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      Stevie Nicks says Fleetwood Mac would have been ‘done’ without 1977 abortion

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      Stevie Nicks thrust herself into the ongoing fight for access to abortion in the US because she had “been there, done that”, the legendary singer-songwriter says in a new interview.“I tell a good story,” Nicks remarked in an interview conducted by CBS News Sunday Morning, a clip of which was circulated by the network in advance.“So maybe I should try to do something.“I was also there.”Nicks’ comments come after the release in September of her new single The Lighthouse, which was inspired by progressives’ battle to reinstate federal abortion rights in the US.She wrote the rock song after three US supreme court justices appointed by the Donald Trump White House voted to essentially overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that gave Americans a constitutional right to an abortion.In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Nicks discussed her certainty that if she had not gotten an abortion in the 1970s, it would have marked the end of the renowned band Fleetwood Mac that she ultimately helped launch to rock immortality.Nicks at the time had a contraceptive intrauterine device but nonetheless became pregnant with singer Don Henley after breaking up her prior relationship with Fleetwood Mac bandmate Lindsey Buckingham, she told Rolling Stone. She said she decided to terminate the pregnancy in about 1977, or going into 1978, as Fleetwood Mac sat atop the world after its album Rumours.Rumours won Fleetwood Mac the Grammy for album of the year in 1978, a year that saw the band play 18 live shows in 11 US states. Three of the album’s singles – Go Your Own Way, Don’t Stop and You Make Loving Fun – reached the top 10 on the charts. Dreams, with Nicks’ vocals, went No 1 as Rumours eventually finished seventh on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.“Now what the hell am I going to do?” Nicks said to Rolling Stone about her thought process at the time of her aborted pregnancy. “I cannot have a child. I am not the kind of woman who would hand my baby over to a nanny, not in a million years.“So we would be dragging a baby around the world on tour, and I wouldn’t do that to my baby. I wouldn’t say I just need nine months. I would say I need a couple of years, and that would break up the band period.”Nicks said she doesn’t “really care” if people become upset with her over having decided to get an abortion. “My life was my life, and my plan was my plan and had been since I was in the fourth grade,” Nicks said to Rolling Stone, adding that Fleetwood Mac would have been “done” if she had decided otherwise.Nicks’ remarks to Rolling Stone about her personal experience with abortion elaborate on ones she delivered to the Guardian in 2020, when she said: “There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly.”Meanwhile, after the reversal of Roe v Wade as Trump set his sights on a second presidency in the 5 November election, Nicks said she heard everywhere around her that “somebody has to do … [and] say something” to support abortion rights.“And I’m like: ‘Well I have a platform,’” Nicks said after CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Tracy Smith asked the singer about the courage needed to “step into the waters of the abortion debate”.The result was The Lighthouse, a rare new release for Nicks, whose last album of entirely fresh material was put out in 2011. The single casts her as a lighthouse guiding women to campaign for their rights as voters choose between Kamala Harris and Trump, whose supporters include a conservative thinktank that is urging him to step up attacks against sexual and reproductive health and rights.“They’ll take your soul, take your power, unless you stand up, take it back,” Nicks sings on the track. “Try to see the future and get mad/It’s slipping through your fingers, you don’t have what you had/And you don’t have much time to get it back.” More

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      Beyoncé brings star power to Harris rally in Texas with abortion law in the spotlight

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      Beyoncé on Friday lent her star power to Kamala Harris at a high-octane rally in her native Texas, declaring that the country was on the “brink of history” as the vice-president warned the state’s near-total abortion ban could become the law of the land if Donald Trump is elected.“For all the men and women in this room, and watching around the country, we need you,” Beyoncé told a crowd of 30,000 people at the open-air Shell Energy stadium in Houston.With the presidential race effectively deadlocked, Harris detoured from her frenetic race across the seven battleground states to appear in reliably Republican Texas, where she sought to highlight the state’s abortion restrictions for voters who have yet to make up their minds or cast a ballot.“Let us be clear: If Donald Trump wins again, he will ban abortion nationwide,” Harris told the audience, her largest to date. Harris walked on to the stage, as she has ever since she became the presumptive nominee roughly 100 days ago, to Beyoncé’s hard-charging anthem, Freedom.Harris has centered her campaign on the theme of freedom. In the closing days of the campaign, she has painted Trump as posing a threat to hard-won progress, eroding access to reproductive care, seeking to walk back LGBTQ rights and targeting American democracy itself. Earlier this week, Harris agreed that Trump was a “fascist”.Harris spoke to an exuberant crowd, thousands of whom had waited hours in the sticky Houston heat to attend. Rally-goers were given flashing wristbands in all different colors. They danced and sang as a DJ spun pop ballads before the event began.But the message Harris came to deliver was sobering. She listed the sprawling impacts of abortion bans like the one in Texas, which she called “ground zero for the right for reproductive freedom.”“All that to say, elections matter,” Harris said.View image in fullscreenDespite the speculation, the megastar did not perform. “I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said. “We are at the precipice of an incredible shift, the brink of history,” Beyoncé told the roaring crowd.In the final days before the election, the Harris campaign is tapping the star power of the party’s most popular figures and celebrity supporters. On Friday night, Willie Nelson, the country music star and Texas resident, performed his best-known songs, including On the Road Again and actor Jessica Alba urged women to vote. Beyoncé was joined by her mother, Tina Knowles, and her former bandmate Kelly Rowland.“We are grabbing back the pen from those who are trying to write an American story that would deny the right for women to make our own decisions about our bodies,” Rowland said. “Today that means grabbing that pen and casting my vote for Kamala Harris.”The night before, Harris held her first campaign event with Barack Obama. They were joined onstage in Atlanta by rocker Bruce Springsteen, who played a three-song set and branded Trump an “American tyrant.” On Saturday, Harris will rally with Michelle Obama in Michigan.Harris does not expect to win Texas. But Democrats here are suddenly hopeful after polls suggest an unexpectedly close senate race between the Republican incumbent, Ted Cruz, and the Democrat, Dallas-area congressman Colin Allred.Democrats face a daunting senate map this cycle. With a loss in West Virginia all but certain, and Montana slipping out of reach, their hopes of maintaining narrow-control of the Senate may rest on an upset in the Lone Star state.“Everything is bigger in Texas,” Allred said on Friday night. “But Ted Cruz is too small for Texas.”The emotional heart of the evening was the personal stories of Texas women who had nearly died from pregnancy-related complications because they did not receive proper care.Ondrea, a Texas woman who appeared in a new Harris campaign, became emotional as she shared her harrowing experience after a miscarriage at 16 weeks and needing an emergency abortion that she was denied under the state’s law. A video played before her remarks showed her with a wound and scars that stretched down her body, from her breast to her pelvis, after a six-hour surgery in which she said doctors had to cut open her torso in order to save her life.Texas residents Amanda and Josh Zurawski, who have become powerful surrogates for Harris on the campaign trail, also shared their story. At 18 weeks pregnant, Amanda Zurawski began to suffer complications and needed an abortion. There was no chance the foetus would survive, but doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy until she eventually developed sepsis, days later.“I was finally close enough to death to deserve healthcare in Texas,” Amanda Zurawski said.Todd Ivey, a reproductive health specialist in Houston, addressed the crowd surrounded by a team of doctors and medical professionals in white lab coats. He emphasized the challenges of administering care to patients when it could mean risking arrest. Since the Texas law took effect the state’s infant mortality has risen.“This is a healthcare crisis,” he said. This is unacceptable and it is cruel.”Among those in the crowd was Sara Gonzales, 32, of Splendora, Texas, who drove to the stadium straight from an early-morning shift at Starbucks. Gonzales said she considers herself an independent and in 2020, wrote in a candidate for president. But the political stakes changed, Gonzales said, the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, and Texas enacted its near-total ban on abortion.“Being a woman in Texas right now, it’s not OK,” she said. “I should have freedom over my own body.” More

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      in Elections

      Mega-Donors Pour $8 Million Into Late Push Against N.Y. Abortion Measure

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      A late-stage effort to defeat a New York State ballot measure that would enshrine a right to abortion into the State Constitution has been bolstered by $8 million in donations from a handful of conservative donors.The Vote No on Prop 1 political action committee received $6.5 million from Dick Uihlein, a scion of one of the founders of Schlitz beer and the founder of the shipping company Uline. Along with his wife, Mr. Uihlein has given generously to former President Donald J. Trump, as well as to groups opposed to gay and transgender rights. Last year, Mr. Uihlein spent $4 million to defeat Ohio’s abortion amendment, providing the bulk of the funding against the measure.The committee also received $1 million from Thomas J. Tisch, a financier who was a key supporter of Lee Zeldin’s unsuccessful bid for governor of New York in 2022.The late infusion of cash is expected to amplify opponents’ messaging surrounding the measure, known as the Equal Rights Amendment.Conceived of as a way to safeguard abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade, the initiative would also expand legal protections to people based on sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability and national origin.Democrats had hoped that the ballot initiative could help boost turnout by energizing voters who care about abortion rights. Public sentiment in New York appeared to be on the ballot’s side: A recent Siena College poll shows that some 69 percent of New Yorkers approve of the amendment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The US is ‘absolutely’ ready for a female president, Harris says in NBC interview

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      Kamala Harris said that she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, insisting that Americans care more about what candidates can do to help them, rather than presidential contenders’ gender.The vice-president’s statement came during an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson, who asked whether she thought the country was ready for a woman, and a woman of color, to be in the Oval Office. “Absolutely,” Harris said. “Absolutely.”“In terms of every walk of life of our country,” Harris said, “part of what is important in this election is really, not really turning the page – closing a chapter, on an era that suggests that Americans are divided.“The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us and what the American people want in their president is a president for all Americans,” she said.Harris was asked why she hasn’t leaned into the historic nature of her candidacy – that she is a woman of color running for the presidency.“I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”“That is why I spend the majority of my time listening and then addressing the concerns, the challenges, the dreams, the ambitions and the aspirations of the American people,” Harris continued, saying that Americans deserve a president focused on them, “as opposed to a Donald Trump, who is constantly focused on himself”.Harris also said she was aware that Trump might potentially try thwarting the presidential election results, noting that her team “will deal with election night and the days after as they come”.Harris said that she is focused on campaigning over the next two weeks while noting “we have the resources and the expertise and the focus” on any potential threats to election results. Jackson noted that Trump declared victory before all the votes were tallied in 2020.Trump, who has refused to accept the 2020 election results and claimed the race was stolen, has been stoking fears with unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud in the 2024 cycle. “This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo the free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol, and 140 law enforcement officers were attacked, some who were killed. This is a serious matter,” Harris told Jackson.Trump supporters on 6 January 2021 stormed the US Capitol in an effort to prevent certification of Joe Biden’s victory. That day, four people died at the Capitol and a police officer working during the insurrection died several days later; four other police officers posted at the building on 6 January 2021 committed suicide, according to CBS News.“The American people are, at this point, two weeks out, being presented with a very, very serious decision about what will be the future of our country,” Harris also said.Jackson also asked about voters’ concerns about the economy, noting that many blame the US president for rising prices.Harris said her policies “will not be a continuation of the Biden administration” and with inflation, “I bring my own experiences, my own ideas to it.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJackson noted that if Harris won, her victory might coincide with Republican control of Congress, which would thwart protecting abortion at the national level.“What concessions would be on the table?” Jackson asked.“I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body,” Harris said.Harris said she would not “get into those hypotheticals” when asked if a pardon might be on the table for Trump.“I’m focused on the next 14 days.”Harris was pressed on the pardon topic, asked if she thought it could help the country move forward together and be less divisive.“Let me tell you what’s going to help us move on: I get elected to president of the United States.” More

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      in Elections

      Harris Will Campaign in Texas to Call Attention to Abortion Rights

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      Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Texas on Friday to campaign on abortion rights, an issue that has energized Democrats and that she hopes she can use to peel moderate voters away from former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Harris plans to hold a rally in Houston and also sit for an interview with the popular podcaster Brené Brown, a researcher who studies vulnerability. The interview will give the vice president access to a broad, nonpolitical audience that most likely includes many undecided voters.Mr. Trump is almost certain to win Texas, which bans abortion in almost all circumstances, making the state among the most restrictive in the nation. In Houston, Ms. Harris will have a ready-made platform to castigate Mr. Trump — who appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade — and to warn that a second Trump administration could threaten abortion access nationwide. She also has the chance to amplify the campaign of Representative Colin Allred, a Democrat challenging Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, in a race that has shown signs of being competitive.“We think this will obviously be a setting and a message that will reach a national audience,” said David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the Harris campaign. Her goal, he said, would be to “paint the picture of what could happen in this country — in the rest of the states — if Donald Trump is elected president.”Ms. Harris’s decision to spend a day outside one of the top battleground states this close to Election Day reflects just how important reproductive rights have become in the race, which is breaking down along gender lines. Ms. Harris is receiving substantial support from women, while men favor Mr. Trump. She has campaigned hard on the issue in an effort to win over moderate Republican and independent women, especially in the suburbs. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has tied himself in knots trying to avoid taking a firm position on the degree to which abortion should be restricted.The Harris campaign has shared the stories of several Texas women who were denied medical care because of their state’s abortion ban, including Amanda Zurawski and Kate Cox.On Friday, Ms. Harris will be joined by Mr. Allred. The race represents perhaps the Democrats’ best opportunity to pick up a Senate seat on a challenging map. But Mr. Allred is four points behind Mr. Cruz in the reliably Republican state, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll, and he is being outspent, both worrying signs for his prospects. More

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      in Elections

      Abortion as an Issue in the Election

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      More from our inbox:Veterans as Poll WorkersAn Immigrant’s StoryPolitical Messages: Time to Turn Up the Sound Allison Dinner/EPA, via ShutterstockTo the Editor:Re “November’s Second-Most-Important Election,” by David French (column, Oct. 14):I find it difficult to understand why the heart has become a determiner of fetal life in abortion discussions and law when it’s the brain that makes us truly human.According to much neurological research, the brain doesn’t reach its major development until the end of the second trimester, about 24 weeks into a pregnancy, also known as viability. The brain then continues to develop through the ninth month of pregnancy, and certain parts, such as the frontal cortex, are not fully developed until adults reach their mid-20s.All of us, even lawmakers, should pay attention to the neurological science instead of emotional reactions to sounds.Ellen CreaneGuilford, Conn.To the Editor:I personally am deeply conflicted on the issue of abortion, but the problem I have with many pro-life supporters is that they never talk about support after the baby is born.Live babies and children need diapers and food and child care and good schools and support for college or learning a trade and safe schools and streets. If you have no concrete plans to eliminate child poverty, improve public education and put gun controls in place, can you really say that you support children?Ending the conversation (and legislation) at birth is not pro-life, but pro-childbirth.Margaret DowlingPhiladelphiaWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris stresses abortion rights and early voting in packed Atlanta rally

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      Kamala Harris highlighted the threat to women’s reproductive rights and Donald Trump’s apparent exhaustion at a rally Saturday in south Atlanta, continuing a full-court press for votes in Georgia as early voting breaks records here.The race continues to appear close in Georgia, with polls suggesting the Republican nominee holds a one-point lead in the state. Trump has made multiple appearances in Georgia and has a rally with Turning Point Action planned in Gwinnett county, outside Atlanta, next week.However, the National Rifle Association canceled a planned Saturday rally with Trump in Savannah, citing a “scheduling conflict”. Trump has also canceled several news interviews over the last week.The Trump campaign has angrily pushed back against a suggestion raised by a staffer that Trump had been exhausted by the appearances. But Harris has seized the idea as a rallying cry.“And now, he’s ducking debates, and canceling interviews because of exhaustion,” Harris said. “And when he does answer a question or speak at a rally, have you noticed that he tends to go off script and ramble, and generally for the life of him can’t finish a thought? … Folks are exhausted with someone trying to have Americans point their fingers at each other. We’re exhausted. That’s why I say it’s time to turn the page on that.”View image in fullscreenHarris returned to familiar themes on a day of perfect Atlanta weather, describing the “opportunity economy” as one that brings down the cost of living for prescription medication, groceries and housing through anti-price-gouging initiatives, while providing financial support for new parents and entrepreneurs.Extending Medicare coverage for home healthcare services would prevent working adults from having to quit a productive job or spend down savings to take care of aging parents. “It’s about dignity,” she said in the city’s Lakewood Amphitheater.Harris will attend services Sunday at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a majority-Black megachurch in the heart of Atlanta’s Black suburbs in south DeKalb county. New Birth and other large Black churches in Georgia traditionally organize a “souls to the polls” push on Sunday early voting days.As of 5pm Saturday, about 1.3 million Georgians had cast ballots early in person, more than double the 2020 pace on the fifth day of early voting in Georgia. In 2020, about 2.7 million out of 5 million voters cast ballots early in person, with more than two-thirds of votes cast before election day. Absentee ballots are down sharply, however, a reflection of the end of the pandemic and changes to absentee ballot rules.Early voting provides real-time feedback for campaign strategists hoping to target voters who have not yet cast a ballot. Democrats pressed their supporters in Georgia to vote early in 2020 and 2022, a strategy that helped lead the party to victory in the 2020 presidential race and Georgia’s two vital wins in the US Senate.“Georgia, out of nowhere, we made a way,” said the US Senator Jon Ossoff. “This is an election that will determine the character of our republic. This is much deeper than Democrats versus Republicans. Former president Trump is unfit for the presidency.”But so far this year, early voting in rural and ex-urban areas of Georgia, rich in Republican votes, have outpaced core Atlanta turnout rates. Donald Trump has pointedly encouraged his supporters to vote early this year, a tacit acknowledgement of the strategic error of 2020.Early voting also began on Saturday in Nevada, where Barack Obama campaigned for Harris in Las Vegas. The former president also poked fun at Trump, telling the audience “we don’t need to see what an older, loonier Donald Trump with no guard rails looks like.”In Georgia, early voters among Democrats have been vocal about abortion policy driving their votes. The deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, two Georgia women who couldn’t access timely maternal health service or legal abortions, have resonated in the rhetoric of the election.“Let us agree, one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree: the government should not be telling her what to do,” Harris said. The rally rolled clips of Thurman’s family describing their grief, and then of Trump mocking their loss in a town hall interview hosted by Fox News.“He belittles their sorrow, making it about himself and his television ratings,” Harris said. “It’s cruel.”But the Lakewood rally was plainly about driving turnout and enthusiasm among Black voters. Usher, an iconic Atlanta-based R&B musician and dancer, spoke early to the crowd, calling on people to vote early for Harris, and to reach out to friends and family.“How we vote – I mean, everything that we do in the next 17 days – will affect our children, our grandchildren, of the people we love the most,” Usher said.Ryan Wilson, the co-founder of private networking hub the Gathering Spot and a notable Atlanta entrepreneur, discussed the Harris proposal to offer up to $50,000 in grants to Black entrepreneurs. “That would have been a game changer for me,” he said. “Vice-President Harris’s opportunity agenda for Black men who provide folks like me the tools to achieve generational wealth, lower costs and protect their rights. And what would Donald Trump do? I think it’s fair to say: nothing.” More