Oh, there, too. There too.  ABOUT CINDI LEIVECindi Leive is the co-founder of The Meteor, the former editor-in-chief of Glamour and Self, and the author or producer of best-selling books including Together We Rise. Her related listening recommendation: Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford, in conversation for the first time here.  ENJOY MORE OF THE METEOR Thanks for reading The Saturday Send. Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy and The Meteor’s flagship newsletter, sent on Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
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. |
