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      Republicans want to steal reproductive freedom. Black women will suffer most | Monica Raye Simpson

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      As the 2024 elections continue to heat up, there are increasing concerns about the rise of fascism around the world and in the United States. Regardless of the word or label used, Black people, living with the legacy of slavery and multiple forms of reproductive oppression including rape and forced pregnancies, sterilizations and the killing of our children and loved ones by vigilantes and police, have a lot of experience with authoritarian regimes that oppress and dehumanize.There is a strategic agenda from the far right – laid out in clear language in Project 2025 to keep power in the hands of a chosen few and prevent the United States from becoming a truly representative, multiracial democracy that embraces and supports all people including those with the capacity for pregnancy.According to US census projections, people of color are on par to be the majority by the middle of the century. With this imminent reality, the focus on controlling our fertility and denying us bodily autonomy is the age-old strategy of authoritarian, democracy-denying regimes. And to have a conservative-leaning supreme court that has proved that it will roll back some of the most critical protections further supports their agenda.One of those critical protections was the right to abortion recognized and protected in Roe v Wade. The Dobbs decision overturned Roe – and not only denied women the right to abortion, but also laid the groundwork for dismantling all reproductive rights and aspects of pregnancy-related healthcare.For decades, we have seen a focus on reversing Roe v Wade with numerous states implementing barriers to access through proposing Trap (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws, expanding funding to crisis pregnancy centers and promoting declarations of personhood for the unborn from the moment of fertilization, all while gerrymandering states to stack our state legislatures with conservative leaders. We are also fighting abortion bans and increased criminalization for those seeking abortions and for pregnant women who are targeted for creating imagined risks of harm to personified eggs, embryos and fetuses.And it is not just about ending a pregnancy. Before the Dobbs decision, the US already had an appalling and shameful rate of maternal mortality that is from four to 12 times higher for Black women. As OB-GYNs flee states that have banned abortions and women are forced to wait out ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages and stillbirths and continue pregnancies with non-viable or already dead fetuses – because doctors have been terrorized into inaction – that rate will no doubt go up. As if that wasn’t enough, research consistently finds that US Black maternal mortality is fueled by racism that goes unaddressed and reinforced by our opposition.While devastating, we can at least note that the Dobbs decision shook the nation and brought the longstanding fight for abortion to the mainstream. While so many wondered how we got here, Black women and people of color had warned about the danger of single-issue litigation and organizing strategies within the historically predominantly white-led reproductive health and rights movements for decades.Thirty years ago, Black women came up with the term reproductive justice and started a human-rights-based movement that not only fought for the right to prevent or end pregnancies but to expand the fight to have the children that we want, to parent them in safe and sustainable communities. This new intersectional movement centered the leadership and lived experiences and bodily autonomy of those historically pushed to the margins.Fascism thrives when the masses are conditioned to think, organize and create policies that are not intersectional thus creating fertile ground for authoritarianism. I believe the kryptonite to fascism is the work being done by those who laid the foundation for the reproductive justice movement – Black women.Black women have found every way possible to resist while also remaining innovative. We consistently vote for our values to save our democracy. From the Black women who were the backbone of the civil rights and Black liberation movements to the Black women who redefined feminism at the Combahee River, to the Black women who created new movements like reproductive justice, Black Lives Matter and Me Too – it is clear we have decades of receipts that show our commitment to dismantling white supremacist, patriarchal authoritarian regimes.With this election we are faced with a serious question: “What world do we want for ourselves and the generations to come?” Do we want to live in a world where we do not have the human right to make our own decisions around our bodies, our families and our futures? Or do we want to live in a world where our lives are dictated by insidious policies?Our future is in the hands of those who are ready to fight for our freedom. This is the time to not only vote but also organize. This is the time to sit at the table and build with people we don’t know and deepen our relationships with our current allies. This is the time to study and learn from the historical victories over fascism. Because fascism always loses when it comes against the collective power of those determined to achieve our human rights.

      Monica Raye Simpson is the executive director of SisterSong, the southern-based national Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Monica is a proud Black queer feminist & cultural strategist who is committed to organizing for LGBTQ+ liberation, civil and human rights, and sexual and reproductive justice by any means necessary. She was also named a New Civil Rights Leader by Essence Magazine and as one of TIME 100’s most influential people of 2023. More

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      Donald Trump is backing free IVF? You can practically smell the desperation | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Would you like to do your bit to curb population decline in the west? Fancy a home full of babies with very high IQs and extremely blond hair? Well, let me introduce you to the Donald J Trump Insemination Institute. On a sprawling ranch in New Mexico, women can be impregnated, free of charge, with Trump’s sperm, ensuring that future generations, on Earth and Mars, are blessed with a steady supply of very stable geniuses.Sorry if I turned your stomach there, but I’m afraid I’m only half-joking. It was actually Jeffrey Epstein – who used to party with Trump – who was besotted with the idea of a ranch where 20 women at a time would be impregnated, in order to seed the human race with his DNA. Elon Musk, who is obsessed with babies and Trump, may harbour similar fantasies. Earlier this year the New York Times reported that Musk has “volunteered his sperm” to help seed a colony on Mars. (Musk has denied these claims.)While Trump hasn’t announced plans for a baby ranch of his own yet, he is suddenly a big fan of artificial insemination. Last week the former president announced that he would support free in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments if elected again. “We wanna produce babies in this country, right?” Trump said during a town hall campaign event in Wisconsin. He didn’t provide many details about how this would work other than saying that either the government or insurance companies would pay for everything.Another fuzzy detail? How government-sponsored IVF would coexist with the Republican party’s 2024 platform, which supports states’ rights to pass foetal personhood laws. It is impossible to support widespread access to IVF while also supporting the idea of foetal personhood, which holds that an embryo is a person and destroying one is homicide. I am fairly sure that Trump has no idea how IVF actually works, so here is a little explainer: you typically fertilise multiple eggs because you have no idea how many of them will develop into viable embryos. You could fertilise 20 eggs and end up with no viable embryos or end up with 20. The only way to control how many embryos you create is to harvest a single egg at a time, which is hugely expensive, inefficient and emotionally exhausting. In short: Trump seems to be running on a platform where IVF would be free but also effectively illegal.While it may be half-baked, Trump’s free IVF policy makes it clear that he is desperate to woo female voters. Women have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every US presidential election since 1980 and now – for obvious reasons – they are leaning heavily towards Kamala Harris. I’m not sure a last-minute IVF policy is going to cancel out the fact that abortion rights are a key issue in this election and Trump has boasted about being the guy who overturned Roe v Wade. Nor will it cancel out the fact that Trump is a legally defined sexual predator who can’t stop himself from saying every misogynistic thought that creeps into his little head. During a recent rally in Pennsylvania, for example, Trump praised his male supporters for “allowing” their wives to attend his campaign rallies without them.While Trump is clearly trying to appeal to women with his IVF policy, you also have to wonder whether his buddy Musk – one of the most influential voices in the US’s growing pro-natalist movement – has a hand in this. If the billionaire did get a position in a Trump administration (a possibility that has been repeatedly floated) one imagines Musk would encourage the US to emulate Hungary’s pro-natalist policies, which stem from a racist desire to encourage births and repopulate the country with the “right” (AKA white) kind of children. “We want Hungarian children,” Viktor Orbán said in 2019. “Migration for us is surrender.”Free IVF may sound like a progressive policy on the surface but, for many on the right, it is linked to a belief that women are nothing more than baby-making machines designed to pass on the legacy of men. A future Donald J Trump Insemination Institute may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in US Politics

      Kamala Harris should launch a national campaign to end the US diabetes epidemic | Neil Barsky

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      Before addressing the political opportunity in front of the vice-president, let us first confront the sacred cow in the room.Contrary to recent claims by Donald Trump, JD Vance and Ted Cruz, Kamala Harris loves a good cheeseburger; she positively does not want to take our red meat away. She has cited sugars and sodas as major culprits in our poor health. Moreover, the Biden-Harris administration has demonstrated that it is unafraid to challenge the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry has over insulin prices, and the cost that industry charges Medicare patients for drugs.Next, let’s dispense with the false narrative that Trump and his acolyte Robert F Kennedy Jr, have the capacity to “make America healthy again.” As part of RFK Jr’s recent endorsement, Trump vowed to appoint “a panel of top experts, working with Bobby, to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems …” Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine work is more likely to make America have measles again, has recently become the darling of many metabolic health advocates for his series of half-truths about America’s obesity epidemic.Let’s not be fooled. To paraphrase Harris, these are not serious people, and the consequences of putting America’s healthcare in their hands would be deadly.I happen to live with type 2 diabetes, and have spent the past year chronicling the ways one of the country’s most lethal, expensive and ubiquitous diseases is actually reversible through a diet low in carbohydrates – the macronutrient that diabetics like me cannot safely metabolize without the help of drug therapies. Nutrition in America has become quite politically polarizing, as shaky science often collides with ideology, leaving us at a loss to know why we get fat, why we get sick, and even whether red meat causes diabetes (it doesn’t). Our healthcare budget is $4tn a year, yet our life expectancy is only 48th in the world, and we seem to be getting heavier and sicker. Something is terribly wrong.In this abyss lies a golden opportunity for presidential candidate Harris to present a healthcare agenda that would save thousands of lives, billions of dollars, as well as her appeal to voters in conservative states. She can do what no president has ever had the courage to do before: launch a national campaign to reverse America’s diabetes epidemic and, in the process, improve our metabolic health. She might even declare the destructive disease a national emergency.This initiative would be both good policy and good politics, and it is not as quixotic as it might first sound. Type 2 diabetes is a condition where the hormone insulin does not naturally function properly, leading to high blood sugars, and leaving its victims at risk of cardiovascular, kidney, eye and other disease. Currently, 38 million American adults have diabetes, while another nearly 100 million more have pre-diabetes – or more than a third of adult Americans. At $420bn per year, it is one of America’s costliest diseases, accounting for over 10% of the country’s $4tn annual healthcare budget. It kills over 100,000 Americans annually, more than die of opiate overdoses.And while it is true that people of color are more likely to get diabetes than white people, it is also the case that, like the opiate crisis, diabetes is a color-blind disease that has disproportionately ravaged red state America. In fact, 14 of the 15 states with the highest diabetes mortality rates voted Republican in 2020. And 14 of the 15 states with the lowest mortality rates voted Democratic in 2020.What form should a Harris initiative take? Here are my personal recommendations, based on my own experience with the disease, and a year’s worth of interviewing well over 100 researchers, clinicians, advocates and patients. Frankly, it is baffling that this disease – which is killing us widely, breaking our budget and reversible through diet – is not yet a matter of national urgency.1. First, she should announce her intention to appoint a diabetes czar whose job, among other things, would be to solve this puzzle – over the past quarter-century, America’s pharmaceutical and medical technology industry have made extraordinary strides developing various forms of insulin and other drugs, continuous glucose monitors and test strips. So why have seven times more Americans been diagnosed with diabetes than in 1980? Eventually commonsense solutions would emerge, such as restricting cereal companies’ ability to market their sugary treats to children.Not only would the czar be empowered to confront things like the scandalous $1bn-plus in sugar subsidies provided by US taxpayers, she would explore common-sense treatments for treating diabetes that are diet and lifestyle-focused. (A good place to start would be the excellent 2024 book Turn Around Diabetes, written by endocrinologist Roshani Sanghani.)2. We must defund, disqualify and otherwise delegitimize the American Diabetes Association (ADA). As I have written, the ADA has become a virtual branch of big pharma and big food. Yet it sets standards of care for clinicians and de-emphasizes mountains of evidence that the low-carbohydrate diet is a powerful tool in reversing the disease. Frankly, it is mind-boggling that the world’s most powerful diabetes-fighting organization (2023 revenue: $145m) has so utterly failed to stem the disease, but still sets standards of care, controls research dollars and dictates the diabetes narrative in this country.Late last year, the ADA was sued by its former director of nutrition. She claimed she was fired for refusing to include the artificial sweetener Splenda, whose parent company donated $1m to the ADA, in the ADA’s list of approved recipes. It is one of American healthcare’s great tragedies that the ADA and the plaintiff, Elizabeth Hanna, settled before the facts of the inner workings of the ADA were brought to light in a trial. In any case, the complaint is a stinging indictment of the organization and should be read by every clinician interested in learning how corporate donations have corrupted the organization’s nutrition guidance.3. Perhaps most urgently, the federal government, including the National Institutes of Health, should expand its research budget to include researchers treating patients with low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets. Over the past two decades, there has been an explosion of courageous clinicians who prescribe the low-carbohydrate diet to their patients, as well as at least two startups – Virta Health and OwnaHealth – with promising results treating diabetes and obesity with low-carbohydrate diets.But because their research does not include the search for the next blockbuster drug, researchers often cannot access ADA, NIH and big pharma research dollars. They don’t get prominent spots in pharma-funded conferences. This is an enormous impediment to the low-carbohydrate diet becoming part of the medical mainstream and in my opinion is responsible for the persistence of the diabetes plague.4. We should give platforms to people who actually have diabetes, especially those who have reversed their condition by taking control of their diet. Of all the misconceptions I uncovered in my reporting on diabetes, the most common was that the low-carb diet was too difficult for patients, particularly low-income patients, to maintain. Of course, resisting bread, sweets, rice and starches is not easy, but it is made far more difficult by the utter lack of a national consensus that these are the foods responsible for diabetes and obesity. Stopping smoking is hard too, but once it became a national imperative, usage plummeted. In my experience, when patients are told the truth (“Stop eating carbs or your disease will progress and you may die”), they can change their behavior. And they feel empowered.Take the case of Jemia Keshwani, a 40-year-old LaGrange, Georgia, woman who has had diabetes for 25 years, and who narrowly escaped amputation of her right foot after her doctor prescribed a low-carbohydrate diet. She has lost 120lb (54kg) and no longer shoots insulin into her belly four times a day. “I didn’t understand you could change things around if you eat the right foods,” she said. “You know how sometimes you feel helpless? Now I don’t feel that way.”Or the case of Ajala Efem, a 47-year old Bronx woman, who, according to a recent article in Medscape, lost nearly 30lbs and got off 15 medications after her Bronx-based healthcare provider, OwnaHealth, prescribed a low-carb diet.“I went from being sick to feeling so great,” she told her endocrinologist. “My feet aren’t hurting; I’m not in pain; I’m eating as much as I want, and I really enjoy my food so much.”This past March, Harris asked an audience in Las Vegas how many people had family members living with diabetes. “A sea of hands went up,” she wrote on her Facebook page.Harris clearly understands the diabetes scourge and needs only a gentle push to make it a priority. So here is one final word of affectionate advice. The next time she attends a state fair, she might consider having one of those cheeseburgers she loves. It’s delicious, nutritious and will make a great photo op.Just lose the ketchup and bun.

      Neil Barsky, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and investment manager, is the founder of the Marshall Project More

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      in UK Politics

      Voices: Junior doctors should see 22% pay rise deal as a compromise, say readers

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      Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorJunior doctor strikes could end following the offer of a 22% pay increase – and our community have been having their say on the proposals.When we asked, many Independent readers expressed dissatisfaction with how the Tories previously managed the NHS, criticising the former government for underfunding, mistreating doctors, and pushing for privatisation. While some noted that British doctors often emigrate, others also pointed out that NHS doctors’ salaries are low compared to other countries, suggesting a 22% pay rise is actually modest. Overall, most saw the pay deal as a reasonable compromise and a positive step toward improving the quality of the NHS.Here’s what you had to say:‘The Tories set out to destroy the NHS’Given the state the Tories have left the country in, I would say that this is as good as the country can afford for this year. Further negotiations can take place in the future to try and restore the NHS to an acceptable standard. The doctors have been shabbily treated by the Tories and need to be compensated in a proper manner.The Tories set out to destroy the NHS and all community services, the new government needs to have the time to try and restore them. We owe the health care staff.How much do people think doctors of all kinds would be paid if the NHS did not exist? Do people really think that they would be paid less? How much would insurance premiums cost if the NHS did not exist? The NHS is cheap in comparison to other systems and some people are too cheap to fund it properly.That the Tories were not prepared to resolve this dispute, just goes to show the depths that they were prepared to sink to in order to destroy the NHS and prolong the waiting times for people needing treatment.WinstonSmith2‘Mismanaged public pennies’If you give to one group then you will have to settle with the rest. There is always enough money for everyone, unfortunately, politics makes sure that public pennies are mismanaged!Chris‘Medicine on the cheap’What Joe Public does not seem to know is that more than 5,000 British doctors emigrate every year and are “replaced” by cheap Third World “doctors” of dubious qualifications and training.Doctor’s incomes in every other civilised country are far higher than here. For too long, silly politicians have sought to have medicine “on the cheap”. No wonder the NHS is so dreadful with massive waiting lists for almost everything. Mind you that is not helped by legal immigration of 1.2 million every year.BillEastman111‘Lousy’People who save lives are worth far, far more than a lousy 20% pay rise.BeansNToast‘I hope Streeting is listening’Of course it’s not enough, but we hope the junior doctors understand the predicament the Tories have put us in and accept it. Hopefully over time what they have lost can be made up. At least Labour have come to a sensible agreement. I understand that the Tories were running the NHS and all public services into the ground, preparing the fed-up public for the wholesale sale of everything, to their friends. Just as they did with water, transport and energy, and we can see where that has brought us. The NHS privatisation has already begun in earnest under the Tories, our GP and dental services are now owned by US multinationals. Imaging services (xray, mri) in major London hospitals are now outsourced. All this needs to be brought back in-house. I hope Wes Streeting is listening.punda‘Lumbers the taxpayer’A junior doctor after five years of service has an average salary of sixty thousand pounds, has just had a twelve thousand pound pay rise, and not only that but this also lumbers the taxpayer with a huge pension to pay for.Salt and Vinegar‘Gone on too long’This has gone on for too long… the previous government had no interest in resolving it. They cared nothing for the NHS. They were a bunch of deceitful disingenuous miscreants and they should hang their heads in shameHappilyRetiredWoman‘A reasonable compromise’The public doesn’t know that a “junior” doctor could be a doctor in training who is not a consultant and this means that a junior doctor could even be 40 or more years old. So this is a misleading term. Now for the amount of time and effort the doctors have invested and the amount of work they do their salary is one of the lowest. So 20% is not a lot but it sounds a reasonable compromise.So the public believes that £4-5k per month for someone who has spent 15 years to become a safe and high-quality doctor is a lot. Don’t worry NHS has started replacing GPs with cheap labour called associate physicians. They can treat people after two years of training only. Perhaps not as good as proper doctors but at least they are cheap. And sooner or later, when health care becomes private, the public will miss the old good NHS with the good doctors. And remember next time your appendix may be removed by a non-doctor that you asked for it because he/she is cheapTiredAllTheTime‘Settling the dispute is essential’Sounds like the sort of compromise that the last government could have agreed if they hadn’t been determined to undermine the NHS to make way for their private health friends. Settling the dispute is an essential first step to getting the health service on the road to recovery.Carolan‘Get our priorities right’That’s really not the priority to me. These people are well-paid. We have millions of children under the poverty level. Let’s get our priorities right.NoblahSome of the comments have been edited for this article. You can read the full discussion in the comments section of the original article.All you have to do is sign up, submit your question and register your details – then you can then take part in the discussion. You can also sign up by clicking ‘log in’ on the top right-hand corner of the screen.Make sure you adhere to our community guidelines, which can be found here. For a full guide on how to comment click here. More

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      in UK Politics

      Voices: Is a 20% pay rise enough to halt junior doctor strikes? Join The Independent Debate

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      Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorJunior doctor strikes may soon end following a government proposal offering a 20% pay increase. Health Secretary Wes Streeting and the British Medical Association (BMA) have negotiated a deal to be voted on by junior doctors.This deal includes an overall pay rise of 20%, valued at £1 billion, with a backdated 4.05% increase for 2023-24 on top of an existing 8.8-10.3% rise. For 2024-25, junior doctors would receive an additional 6% pay rise plus a consolidated £1,000 payment.Over the past 18 months, strikes have led to the cancellation of more than 1.4 million NHS appointments and operations, costing the health service an estimated £3 billion. Junior doctors in England have staged industrial action 11 times in the last 20 months, with the most recent strike from June 27 to July 2 affecting 61,989 appointments, procedures, and operations, according to NHS England.Is the deal struck by Streeting and the BMA enough to end the junior doctor strikes? Or do you think industrial action should continue?Share your thoughts by adding them in the comments — we’ll highlight the most insightful ones as they come in.All you have to do is sign up and register your details — then you can take part in the discussion. You can also sign up by clicking ‘log in’ on the top right-hand corner of the screen.Make sure you adhere to our community guidelines, which can be found here. For a full guide on how to comment click here.Join the conversation with other Independent readers below. More

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      in US Politics

      Unlike Joe Biden, Kamala Harris will be a genuine champion for abortion rights | Moira Donegan

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      When he was still the nominee, Joe Biden’s preferred euphemism for abortion was “Roe”. He would talk about “upholding” Roe v Wade even after June 2022, when the US supreme court struck it down. Reproductive rights advocates bristled at this, pointing out how many people had been denied abortions under Roe, and how flimsy the decision’s protection of reproductive rights had been on personal-autonomy or sex-equality grounds.Frankly, it was hard to get the president to talk about abortion at all. He seemed to avoid even the word “abortion”. When he did talk about the procedure – and the bans on it that Republicans have unleashed across the country – he preferred to focus on women who had been denied emergency abortions for wanted pregnancies in the midst of tragic health complications.Abortion, in his hands, became an issue in which sad, troubled and helpless women could be aided by the mercy of heroic men like himself – or like that of the imagined doctor he referenced in his disastrous June debate with Donald Trump, a man, Biden said, who would determine whether an abortion seeker “needed help or not”. Abortion, in his telling, was an unpleasant but necessary evil that men mediated for women. It was decidedly not a matter of adult women’s rights, dignity or right of autonomy over their own bodies and lives.Kamala Harris, Biden’s successor at the top of the Democratic ticket following his withdrawal last Sunday, has taken a different approach. The Biden administration had largely delegated abortion rights messaging to the vice-president, out of deference both for Biden’s obvious personal discomfort with the issue and his growing inability to campaign effectively at all. (The anti-choice group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America named Harris as Biden’s “abortion czar”, a name that perhaps sounds a little cooler than they intended.) She made a multistate tour focusing on the issue earlier this year, which included what is believed to be the first public visit to an abortion clinic by a president or vice-president: a stop at a Planned Parenthood in St Paul, Minnesota, where Harris appeared with the clinic’s medical director, and commended the clinic’s staff for their “true leadership”.“It is only right and fair that people have access to the healthcare they need,” she said.The result was a divergence of abortion messaging within the White House, with Harris making a much more robust case for abortion, and for reproductive justice more broadly, in much more affirmative and unapologetic terms. The preferred catchphrase that she repeated when speaking about the issue was not Biden’s tepid and euphemistic “restore Roe”. Instead, Harris has made apparent reference to Dr George Tiller, an abortion doctor who was murdered by anti-choice extremists in 2009, who summarized his own approach to abortion in two words: “Trust women.”Before Biden dropped out of the race, November’s presidential election was set to be little more than a referendum on his age. But now that he has stepped aside, Harris has an opportunity to make a much stronger case for a Democratic policy vision. And reproductive rights, an issue that has motivated women voters in large numbers even in deep-conservative states since the Dobbs decision, appears to be at the center of her agenda.The move is good politics. Abortion rights are extraordinarily popular, and have only become more so in the years since Dobbs, mobilizing voters who would stay home or vote for Republicans when other issues are more salient. A new poll from the Associated Press finds that six in 10 Americans support abortion for any reason; other polls show even higher levels of support for abortion, especially early in pregnancy.It’s not just that abortion, in the abstract, is popular: abortion bans, in particular, are profoundly unpopular. The reality of post-Dobbs bans has dramatically moved public opinion on the issue: since May 2019, the percent of Americans who say that abortion should be legal under all circumstances has increased by 10 points, to 35%. The percent who say it should be illegal under all circumstances – the position advocated by the Republican party platform, which supports recognition of fetuses and embryos as persons under the 14th amendment – has fallen dramatically during that same period, to just 12%.These shifts in public opinion have had a marked impact at the ballot box. Democrats’ better-than-expected showing in the November 2022 midterms is credited to outrage against the Dobbs decision that June. But a desire to protect or restore abortion rights has driven large turnout even in heavily Republican states: Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio have all voted overwhelmingly in favor of abortion rights since Dobbs. Harris has seized on this shift in a way that Biden has not been able to, speaking passionately – and credibly – about abortion as a matter of not only health, but also dignity.Harris has also cannily and repeatedly drawn connections between Trump’s last term, in which three anti-choice zealots were appointed to the US supreme court, and the suffering that abortion bans have caused in Republican-controlled states. She refers to the state laws prohibiting the procedure as “Trump abortion bans”. This focus could bear fruit in November: alongside Harris’s presidential bid, a total of five states – Nevada, Colorado, South Dakota, Maryland and Florida – will have abortion-rights measures on the ballot.The Republican ticket, meanwhile, has leaned further and further into an ideology of misogyny and gender reaction. Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, is a passionate and lurid misogynist; he recently referred to Harris and other Democratic women as “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”, and that childless women “have no direct stake” in America’s future. He has also suggested that citizens without children should have their votes diluted.Childless women seem to be a particularly irksome demographic for the Trump camp’s army of prurient creeps: both the media personality Laura Loomer and the lawyer and thinktank gadfly Will Chamberlain quickly joined Vance in attacking Harris for not having biological children. It’s a fitting line of attack; after all, the very reason why Republicans are pursuing abortion bans in the first place is because they have an extremely narrow view of what women should be, one they want to enforce with the law.Abortion-rights advocates will certainly seek to push Harris for even more commitments for reproductive freedom and justice. But Harris, at least, is willing to argue that women can be things other than mothers. Like maybe the president.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Arkansas official rejected valid abortion ballot signatures, lawsuit claims

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      Organizers behind a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the Arkansas state constitution sued a senior state official on Tuesday, accusing him of illegally rejecting the signatures they submitted in support of putting the measure on the November ballot.The group, Arkansans for Limited Government, submitted more than 101,000 signatures backing its ballot measure on 5 July, according to its lawsuit. Five days later, the Arkansas secretary of state John Thurston rejected their signatures because, he said, they failed to turn in the required paperwork, including a statement that identified any paid canvassers used by the group.In its lawsuit, Arkansans for Limited Government fired back, claiming that the group had fully complied with Arkansas law and submitted canvassers’ names. They also argued that even if they had not complied with the law, they should be given the chance to correct the paperwork.“Our compliance with the law is clear and well-documented,” Lauren Cowles, executive director of Arkansans for Limited Government, said in a statement. “The secretary of state’s refusal to count valid signatures is an affront to democracy and an attempt to undermine the will of the people.”Arkansas currently bans all abortions except in medical emergencies. Arkansans for Limited Government’s ballot measure would permit people to get abortions up until 18 weeks of pregnancy, as well as in cases of rape or incest.“We are reviewing the lawsuit and would have no further comment at this time,” Chris Powell, press secretary for the Arkansas secretary of state, said in an email.In order to go before voters in November, the ballot measure must be certified by 22 August. Arkansans for Limited Government’s lawsuit asks the Arkansas supreme court to force Thurston to start counting and verifying signatures so that the measure can meet that deadline.In the two years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, voters in states like Michigan, Ohio and Kansas have all passed ballot measures to protect abortion rights. A number of states, including Nevada, Arizona and Florida are slated to put abortion-related ballot measures before voters this November. Democrats are hoping that these measures will boost turnout among their base, while anti-abortion activists and their Republican allies have tried to squash similar measures in states like Missouri and South Dakota. More

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      in UK Politics

      Wes Streeting vows to begin negotiations with junior doctors next week in first act as health secretary

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      Support trulyindependent journalismFind out moreCloseOur mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.Louise ThomasEditorNew health secretary Wes Streeting has announced talks next week with junior doctors to negotiate an end to strikes as his first act in office.Following a landslide Labour win in the general election, Wes Streeting was appointed the Department for Health and Social Care’s new health secretary, as was expected. He takes over the office as the NHS faces ongoing junior doctors strikes and an NHS waiting list of 7.57 million. In his first statement as health secretary on Friday he said: “I have just spoken over the phone with the British Medical Association junior doctors committee, and I can announce that talks to end their industrial action will begin next week.“We promised during the campaign that we would begin negotiations as a matter of urgency, and that is what we are doing.”Mr Streeting has previously been clear he could not cave to junior doctors’ requests for a 35 per cent pay rise, but promised to open negotiations with the BMA when in office.His statement added: “When we said during the election campaign, that the NHS was going through the biggest crisis in its history, we meant it.Wes Streeting, left, has been handed one of the most challenging ministerial roles in the cabinet More