"I woke up worried for my daughter."
  November 6, 2024 Dear Meteor readers, You’re getting this email approximately 12 hours after Donald Trump secured his second presidential victory, and only minutes after Vice President Kamala Harris conceded in front of a tearful crowd at Howard University. Trump’s decisive win is still a fresh wound: We’re only in the earliest minutes of figuring out what it means for not just our democracy but our actual, real lives: how we work, where we are safe, who we need to hold close. As a media outlet, The Meteor tries to bring you reasonably thoughtful stories, analysis and videos. But as a group of real people negotiating emotions, The Meteor had a day like everyone else, and may or may not have typed this from a fetal position on the couch. Rage, disorientation, and heartache for the many people who put their lives on the line for change were all part of the mix. So while there’ll be plenty of time for action steps in the weeks (and, realistically, years) to come, today is personal. In this newsletter, six of my colleagues tell you exactly what today felt like to them. (We did have a no-false-hope rule: “You know we’re not gonna kumbaya our way out of this,” Shannon said at our editorial meeting this morning.) Here are their reflections. And we want to hear yours—find us at [email protected], or, as always, here. Grateful for all of you, Cindi Leive  “We have never been safe.”A Trump win hits different as a tranny. In 2016, I was a 22-year-old gay boy living in Houston, and I was scared. The day after he won, some men in a pickup truck drove by me and yelled, “TRUMP WON, FAGGOT!” And, obviously, that felt bad. But now…? I have an appointment to discuss getting back on estrogen (had to stop after a health scare) set for January 30—ten days after the inauguration. And no, I don’t think gender-affirming care will be outlawed in ten days. (Mind you, I also thought the sexual abuse court decision might make people give half a shit, so what do I know?) But it does have me acutely aware: How much longer do I have? That seems to be the common question for the trans people I’ve been talking to today: How much time do I have to change my name? How soon can I scrape the money together for surgery? How much longer can I stay in the state where I’ve built my home? If this truly is the fabric of the country we live in, will the remainder of my life be measured in decades, years, or weeks?  A national monument of enduring historical significance. And a fort in the background. (Photo courtesy of Bailey Wayne Hundl) I remember the first Trump presidency. I remember how new oppressions would burst from his administration like solar flares—fast, unpredictable, deadly—and burn whichever community happened to be standing in the danger zone. And if the focus of his most recent campaign is any tell, my community’s going to need some SPF 70,000. I feel my cis friends’ knowing gloom. I get texts telling me they’re so sorry. My boyfriend holds me as he describes what he’ll do if anything happens to me. The danger is real, and I’m not the only one who knows it. There are small bright spots, electorally speaking: Zooey Zephyr, an outspoken trans state senator in Montana, won her reelection with 83%. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) will be the first openly transgender congresswoman (although she does, I’m sorry to say, support Israel’s right to “defend itself”). And I am not so naive as to pretend that amassing electoral power is enough to save my community. But it is nice to know that the next time a legislator in a room full of people suggests “hey, let’s kill the transes,” someone will be in that room to say no. But oddly enough, what brings me the most comfort is the knowledge that this country has never had my community’s interests at heart. At best, we have had the illusion of safety with some semi-significant improvements to our material realities. But I’ve always been one pickup truck of men away from becoming a headline. And before I was born, my community had it even worse. And still we loved. And still we held each other close. And still we resisted, and made art, made protest signs, made love, cried, danced, survived another day. I’m reminded so often, but especially today, of these words from queer pastor Hannah Adair Bonner: “We have never been safe, but we have always been brave. We have never been given a space; we have always had to take it.” —Bailey Wayne Hundl, content editor  “I woke up worried for my daughter.”Here are two of the things I kept in mind when I voted last week: my abortions, and my daughter.  Nona and her daughter Dorie at the Jersey Shore. (Photo courtesy of Nona Willis Aronowitz) I’ve had two abortions—one at seven weeks because I didn’t want to have a baby, and one at 14 weeks because I very much wanted to have a baby but had gotten some horrible news from our genetic screening. Both took place in New York, where they were easy to schedule, covered by insurance, and within a few miles of my house. Both times, I envisioned myself living a parallel reality of a woman in an abortion-hostile state. In 2019, when I had my first abortion, I thought about the spate of “heartbeat bills” being proposed across the country, keenly aware that my procedure would have come too late if those bills had been law. In 2024, on the eve of my second, I thought about how my devastation would be compounded by planning an out-of-state abortion without medical guidance, amid work and childcare obligations and my own deep grief. Today, 17 states would have prevented me from having my first abortion, and 19 would have blocked the second. In each case, my life would have been irreparably changed against my will. Yesterday, I hoped that the country would elect a person who believes in every pregnant person’s right to shape their fate. That did not come to pass—even though voters approved seven more ballot initiatives codifying abortion rights, all meaningful victories that reflect abortion’s broad popularity. As I cuddled my oblivious, wriggling toddler this morning, I worried for her future. But I took a teensy bit of solace in her declaration of bodily autonomy as I tried to persuade her to go potty before we left for daycare: “NO, I don’t have to go pee!!!” she screamed. It was her body; I couldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do. My job will be to help her keep that sense of agency, that sense of self-ownership, for as long as humanly possible. —Nona Willis Aronowitz, contributing editor  “Sit in that discomfort.”I wish I could tell you that I was shocked by the news that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. But I don’t want to lie. I have seen the deep ugliness, the racism, the violence of this country. I have felt the fear of living as a visibly Muslim woman, the dread of being visibly queer, and even changed the way I speak so as to make myself non-threatening to white people. I have lived my entire life under the heavy thumb of a white-nationalist America that, until 2016, went largely unnoticed by those who benefited from it. But now you see it. You see him. You know now without any doubt what has always been waiting just beneath the surface for someone willing to say all of it out loud. Someone willing to say they will reshape this nation for the benefit of white, reactionary, Christian men. And perhaps seeing it in the harsh light of day grips you with fear. For some of us, these sensations are not new. But for many of you reading this, it’s the first time you’ve seen white supremacy so naked, so unabashed. And if you are in the latter group I challenge you to sit with that fact all day today. Sit in that discomfort. Don’t look for something to point to to make all of this somehow feel okay. Spend time in the knowledge that when given the opportunity to say “no” to a fascist, a majority of Americans chose to embrace him. I’ve lived under a blanket of white supremacy for 30 years. You can endure that feeling for 24 hours. And when we are ready to resume the fight—because we are going to fight—my guiding light will be the people of the Young Lords Party of the 1960s and ‘70s who, when everything was working against them, came together to care for their own. This group of young Latine and Black activists in New York and Chicago knew politicians would not save them and so they chose each other. They chose resistance. They chose to change lives. There is nothing stopping each and every single one of us from making that same choice. This is the moment. "El machete no es solo pa' cortar caña." —Shannon Melero, newsletter editor  “We are not the lost ones.” Rebecca and her sister in community building, Caryn Rivers. (Photo courtesy of Rebecca Carroll) For those of us who voted for decency: Decency lost, but we didn’t. We are not the lost ones. We are the ones who fought and will continue to fight for each other with our whole entire selves. As a Black woman in America who is resolutely clear about the work we do and have done for this country, I’m angry AF that a white man protected by the primal callousness of America won. But I am also buoyed by the brilliant fighters who, over the last century, turned community organizing into a collective blueprint for how to be in this world. Toni told us, Jimmie warned us, Octavia predicted this almost to the letter. Our work now is to evolve the language of telling, the tenor of warning, and the vision of predicting by tapping into the reserve of love and fight and compassion created by those of us who did vote for decency. We prioritized the future safety and wellness of each other over everything else. That priority hasn’t changed. —Rebecca Carroll, editor-at-large and founding collective member  “I didn’t realize how hopeful I was.”I know we’ll have endless discussions about what happened and who to blame—a lot of which will be misguided, some of it accurate but hard to hear. I see people on social media saying they knew this would happen. I respect that, but I’m shocked at how legitimately shocked I am. I didn’t realize how hopeful I was that people would not fall for Trump’s chaos again. And it’s hard for me right now to even begin to grapple with what’s to come. But as a writer and a movement journalist, I’m clinging to one thing I know to be true: There is no greater power than of the collective and of standing with each other, and there’s never been a moment in history when that part was easy or handed to us. I’m deeply grateful for every organizer today—every person who protested, door-knocked, talked to people, made art, bore witness to atrocity, and made impossible compromises. That said, I’m not creating today. Today, I’m listening and feeling, wrapping myself in a blanket even though it’s 75 degrees in November, and eating my favorite things while the wisdom comes and the ancestors show us the way. It’s coming. Some may say it’s already here. —Samhita Mukhopadhyay, former editorial director and collective member  “It’s going to be up to them.”Waiting for the girls to wake up was the hardest part. Hearing their footsteps on the stairs, eager for news. Knowing that I’ll have to find words, again, that instill hope and protect their young spirits, but also brace them for the realities of a country and a culture that thinks of them as less than the perfect, beautiful beings they are. Words they’ll remember and return to someday when they need to draw on reserves of strength to keep going in whatever fight they will inevitably be fighting. But this time they know more. They’ve seen more. As South Asian girls, they also see themselves in Kamala — and have now watched her come so close to realizing a dream that may not arrive anytime soon. In 2016, I wrote that I found my hope in their smiles, in the light in their eyes. Today there were no smiles. Today there were tears. The only thing I could do was to look at them and tell them that I still believe. That it’s going to be up to them. That they will be the ones to lead the next generation, with kindness, with integrity, and with love. And that I will be there for them, with them, always. I’ll be fighting too. —Tara Abrahams, head of impact  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 Everyone Forgets on Election Day
  November 4, 2024 Meteor friends, Tomorrow is the big day. We know there’s a lot on the line and we’re processing it all with you. We hope you’re ready to vote for something, and someone, you feel strongly about.  But before we all get swept up in the CNN of it all, let’s go over a few key things it’s easy to forget—both about Election Day and the confusion that is likely to come after. Make your voice heard, Cindi, Nona and Rebecca  IF YOU HAVEN'T VOTED YET... We’ve been saying this a lot in the newsletter when it comes to voting: “Y’all know what to do.” But for those who don’t know what to do—which is understandable, ’cause it’s not always clear!—we’re here to help.
Know your rights. If you’re told you can’t vote, ask to complete a provisional ballot, and learn your rights. And if anyone threatens or tries to block you from voting, report it to the Election Protection Hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE. Intimidation is illegal! IF YOU’VE ALREADY VOTED, BUT WANT TO HELP… POLL WORKERS IN GEORGIA DOING THE SACRED WORK OF SIGNING IN VOTERS DURING EARLY VOTING (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Focus on the people closest to you. Encourage them to vote, offer to watch the kids and drive them to their polling spot. If they have questions about accessibility or what to bring, direct them here. If they have questions about voting more confidentially (which people living in abusive situations may want), direct them here. And if they’re in a place where the lines are seemingly endless, pack them snacks and water.
WHAT TO EXPECT AFTER NOVEMBER 5 KIDS LOVE VOTING! (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Unless there’s an unexpected landslide, we probably won’t know who won the presidential election on Tuesday night. Here are some key things to know for the days and weeks ahead:
And finally, be mindful of inadvertently spreading dis- and misinformation during and after the election—it happens when we’re most confused and agitated. Here is a great resource with a checklist of what to consider before you share links. Let’s be part of the solution!  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. |
I Was a Sexual-Assault Advocate Under Trump
Yes, it was as bad as it sounds. And no—we can’t go back
By Alisa Sieber
Imagine walking into your office every morning—a room where you’ve listened to countless survivors recount their stories, where the air is often heavy with the weight of trauma. You sit down at your desk, surrounded by the files of people who trusted you to advocate for them, only to look up and see a framed photograph of the leader of your organization—a man who was accused of sexual misconduct.
That was my reality. My commander-in-chief was Donald Trump, the man who openly boasted about grabbing women “by the pussy.” And suddenly, after January 2017, he was at the top of the military chain of command, overseeing everything including the very program where I served as a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (SARC) in the Marine Corps.
How did I end up here, serving as a victim advocate under a president who openly bragged about violating women’s bodies?
At 17, I joined the Marine Corps on a parental waiver, seeking structure, belonging, and a way to overcome the depression and trauma I carried from past abuse. I had trusted the Corps to make me stronger than my pain, to help me become untouchable. But that trust was misplaced, and I found myself a victim of sexual assault within the organization I thought would protect me. The weight of these experiences grew heavier as I pushed myself harder, hoping the pain would fade.
Eventually, I became a C-130 pilot, flying logistical missions and supporting operations worldwide. Yet, despite my skills, I never felt I truly belonged in the cockpit. Constant pressure in a male-dominated field kept me perpetually on edge. Any sign of struggle was seen as weakness. I felt like I was breaking myself just to perform, overcompensating to hide everything I’d endured.
Midway through my career, I was assigned the role of victim advocate for the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program. I knew this role could trigger my own unreported trauma, but saying “no” wasn’t an option. Refusing would have disappointed my leadership, who wouldn’t have understood. And I knew survivors needed someone who truly cared, so I took the training to become a victim advocate during the 2016 election.
At that time, I never could have imagined that a perpetrator would rise to commander-in-chief. I had commissioned just as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed, and combat roles had opened to all genders—a glimpse of progress. I was idealistic, believing I could help survivors find the courage to report where I hadn’t, trusting they would be supported by leaders who upheld accountability and respect.
After Trump took office, the culture shifted dramatically. Frequent policy changes and inflammatory rhetoric created tension and uncertainty within units, blurring lines around acceptable behavior. Locker room talk, inappropriate jokes, and divisive comments on gender and sexual orientation reignited divisions we thought were behind us. And my own job got harder: How could we tell survivors they mattered when the man at the top dismissed responsibility and minimized identity, service, and assault? His actions sent a clear message: integrity was no longer a priority.
For survivors like me, that shift was painful. Each day, I worked closely with other military personnel who had survived violence—accompanying them to appointments, guiding them through the judicial process, and bearing witness to their stories. The hardest moments were sitting with them as they unraveled, recounting violations committed by those they trusted—often colleagues who wore the same uniform.
In those vulnerable moments, Trump’s photograph was more than an image. It was a symbol of abandonment, a message that survivors’ pain didn’t matter. Justice felt impossible in a system that seemed to be moving backward. Survivors who dared to speak up were often ostracized, while perpetrators faced minimal consequences.
Each story weighed heavily on me, reminding me daily that the system wasn’t built to save them—or me. By 2019, I left the military, hoping civilian life would lift that burden. But the pain followed. Outside the military, I found that people didn’t want to hear about the dark realities of service or the systemic failures that harm survivors. The same people who claimed to love their country would flip their flags upside down, dismissing my nine years of service because I didn’t share their values. For believing in empathy, justice, and accountability, my experience as a Marine—my skills, my sacrifices—seemed to mean nothing. Once again, I felt silenced. And that silence is not something I want my daughters to inherit.
As I began to share my experiences, other survivors—people I never expected—started opening up to me. One of the most profound moments came recently when my own mother shared a story I had never heard before. At 18, she was drugged, assaulted, and left pregnant. Raised in a strict religious household, she couldn’t turn to her family, fearing punishment. Instead, she found support at Planned Parenthood. If not for her courage, I wouldn’t be here today.
Her story brings everything full circle—showing how bodily autonomy shapes our lives. It reinforces for me that we need leadership grounded in empathy, not just power.
The fight for survivors of military sexual trauma is far from over. With threats like Project 2025 proposing cuts to veterans’ disability benefits, survivors who serve face even greater challenges—alongside active-duty women whose health care autonomy is already limited.
We can’t allow that. I dream of a world where no survivor must live in the shadow of a predator. A world where all of us can stand openly in the light, safe and valued. And we can make that world possible when we vote.
Alisa Sieber is a Marine Corps veteran, former C-130 pilot, and Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (SARC) who served under the Trump administration. Today she is a writer and advocate, she uses her voice to shed light on the systemic challenges survivors face and the importance of leadership that truly values human dignity.
Her life-saving abortion would have been a "crime"
  October 31, 2024 Happy Halloween, Meteor readers, And a happy Diwali to those celebrating, as well. I wish I had something fun and spooky to offer on this eve when the veil between worlds is thinnest, but honestly, the regular news is scary enough. So, let’s get straight into it. Maiden, mother, crone, Shannon Melero 🔮  WHAT'S GOING ON“Natural causes”: A new report from ProPublica released earlier this week investigated the preventable death of Josseli Barnica, a Texas mother who died from an infection in 2021 after doctors delayed treatment of her miscarriage. Despite the fact that doctors had confirmed that Barnica was miscarrying her 17-week-old fetus, they declined to intervene on Barnica’s behalf because it would be, as one doctor relayed to her, “a crime to give her an abortion.” Barnica was forced to spend 40 hours waiting for the fetus’ heart to stop before she delivered it shortly after. She died three days later from “sepsis due to acute bacterial endometritis…following a spontaneous abortion of a 17-week stillbirth fetus,” her autopsy shows. Underneath the cause of death, Barnica’s is listed as “natural.” Her death may have been technically natural, but it was also very much man-made. She died from negligence, from fear, and because she lived in a state with the country’s oldest abortion ban on the books. Yes, Texas’ ban has provisions that allegedly allow for an abortion to preserve the life of the mother. And yet what we have here is one more dead mother. The pile of corpses is getting higher, and still, we have to listen to pundits and Donald Trump himself pretend that these tragic stories are mere fantasy or unrelated events. Bluntly, the GOP—one of the two most powerful political parties in the country—simply does not care about preserving anyone’s life. Don’t give them the chance to do this to someone else. AND:
 WEEKEND READING 📚On work: After years of dismissing the girlboss, have millennials overcorrected? Maybe, says our own Samhita Mukhopadhyay. (Bustle) On divisions: Trump’s anti-immigrant messaging is expertly designed to sow even more division between Black and Latino voters. And it’s working. (The New York Times) On deviants: “I am delighted to inform you that all monsters are gay.” (Slate)  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. |
She Needed an Abortion in Alabama
  October 29, 2024 Darling Meteor readers, I’m sure by now you’ve seen clips of the racist comments made by speakers at Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden over the weekend. I won’t angrily opine on the “floating island of garbage” comment for too long, but as a product of garbage island, I will say one thing: If you don’t quite understand why the right is targeting Latinos and Puerto Rico specifically, read this and this (written by my sister!), then go out and read The War Against All Puerto Ricans. In today's newsletter, we introduce you to a young woman who was denied life-saving abortion care in Alabama. Plus, an open letter about Israel from more than 1,000 authors, and an update on the WNBA. Garbage Girl  WHAT'S GOING ONUnited States of Abortion: Alabama Yesterday, we broke the story of Tamara Costa, a young woman from Alabama who was denied timely abortion care and forced to travel nearly 600 miles to terminate a life-threatening partial molar pregnancy.  In early August, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist shared with Tamara and her husband Caleb that the fetus she was carrying didn't have a skull. Its major organs were outside of its body; the lower extremities couldn’t be seen at all. “I was pretty quiet,” Tamara explains. “But my husband was like, 'Are you sure your results are correct? Are you sure your ultrasound is up to date?' I think we were just trying to hear that there could be a possibility of something different.” The specialist said that Tamara’s baby would not survive outside the womb, that termination was his only recommendation, and that Tamara should go back to her doctor for more information. But the OB-GYN did not offer “more information”—at least not in the way they might have hoped. When Costa and her husband arrived at her appointment the following week, they say that the OB-GYN told them that, since they were in Alabama, there weren’t “a lot of resources,” but that she’d see what she could find. Then the doctor handed her a sticky note with a phone number and the words “Planned Parenthood Chicago” written on it. “She told me that she’d be willing to see me afterward to do genetic testing, just to confirm that it was nothing with me that happened,” says Costa, “and that was pretty much the last time I heard from my doctor.” After maxing out a credit card, the couple traveled to Chicago—where Tamara was diagnosed with a partial molar pregnancy, a condition in which an abnormal placenta grows at an accelerated rate, raising the pregnant person’s risk of organ failure and cancer. “No one in her care up until this point had even mentioned the word molar pregnancy to her, right?” recalls Dr. Erica Hinz, the doctor on duty at Planned Parenthood Chicago. “I was very, very angry and very, very shocked.” AND:
 A NOTE FROM OUR FRIENDSAttention, New Yorkers! As next Tuesday nears, PowHer New York, a network of over 100 gender and racial justice organizations, is mobilizing voters to ensure that the rights and interests of women and people of color are front and center through its PowHer the Vote campaign. This year, the initiative focuses on informing New York voters and candidates about issues like Prop 1—the New York Equal Rights Amendment—along with voter turnout and the importance of electing leaders who champion gender and racial equity. Learn more about Prop 1 and the campaign through PowHer the Vote, supported by the Amplify Her Foundation.  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. |
HER LIFE WAS AT RISK. ALABAMA DIDN’T CARE.
NEWSLETTER
Tamara Costa needed an immediate abortion. All she got was a sticky note with the phone number of a clinic 580 miles away. Here’s how one state’s severe laws punish families in terrifying health situations
BY JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD
Tamara Costa was over the moon when, in June 2024, she discovered she was pregnant for the second time. A 24-year-old logistics analyst in Athens, Alabama, she and her now-husband Caleb were already raising a toddler son, Xavier, and were eager to give him a sibling. They began saving for a larger house to accommodate a growing family. Tamara had gotten a pregnancy test at a Publix, sneaking away from her mom to buy it so she could surprise her. “As soon as it was positive, we ran to [Xavier’s] Grandma, like ‘Look!’” she says. “Everyone was all excited.”
But the day after she took the test, Costa began bleeding enough that she went to the hospital, where she says she was told that, four weeks into her pregnancy, she was having a miscarriage. The bleeding had stopped by the time she saw her OB-GYN but, after a routine check-up in mid-July—near the end of her first trimester—genetic testing found that the fetus had a high risk of triploidy, a usually fatal chromosomal abnormality. The OB-GYN then directed her to a maternal-fetal medicine specialist (MFM), trained to diagnose and treat high-risk pregnancies, an hour and a half away in Birmingham.
In early August, the MFM performed a high-resolution ultrasound—and the news was heartbreaking. The fetus didn’t have a skull, the specialist told them; the heart, liver and other organs were outside the body; the lower extremities couldn’t be seen at all. “I was pretty quiet, but my husband was like, ‘Are you sure your results are correct? Are you sure your ultrasound is up to date?’” Costa remembers. “I think we were just trying to hear that there could be a possibility of something different. But the specialist said that Baby would not survive outside of the womb, and there was nothing that we could do. And he said I could get sick, so termination was his only recommendation he was giving—and I had to go to my OB-GYN for more information on that.”
But the OB-GYN did not offer “more information”—at least not in the way they might have hoped. When Costa and her husband arrived at her appointment the following week, they say that the OB-GYN told them that, as they were in Alabama, there weren’t “a lot of resources,” but that she’d see what she could find.
Then she handed her a sticky note with a phone number and the words “Planned Parenthood Chicago” written on it. “She told me that she’d be willing to see me afterwards to do genetic testing, just to confirm that it was nothing with me that happened,” says Costa, “and that was pretty much the last time I heard from my doctor.”
THE LAW IN ALABAMA: AIMED AT “UTTERLY ISOLATING THE PERSON WHO IS PREGNANT”
Alabama is among the 14 states in the U.S. with a total abortion ban, in which the procedure is illegal in virtually all cases, at all stages of pregnancy. Under the law, which passed in 2019 but only took effect after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, performing an abortion is a Class A felony with a punishment of up to 99 years in prison, plus a $100,000 fine. Today, the state is fighting to put even more strictures on reproductive care; in February 2024, an Alabama Supreme Court ruling granted personhood to embryos, temporarily halting IVF in the state.
At the same time, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has made criminalizing abortion care and gender-affirming care a crusade, and has threatened to use an 1896 conspiracy law to criminalize anyone who helps a pregnant person travel out-of-state to obtain an abortion or even gives a patient information about how to do so. “If someone was promoting themselves out as a funder of abortion out of state,” Marshall told a radio show in 2022, “then that is potentially criminally actionable for us.” He then promised to “fully implement this law.”
Doctors and clinics have taken action to try to protect Alabama patients—including by suing to block AG Marshall from what they see as muzzling health-care providers. Robin Marty, the executive director of the WAWC Healthcare clinic in Tuscaloosa and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, says these laws are aimed at “completely and utterly isolating the person who is pregnant, because if you cut them off from information and any sort of assistance, then you have essentially isolated her and forced her to do what you want. And let’s be honest, that’s what domestic abusers do: isolate and then abuse and force them into what you want.”
Tamara and Caleb Costa at their wedding. (Photo courtesy of Tamara Costa)
There are resources for pregnant people in dangerous health circumstances—notably, abortion funds, which offer financial and logistical assistance. But pending the results of the lawsuit, none in the state of Alabama are currently allowed to operate, and Costa wasn’t aware of out-of-state resources that can help. So she and her husband maxed out a credit card to cover the expenses for the last-minute, 580-mile trip to Chicago—flights, rental car, hotel, food, and childcare for Xavier back home.
In the week leading up to Costa’s Chicago appointment, she began feeling even sicker, but her doctors couldn’t see her again before she left—and so, feeling neglected, she decided just to wait. When Costa finally arrived at Planned Parenthood on August 16, the clinic performed a routine pre-procedure ultrasound, and the OB-GYN on duty, Dr. Erica Hinz, went in to see the couple as soon as she’d reviewed it. Costa, she said, was experiencing a partial molar pregnancy, along with her fetus’s triploidy. (The Meteor has reviewed Costa’s medical records from Alabama and Illinois and confirmed these diagnoses and treatment.)
Dr. Hinz remembers that Caleb, in particular, “was really surprised to hear that. No one in her care up until this point had even mentioned the word molar pregnancy to her, right?” recalls the doctor. “I was very, very angry and very, very shocked.”
“IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN THAT FAR”
Molar and partial molar pregnancies are potentially life-threatening diagnoses in which an abnormal placenta grows at an accelerated rate; it can also develop precancerous cysts. The condition is rare, but can cause long-term complications; the placenta can grow into the muscles around the uterus and invade the pregnant person’s other organs, and the associated hyper-metabolism can cause anemia, heart attacks, and multiple-organ failure leading to seizure and stroke. The cysts within a molar pregnancy can also develop into cancer. Dr. Hinz says it’s rare to see a molar or partial molar pregnancy progress as far as Costa’s, because “with ultrasound technology these days, we catch it pretty early, and that’s why it’s become not as dangerous—because you catch it and you treat it early…In her case, it should have never gotten that far.”
The Costas with their son, Xavier, at Christmas. (Photo courtesy of Tamara Costa)
Dr. Hinz knew that Costa needed termination immediately, but because Planned Parenthood was not equipped to perform a blood transfusion if she needed one, she urgently arranged for Costa to have the procedure done immediately at a nearby hospital. “Honestly, if she were delayed any further, I think she would have had a much worse outcome,” says Dr. Hinz.
“I was in surgery within, like, an hour of being there,” Costa says of her hospital experience. “At that point, I think we were terrified.”
If any delay was so risky, why was Costa forced to wait two weeks and travel three states away to get the healthcare she so clearly needed? In Alabama, there is one highly restricted exception to the abortion ban: Care is allowed only if there is serious health risk to the pregnant person, and if two Alabama-certified physicians have confirmed the diagnosis. Costa’s partial molar pregnancy could have met the criteria, if she’d had that diagnosis earlier, and it’s possible she could have received care in the state.
But advocates tell The Meteor there is no guarantee that any Alabama facility would have been willing to perform the procedure. The wording of Alabama’s abortion ban is confusing, and according to Robin Marty, has cultivated an environment in which doctors can be terrified to act on their diagnoses. This has “destroyed the doctor-patient relationship,” says Marty. “Patients can’t trust doctors, either because the doctors are withholding information because they don’t want a patient to seek an abortion for ‘moral’ reasons, or they are withholding the information in order to protect themselves from any sort of potential litigation or ending up in jail. But on the other hand…doctors can’t necessarily trust the patients. I know that at our clinic, when we have patients who say, ‘Okay, I want an abortion, where can I get it?’, we can’t trust that these patients are actually trying to seek out this information and not trying to entrap us. So now the doctors can’t trust the patients, the patients can’t trust the doctors, and it has destroyed the confidence in the medical system at all. And so how are we supposed to deal with these extraordinarily life-threatening conditions when nobody can provide the information that needs to happen in order to make a good decision for the patient?”
The Costas’ experience reflected this fear-filled medical environment. Caleb Costa remembers that the doctors in Alabama were speaking in euphemisms. “They used the term ‘because of what’s going on,” he says. “‘In our current’ you know, ‘environment,’ there is not much we can do about it unless the heartbeat stops.”
“THIS ISN’T A DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN THING…IT WAS ABOUT MY HEALTH.”
Tamara and Caleb Costa met at the University of Alabama through mutual friends. They’d both grown up in the same area of Kentucky, and were living quiet lives that revolved around work, family, and University of Alabama football. Tamara never thought she would have an abortion herself, though she didn’t think her beliefs should restrict how another person might feel. But this experience has changed them both, and the trauma is still fresh. “This isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing,” she says. “It was human rights. It was about my health.”
Of the laws that put her in danger, Costa continues: “It seems like they’re concerned with life, right? [But] the only person that was affected was me. They said the baby wasn’t compatible with life. The only life that was affected in this [situation] was the living one. The only one that could survive was me. And it wasn’t a priority…The state, by making the decision for me, was essentially saying Baby’s life was already gone—so we were both gonna die.”
“Everything I enjoy doing mostly revolves around my family,” says Tamara Costa, here with Caleb and Xavier. (Photo courtesy of Tamara Costa)
It was “like she didn’t matter,” says Caleb Costa through tears. “Her life was at risk and it didn’t matter to anybody. She didn’t have an option here to get help, and that’s not fair to her… We were told we needed to terminate our child in Alabama, but Alabama said, you can’t do it here. Make it make sense.”
Back in Huntsville, Costa and her family are still dealing with the ripple effects of their ordeal. “Everything I enjoy doing mostly revolves around my family,” she says, including her three new siblings—foster kids whom her parents recently adopted. Tamara, Caleb, and Xavier have moved to another house, but they’re still paying off their credit card debt for their Chicago trip. They’re taking in every Crimson Tide game and watching their fantasy football brackets, but Tamara regularly sees a new local OB-GYN recommended by Dr. Hinz, because they have to monitor her blood on a weekly basis for any residual health risks from the partial molar pregnancy, which can continue to cause dangerously high hormone levels even after it’s treated. And, in fact, her levels of hCG—the hormones produced by pregnancy or cancer cells—still haven’t gone back down to zero.
But the couple is trying to both honor their baby and still move on. “I lost a part of me,” Tamara says. “So we were trying to figure out how we were going to keep that memory.”
“We decided we wanted something that was living and could grow.”
Late this summer, Caleb and Tamara bought a baby plant from a botanical garden in Huntsville. They tucked the ultrasound photograph into it, so that as the plant grows, “Baby is still growing with us.”
“We’ve just been trying,” Tamara says, “to heal the best way that we can.”
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is a Xicana writer, editor, and co-founder of the music and culture publication Hearing Things. Her first book, Vaquera, about growing up Mexican American in Wyoming and the myth of the American West, is coming soon from Penguin.
Read more about the medical facts of Tamara Costa’s case here. And read more United States of Abortion reporting here.
Video Credits
Director: Amy Elliott
Editor: Dana Cataldo
DP: Brack Bradley
Camera: Jacob Cantrell
Audio: Neil Bagley
Producer: Annie Venezia
This film is a project of The Meteor Fund, and produced in partnership with Harness; with support from Pop Culture Collaborative.
WHAT IS A PARTIAL MOLAR PREGNANCY?
NEWSLETTER
Tamara Costa’s diagnosis, explained
BY MEGAN CARPENTIER
Tamara Costa faced two intertwined diagnoses: a partial molar pregnancy and a fetus with triploidy.
Molar pregnancies, explains Jennifer Conti, M.D., an OB-GYN and Complex Family Planning Specialist at Stanford Hospital, are “a very rare complication where the cells that will form the placenta go haywire.”
In both a molar pregnancy (one with no fetus) and a partial molar pregnancy (one with an abnormal fetus), the placenta includes cysts producing high levels of the pregnancy hormone hCG. Diagnosis usually occurs during the pregnant patient’s first ultrasound, and the only treatment is termination. Patients who aren’t treated early can suffer life-threatening complications, including sepsis, preeclampsia, shock, and uterine infections. The abnormal tissue can also grow into their abdominal muscles and/or cause cancer.
In addition, Tamara’s fetus had 69 chromosomes instead of the expected 46—a condition known as triploidy. It happens when one parent contributes two sets of their own chromosomes during fertilization, and can often also cause a partial molar pregnancy. Triploidy causes severe birth defects and usually results in miscarriages; the few fetuses that survive to term usually die within days.
“This goes to show how complicated and complex reproductive healthcare can be—and another reason why the doctor should be one making these decisions,” Dr. Erica Hinz, an OB-GYN with Planned Parenthood Chicago, told The Meteor.
Read more about Tamara Costa, and the laws in Alabama, here. And read more United States of Abortion reporting here.
Video Credits
Director: Amy Elliott
Editor: Dana Cataldo
DP: Brack Bradley
Camera: Jacob Cantrell
Audio: Neil Bagley
Producer: Annie Venezia
This film is a project of The Meteor Fund, and produced in partnership with Firebrand and Obstetricians for Reproductive Justice; with support from Pop Culture Collaborative.
"I Felt Like a Piece of Meat"
  October 24, 2024 Greetings, Meteor readers, Today, someone on my Instagram feed noted that we are nine weeks away from Christmas, and somehow, that feels a little too close for comfort. I mean, who’s trying to go holiday shopping after we step out of the voting booth? Anyone? No? In today’s newsletter, a new woman has stepped forward to accuse Trump of sexual violence. Plus, troubling pre-election lawsuits, farewell to a true gem, and your weekend reading list. This year was ten minutes long, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONAnother day, another Trump accuser: During this week’s Survivors for Kamala Zoom call, Stacey Williams, a former Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Hall of Fame model, shared that in 1993, she had been groped by Donald Trump while she was visiting Trump Tower with Jeffrey Epstein. Williams alleges that Trump touched her breasts, waist, and butt while he and Epstein continued to chat and smile at each other. “I felt shame and disgust as [Jeffrey] and I went our separate ways,” Williams told The Guardian. “I had this horrible pit in my stomach that it was somehow orchestrated. I felt like a piece of meat.” A spokesperson for Trump called the allegations “unequivocally false” and a “fake story.” Williams is part of a growing group of at least 26 women who have accused the former president and now-candidate of sexual misconduct or abuse. (Trump continues to deny any wrongdoing, but last year, he was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll by a court of law.) There are many things to say about these new charges—which you can watch Williams recount here—but one is: It is simply not normal that so few people are talking about them. Back in 2016, the release of audio of Trump bragging about sexual assault felt like a seismic turning point in the race. (Trump even apologized, which seems unthinkable now.) But eight years and dozens of allegations later, Trump’s behavior towards women is often treated less as a dealbreaker and more as a bothersome personality trait—well, that’s Trump, he’s a creep, move on! Still, in other ways, we’ve made some progress: In 2024, sexual assault victims are more likely to be taken seriously than they used to be (certainly more so than in 1999, when only a third of the public believed Juanita Broaddrick’s story of Bill Clinton raping her). More people believe women, it seems. Now all we have to do is get people to care. AND:
 THE QUEEN OF THE TETONS, 399, PLAYING WITH SOME OF HER CUBS IN 2020 (VIA GETTY IMAGES)  WEEKEND READING 📚On keeping the fight alive: The women of Afghanistan have fallen out of Western headlines, but they’re still marching on the streets of Kabul. (The Persistent) On the newest political force: Parents are tired of being invisible to candidates, and they’re finally speaking up about it. (The 19th) On the woman behind the man: How do we better understand Usha Vance, an intelligent, successful woman of color married to a borderline white supremacist? Irin Carmon investigates. (The Cut)  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. |
A "Strange Sorority" Unites Against Trump
  October 22, 2024 Greetings, Meteor readers, Despite the Eric Adams of it all, this is truly a great time to be a New Yorker. We’ve got this year’s NWSL champions, the WNBA champions, and the Yankees are going to the World Series where we presume they will become champions for the 28th time. If you thought we were obnoxious before, you’re in for a real treat.  In today’s newsletter, survivors of sexual violence are banding together to keep Trump out of office. Plus, WNBA players are ready to stand on business, and a new bump to the legacy of our Tejana queen, Selena Quintanilla. NY or nowhere, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONSurvivor power: Yesterday a group of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, and their allies, took out a full-page ad in The New York Times endorsing Kamala Harris for president and reminding readers that “Donald J. Trump was found liable for sexual abuse in a court of law…this is not a matter of opinion; it is a fact.” The letter was a call to anyone who cares, even one iota about the issue that allowing a known abuser into the White House (again) would be anathema to fighting gender-based violence in America.  IMAGE COURTESY OF SURVIVORS FOR KAMALA Last night, the group behind the ad, Survivors for Kamala, hosted a Zoom call led by advocates like Tarana Burke, Professor Anita Hill, Hadley Duvall, Ashley Judd, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, and not one, not two, but three members of what Alva Johnson called the “strange sorority” of women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual abuse. Johnson, who has accused Trump of forcibly kissing her, described his second campaign as “a nightmare that just doesn't end…like the Friday the 13th horror movies,” then promised to “do everything we can to keep him out of office.” As Burke put it on the Zoom call, “there is no collective power greater than survivor power”—not least at the voting booth. Speaking of: We are a very short two weeks away from election day. For the love of all things good, make a plan, know where you need to go, and cast your vote. Do it today, if you can! Polls are open virtually everywhere. AND:
 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. |
The "Zombie Law" That Won't Die
  October 17, 2024 Greetings, Meteor readers, And an especially warm hello to Breanna Stewart, who last night hoisted the New York Liberty onto her back and carried them to a 2-1 lead in the finals by dropping 30 points on the board. This is our year!  In today’s newsletter, we learn about the latest attack on mifepristone, the abortion pill. Plus, a new documentary out today is helping to push us down the road to understanding menopause. And we’ve got your must-reads for the weekend ahead. Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThe “zombie law” that won’t die: Yesterday, Abortion, Every Day founder Jessica Valenti broke the news that the Attorneys General of Kansas, Missouri, and Idaho had quietly filed a lawsuit against the FDA attempting to severely restrict access to mifepristone, one of the two medications used to induce abortions. Using an 1873 “zombie law” called the Comstock Act, the suit seeks to ban (among other things) the shipping of abortion medication—which nearly 20% of people who get abortions rely on. If successful, the ruling would apply across the country, including in pro-choice states. If all this sounds familiar, it's because anti-abortion activists have tried this before. In fact, this most recent suit was filed with Trump-nominated Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who ruled in favor of the previous mifepristone lawsuit before it was tossed out by the Supreme Court back in June. We knew this was coming; after the Supreme Court ruled that the previous plaintiffs did not have the proper standing to challenge the FDA, the only thing left to do for conservatives was to find new plaintiffs. Now, here they are. The timing of this lawsuit is perplexing, given that abortion restriction is a losing issue at the ballot box, and this is bound to make anyone who cares about it furious. Perhaps that’s why, as Valenti points out, none of the AGs involved in the suit have put out a press release. But make no mistake: Despite recent attempts at moderation, this is the GOP attempting a national ban. AND:
 How Much Do You Know About Menopause?BY VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL A new documentary might teach you things your own doctor won’t. (VIA INSTAGRAM) The migraines, joint pain, night sweats, and brain fog began in my mid-forties. With two young children to keep up with, there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to make me feel present. I had an inkling I might be perimenopausal, but no one—not even my OB/GYN at the time—sat me down and told me what I was experiencing was normal, let alone offered me treatment options. I, for one, would have greatly appreciated it if the new documentary The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause had come out a decade ago when my hormonal shenanigans began. Produced by Tamsen Fadal and Denise Pines, it’s airing tonight on PBS, right in time for World Menopause Day tomorrow. It’s the first menopause film to earn medical accreditation, meaning doctors and nurses can earn credits just by watching it. (Which is a good thing, since many of them don’t actually get taught this stuff in medical school.) In 2025, more than one billion women worldwide will be in menopause, after a five-to-ten-year period of symptoms ranging from hot flashes and mood swings to vaginal dryness and heart palpitations. Yet even though menopause is as natural as puberty or childbirth, it has long been criminally neglected, under-researched, misdiagnosed, and mistreated. Too many women are blindsided by symptoms, gaslit or dismissed by their doctors, and end up feeling like they’re going insane. Building on a recent wave of menopause journalism, the documentary fills in some of these gaps, explaining the experience from a medical, emotional, cultural, and historical perspective. In the absence of widespread guidance, some of the doctors featured have become revered social media heroes. Dr. Lisa Mosconi, a neuroscientist and author of The Menopause Brain, regularly shares her work with her hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers—including her major study linking estrogen to cognitive function and establishing Hormone Replacement Therapy as the gold standard of menopause treatment.  It took a while to get to that gold standard: The documentary takes us through the devastating impact of the flawed-as-hell 2002 Women's Health Initiative study, which found that HRT increased the risk of blood clots and breast cancer, even though many subjects were well into their seventies and at high risk for those conditions anyway. After that study came out, many doctors stopped prescribing HRT, and what little menopause education there was in the U.S. basically ceased, says Mary Jane Minkin, MD, a clinical professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at Yale School of Medicine who appears in the documentary. More than 20 years later, she told me, a study led by a colleague of hers proved that less than a third of the OB/GYN residents surveyed were taught a menopause curriculum. Fortunately, a far more inclusive, age-appropriate, longitudinal study about women in midlife called the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation eventually disproved the 2002 study, restoring the credibility of HRT (and helping bring about the treatment’s current popularity). For me, it took several years of complaining, writing an article about the efficacy of HRT, and a series of tests to convince my OB/GYN to give me a prescription. Now that my sleep has largely been restored, my joints feel better, and my brain fog has cleared, I mourn the years I struggled through symptoms for absolutely no reason. The documentary takes care to note that menopause isn’t a one-size-fits-all experience. The severity and length of symptoms can vary greatly depending on who you are; they can last an average of 4.8 years for Japanese-American women and an average of 10.1 years for Black women. Systemic racism can play a part in one’s experience with menopause, the documentary explains: It delves into the dark history of inequities of gynecology, including how Black enslaved women’s bodies were experimented upon by American gynecologists and the fact that Black women still suffer adverse outcomes and maternal mortality at disproportionately high rates, often because they’re not listened to by their doctors. Things seem to be slowly changing for the better: President Biden signed an executive order in March that allocates 12 billion dollars to women’s midlife research—something Minkin hopes will further inspire young medical students to follow in her footsteps. As she says in the documentary: “I try to trick my medical students into going into menopause research because I guarantee you there’s a Nobel prize for the person who can figure this out.” And in the meantime, say many menopause experts, we shouldn’t be white-knuckling it. “The option should be, ‘I’m going to go, I’m going to get this addressed,’ not ‘I’ll just suffer through and it’ll be over in a decade,’” says Sharon Malone, MD, another certified menopause practitioner, in the doc. “You’re doing far more harm than good by just not addressing what the issues are.”  Vivian Manning-Schaffel is a journalist and essayist who covers entertainment, culture, psychology, and women’s health. Her Substack, MUTHR, FCKD, covers pop culture through a feminist Gen X lens.  WEEKEND READING 📚On anti-abortion dogs: Investigative journalist Debbie Nathan reports out a tip about drug-sniffing police dogs in Jackson, MS, intercepting abortion pills in the mail. (The Intercept/Lux) On Ozempic: The drug has been touted as a miracle for weight loss and glucose management. It’s even been held up as a tool for aiding in the climate crisis. But the full story is a lot more complicated. (Atmos) On the small screen: The funniest and queer-friendliest vampires we’ve ever known are taking their final bow this month. How do we bid farewell to What We Do in the Shadows? (Vulture) 🦇 On music: What are the songs that define our decade? Luckily, someone made a list. (Hearing Things, a brand new website co-founded by beloved Meteor collective member Julianne Escobedo Shepherd 🥳)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend?
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