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      As I vote for president, I’ll be thinking of what Amanda Zurawski told me | Sophie Brickman

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      Shortly before America’s first presidential election since the fall of Roe v Wade, I want to tell you the story of Amanda Zurawski, a bright light in the center of a perfect, horrendous storm.A little over two years ago, Zurawski was 18 weeks pregnant with her first child, a child she and her husband had conceived after a year and a half of fertility treatments. When she started leaking fluid and sought medical help, her doctors told her there was no chance the fetus would survive. But Zurawski lives in Texas, a state with some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country: in May of the previous year, the governor, Greg Abbott, had signed into law the Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as SB8, which makes performing abortions after detection of embryonic or fetal cardiac activity, usually at six weeks, illegal. That was on top of several existing statutes. Then, in June 2022, Roe fell.And so Zurawski’s doctors told her that by the letter of the law – as far as they understood it; more on that later – in order to get the medical care she so desperately needed, either her daughter’s heart would have to stop, or her health would have to devolve into a “life-threatening situation”, something Zurawski has previous called “the most horrific version of a staring contest: whose life would end first? Mine, or my daughter’s?”Her doctors advised her not to leave a 15-minute radius of the hospital lest her situation spiral, nixing the already unfathomable idea of getting into a car or on to a plane to seek help from a less restrictive state, and risking going into septic shock in the middle of the Texas desert, or 30,000ft up in the air. So she went home to grieve her impending loss and brace for what might come – during which time, Texas’s total abortion trigger ban went into effect, which made performing an abortion punishable by life in prison. And there Zurawski sat, waiting.The next day, she developed sepsis – a condition her doctors felt was extreme enough to protect them from unintentionally violating the new law, allowing them to induce labor – and after three days in the ICU, she emerged from the experience having almost died, with her own future fertility compromised, and galvanized to make a change about the inhumane laws.“I admittedly didn’t realize the ways in which an abortion truly is just healthcare,” Zurawski told me this week when I reached her by phone during her early morning walk with her sheepadoodle, Millie, in Austin, where she lives with her husband, Josh. “I couldn’t imagine that I would ever need or want one, since I was desperately trying to have a baby.”The first moment abortion laws and her own fertility journey intersected was early on in the IVF process. The likelihood of a multiples pregnancy increases when using IVF, but as she is not able to carry multiples, her doctor had discussed the possibility of needing to perform selective reduction surgery if more than one embryo implanted, something that is currently illegal in Texas.“So I was aware that these laws could affect us, but not from the perspective that I would need it to save my life, and be denied healthcare,” she told me. When she found herself in the unimaginable situation of being turned away from the hospital by doctors who wanted to help her, but weren’t sure they could, her eyes opened, and she and Josh vowed to fight.Zurawski became the lead plaintiff in the landmark case, Zurawski v Texas, which sued the state of Texas to clarify the “medical emergency” exception in the law – a riveting and harrowing new documentary about the case follows Zurawski and two fellow plaintiffs through the legal fight – and soon found herself catapulted on to the national stage. Her natural charisma, straight talk, and tragic story calcified into a perfect trifecta with the power – so hopes Kamala Harris, who made her a campaign surrogate – of firing up the electorate.“Humanizing it is what’s really getting people to sit up and pay attention,” Zurawski told me. “When you see a face and a real human who’s been impacted by this, it’s impossible to say, ‘This is reasonable, this is exactly what we want for our country.’” She paused to take a breath. “That’s barbaric.”One of the most powerful scenes in the documentary shows Zurawski at home with her parents, her mother saying that she’s always voted Republican, but won’t after seeing her daughter almost die.“Will I say they’re converted Democrats? No!” Zurawski told me, laughing, as she huffed her way up a hill. “But I do think they are single-issue voters, at least in this election. It opened up their eyes a little bit to the legislature, and how laws are written, and how bans go into effect, and the real implications.”The real implications of, say, “medical exceptions” to a near-total abortion ban?“They don’t work! Categorically!” she scoffed, citing the multiple patient plaintiffs in her case, alongside other women who have died in our country awaiting care their doctors are prohibited, by law, from providing. “Every pregnancy is inherently unique. Where else in healthcare do we put a blanket rule over where you can and cannot receive treatment?”In her work over the years since she lost her pregnancy, she’s found that one key to changing minds lies in reframing the conversation from “pro-life” v “pro-choice” to one about healthcare access.“For 50 years, the right worked really hard to politicize and weaponize and stigmatize the word ‘abortion’,” she said. You say pro-choice or pro-life, and people are already on a side. But some of the time, she pointed out, people simply don’t understand what it means to be on one side or the other.“I’ll be at a rally, and someone will come up to me and say, ‘I didn’t realize that in 1985, when I had a D&C’” – a dilation-and-curettage surgical procedure that removes tissue from the uterus after miscarriage – “‘that’s an abortion.’ That’s the same as abortion care!”As Zurawski has crisscrossed the country, campaigning for the Harris-Walz ticket, another part of her family has also moved: her embryos. In February, the Alabama supreme court ruled that frozen embryos are “unborn children”. Zurawski, living in a state that has a similar political climate – one in which city councils have enacted abortion travel bans, in effect criminalizing the use of cities’ roads and highways to seek abortion care – panicked, and rushed to move them to a safer place.“The implications of the ruling are just staggering,” she said. But, by some estimates, she admits that moving the embryos is itself a stopgap measure. “If Trump is elected, it doesn’t matter where the embryos are, or where we are. He will unleash chaos.”She cited Project 2025, a rightwing policy manifesto for Trump’s second term that indicates plans not only to restrict birth control access and block access to abortion pills and medical equipment, but also potentially ban IVF and surrogacy in certain states.“Well, Josh and I have to use a surrogate now because of what my body went through. It’s like they’re saying, you’re out of luck!” She paused, catching her breath on the other end of the phone, perhaps reaching the top of a hill. “It could theoretically prevent us from having children.”So, what’s to be done? Watch the documentary. Share her story. Vote. Fight.

      Sophie Brickman is a contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times and other publications, and the author of Baby, Unplugged: One Mother’s Search for Balance, Reason, and Sanity in the Digital Age and the novel Plays Well With Others More

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      Contested state supreme court seats are site of hidden battle for abortion access

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      Abortion will be on the ballot in 10 states on Tuesday, and it’s one of the top issues in the presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But it is also key to less publicized but increasingly contested races for seats on state supreme courts, which often have the last word on whether a state will ban or protect access to the procedure.This year, voters in 33 states have the chance to decide who sits on their state supreme courts. Judges will be on the ballot in Arizona and Florida, where supreme courts have recently ruled to uphold abortion bans. They are also up for election in Montana, where the supreme court has backed abortion rights in the face of a deeply abortion-hostile state legislature.In addition, supreme court judges are on the ballot in Maryland, Nebraska and Nevada – all of which are holding votes on measures that could enshrine access to abortion in their state constitutions. Should those measures pass, state supreme courts will almost certainly determine how to interpret them.Indeed, anti-abortion groups are already gearing up for lawsuits.“We’re all going to end up in court, because they’re going to take vague language from these ballot initiatives to ask for specific things like funding for all abortions, abortion for minors without parental consent,” said Kristi Hamrick, chief media and policy strategist for the powerful anti-abortion group Students for Life of America, which is currently campaigning around state supreme court races in Arizona and Oklahoma. “Judges have become a very big, important step in how abortion law is actually realized.”In Michigan and Ohio, which voted in 2022 and 2023 respectively to amend their state constitution to include abortion rights, advocates are still fighting in court over whether those amendments can be used to strike down abortion restrictions. Come November, however, the ideological makeup of both courts may flip.Spending in state supreme court races has surged since Roe fell. In the 2021-2022 election cycle, candidates, interest groups and political parties spent more than $100m, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. After adjusting for inflation, that’s almost double the amount spent in any previous midterm cycle.View image in fullscreenIn 2023, a race for a single seat on the Wisconsin supreme court alone cost $51m – and hinged on abortion rights, as the liberal-leaning candidate talked up her support for the procedure. (As in many other – but not all – state supreme court races, the candidates in Wisconsin were technically non-partisan.) After that election, liberals assumed a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin supreme court. The court is now set to hear a case involving the state’s 19th-century abortion ban, which is not currently being enforced but is still on the books.It’s too early to tally up the money that has been dumped into these races this year, especially because much of it is usually spent in the final days of the election. But the spending is all but guaranteed to shatter records.In May, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and Planned Parenthood Votes announced that they were teaming up this cycle to devote $5m to ads, canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts in supreme court races in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. Meanwhile, the ACLU and its Pac, the ACLU Voter Education Fund, has this year spent $5.4m on non-partisan advertising and door-knocking efforts in supreme court races in Michigan, Montana, North Carolina and Ohio. The scale of these investments was unprecedented for both Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, according to Douglas Keith, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s Judiciary Program who tracks supreme court races.

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      “For a long time, judicial campaign ads often were just judges saying that they were fair and independent and had family values, and that was about it. Now, you’re seeing judges talk about abortion rights or voting rights or environmental rights in their campaign ads,” Keith said. By contrast, rightwing judicial candidates are largely avoiding talk of abortion, Keith said, as the issue has become ballot box poison for Republicans in the years since Roe fell. Still, the Judicial Fairness Initiative, the court-focused arm of the Republican State Leadership Committee, announced in August that it would make a “seven-figure investment” in judicial races in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.Balancing the federal benchAbortion is far from the only issue over which state courts hold enormous sway. They also play a key role in redistricting, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights and more. And with the US Congress so gridlocked, state-level legislation and its legality has only grown in importance.For years, conservative operatives have focused on remaking the federal judiciary in their ideological image – an effort that culminated in Donald Trump’s appointments of three US supreme court justices and has made federal courts generally more hostile to progressive causes. Now, the ACLU hopes to make state supreme courts into what Deirdre Schifeling, its chief political and advocacy officer, calls a “counterbalance” to this federal bench.“We have a plan through 2030 to work to build a more representative court,” said Schifeling, who has a spreadsheet of the supreme court races that will take place across eight states for years to come. (As a non-partisan organization, the ACLU focuses on voter education and candidates’ “civil rights and civil liberties” records.) This cycle, the organization’s messaging has centered on abortion.“Nationally, you’re seeing polling that shows the top thing that voters are voting on is the economy. But these judges don’t really influence the economy,” Schifeling said. “Of the issues that they can actually influence and have power over, reproductive rights is by far the most important to voters.”Abortion rights supporters are testing out this strategy even in some of the United States’ most anti-abortion states. In Texas, where ProPublica this week reported two women died after being denied emergency care due to the state’s abortion ban, former US air force undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones has launched the Find Out Pac, which aims to unseat three state supreme court justices.Justices Jane Bland, Jimmy Blacklock and John Devine, the Pac has declared, “fucked around with our reproductive freedom” in cases upholding Texas’s abortion restrictions. Now, Jones wants them out.“Why would we not try to hold some folks accountable?” Jones said. “This is the most direct way in which Texas voters can have their voices heard on this issue.” (There is no way for citizens to initiate a ballot measure in Texas.) The Pac has been running digital ads statewide on how the Texas ban has imperiled access to medically necessary care.However, since state supreme court races have long languished in relative obscurity, voters don’t always know much about them and may very well default to voting on party lines in the seven states where the ballots list the affiliations of nominees for the bench. Although the majority of Texans believe abortions should be legal in all or some cases, nearly half of Texans don’t recall seeing or hearing anything about their supreme court in the last year, according to Find Out Pac’s own polling.“This conversation that we’re having in Texas, around the importance of judicial races, is new for us as Democrats,” Jones said. “It’s not for the Republicans.” More

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      ‘We can win Florida’: Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff rallies for VP in red state

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      In terms of presidential elections at least, Florida has fallen a long way since its heady days as the ultimate swing state. Seven cycles on from the 537-vote cliffhanger in 2000 that was finally resolved when the US supreme court placed George Bush in the White House, Florida is so reliably red, and Donald Trump so confident of picking up its 30 electoral college votes, that he has barely campaigned here.For the same reason, the Sunshine state has not featured on Kamala Harris’s schedule either. So some eyebrows were raised when second gentleman Doug Emhoff, the vice-president’s husband, rolled up on Wednesday to rally Democrats in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, on a break from stumping in the battleground states of the north-east.Publicly, at least, Emhoff believes the state is still in play. “We can win Florida. We should win Florida!” he told a lively gathering of supporters at a Get Out the Early Vote rally at the OB Johnson Center in Hallandale Beach, a Fort Lauderdale suburb in the Democratic stronghold of Broward county.Polling would suggest otherwise: Trump leads Harris by about six points in the latest FiveThirtyEight.com average in a state he won handily in both 2016 and 2020.But even under the specter of a Florida defeat in the presidential contest, Democrats at the national and state levels see extra value in his visit because of a tighter US senate race in Florida between incumbent Republican Rick Scott and his Democratic challenger, former representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.Much of the sparring in that contest has been over women’s healthcare rights, and especially Amendment 4, the ballot initiative that will overturn Florida’s draconian six-week abortion ban if approved by a 60% majority.It’s an issue that has caused outrage among advocates largely because of ultra-conservative Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s efforts to interfere. He has been accused of sending law enforcement to the homes of people who signed a petition in support, illegally spending taxpayers’ money on TV ads opposing it, and threatening legal action against networks that broadcast ads supporting it.Emhoff, unsurprisingly, had thoughts. Attacking Trump as the architect of the downfall of Roe v Wade, he said: “Make no mistake, Donald Trump is no friend to women. He has proven himself to be a threat to women. Now he claims to be a friend to women. Would he protect you? Of course not. Trump is proud of it. He brags about stripping away Roe v Wade.”His comments prompted chants of: “Yes on 4!”Mucarsel-Powell was among the speakers and also addressed it. “I will protect healthcare and people with pre-existing conditions. I will stand for women, and children, to make sure we protect them against the attacks on their reproductive freedom,” she said.

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      Also on Emhoff’s agenda was gun violence, the economy and immigration, as well as the Republicans’ extremist Project 2025 agenda. He laid out how Harris would address these issues from the White House, and expressed disappointment that polling, less than two weeks from election day, showed a tightening race.“It shouldn’t be this close,” he said.Some had thought the back-to-back hurricanes, Helene and Milton, that ravaged parts of Florida in recent weeks would be addressed. Harris had sparred with DeSantis over the storms, with the governor reportedly refusing to take her calls because, he said, they “seemed political”.But Emhoff did cover a number of other familiar recent Democratic talking points in his half-hour speech, including Trump’s reported admiration for Adolf Hitler’s military generals, which, as he pointed out, Harris addressed earlier Wednesday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We really need to listen to what Donald Trump is saying, what’s coming out of his mouth. We lived through it when he was president. Somehow we got through it. This time around, he poses an even greater threat – to the economy, to women, and our very lives,” he said.“We can’t look away from this. This is as real as it gets. This is right in front of our faces. He’s completely unfit, unhinged and un-American. We need to turn the page on this chapter of American history.”He also referred to Trump’s “weird” references to Arnold Palmer, and the size of his genitalia. “What is that?” Emhoff said.Following his address in Hallandale, Emhoff headed for a Wednesday night rally and fundraiser in Coral Gablers, Miami, close to where Trump spoke directly to Latino voters earlier this week. Both sides are desperately courting south Florida’s sizeable Hispanic community in the final stages of the race.Supporters speaking before the Hallandale Beach event welcomed Emhoff’s visit. Democratic voter Anthony Hill, of Lauderdale Lakes, said it showed Democrats had not given up on Florida.“Every weekend, the Trump supporters are out here on street corners with their flags. It gets depressing,” he said. “I don’t think Kamala is going to win here, but if we can win some of the down-ballot races we can show that we’re still alive.” More

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      Melania Trump’s abortion views baffle both sides: ‘Hard to follow the logic’

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      The revelation on Wednesday evening that Melania Trump’s forthcoming memoir includes a full-throated defense of abortion rights, an issue her husband Donald Trump has repeatedly flip-flopped on during his presidential campaign, left people on both sides of the issue less than impressed.“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body,” Melania Trump wrote in her memoir. “I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”Melania Trump also defended the right to abortion later on in pregnancy – a procedure that her husband has repeatedly demonized. (Less than 1% of abortions occur at or past 21 weeks of gestation.)“Sadly for the women across America, Mrs. Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom and their lives,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in an email. “Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear: If he wins in November, he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women and restrict women’s access to reproductive health care.”Melania Trump’s remarks also took anti-abortion activists by surprise.“It’s hard to follow the logic of putting out the former First Lady’s book right before the election undercutting President Trump’s message to pro-life voters,” Kristan Hawkins, president of the powerful Students for Life of America, posted on Twitter/X on Wednesday night. “What a waste of momentum.”Over the last several weeks, anti-abortion activists have grown increasingly fed up with the former president, who has struggled, alongside the rest of the Republican party, to redefine his messaging on abortion rights amid outrage over the overturning of Roe v Wade.Earlier in his campaign, Trump bragged about appointing three of the US supreme court justices who voted to overturn Roe, branded himself the “most pro-life president ever”. After Kamala Harris became the presidential nominee, however, Trump has pledged that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights” as well as vowed not to sign a national abortion ban – just weeks after refusing to say that he would veto one.Melania Trump’s comments may feel like a further insult to the anti-abortion voters who feel abandoned by Trump, said Republican campaign strategist Liz Mair, adding anti-abortion advocates run potent get-out-the-vote operations. Those advocates were key to Trump’s 2016 victory.“This might be just another thing that piles on to make pro-lifers think: ‘I just can’t with this guy.’ A lot of them were single-issue voters anyway,” Mair said. “He’s not really giving them much of an incentive to show up and do anything to his benefit.”When Tresa Undem, a pollster who has surveyed people about abortion for more than two decades, heard the comments, she immediately thought: “Wow”. Then she thought: “It’s a campaign move.”However, Undem is not sure who, exactly, the move is for – especially given the Trumps’ sometimes frosty relationship in public. Melania Trump has rarely aired her political views and has largely vanished from Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.The odds of Melania Trump’s comments comforting moderate or conservative voters who support abortion rights are “fairly slim”, Undem said.“These strong feelings – they did not suddenly appear this year, right? So she clearly has had no influence on him when it comes to policy related to abortion,” Undem said. “I don’t think she’s ever been positioned, or voters ever think of her, as having any kind of policy position or weight or influence on Trump.” More

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      Where will abortion be on the ballot in the 2024 US election?

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      This November, abortion will be on the ballot in 10 states, including the states that could determine the next president.In the two years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion has become the kind of issue that decides elections. Outrage over Roe’s demise led Republicans to flounder in the 2022 midterms, and abortion rights supporters have won every post-Roe abortion-related ballot measure, including in red states such as Ohio, Kentucky and Kansas.This year, most of the ballot measures are seeking to amend states’ constitutions to protect abortion rights up until fetal viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Because a number of the measures are in states that have outlawed abortion, they could become the first to overturn the post-Roe ban. Others are in states where abortion is legal, but activists say the measures are necessary to cement protections so they can’t be easily overturned if Republicans control the government.These are the states slated to vote on abortion this election day.ArizonaAbortion rights supporters in Arizona, a key battleground state in the presidential election, are vying to pass a measure that would enshrine the right to abortion up until viability in the state constitution. A provider could perform an abortion after viability if the procedure is necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of a patient.Arizona currently bans abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy. Earlier this year, the state supreme court reinstated a 19th-century near-total abortion ban, generating nationwide outrage that prompted the state legislature to quickly repeal it in favor of letting the 15-week ban stand.ColoradoColorado’s measure would amend the state constitution to block the state government from denying, impeding or discriminating against individuals’ “right to abortion”. This measure also includes a one-of-a-kind provision to bar Colorado from prohibiting healthcare coverage for abortion – which could very well pass in the deep-blue state.Because Colorado permits abortion throughout pregnancy and neighbors five states with bans – Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Utah and Nebraska – the state has become a haven for people fleeing abortion bans, especially those seeking abortions later in pregnancy.FloridaOnce the last stronghold of southern abortion access, Florida in May banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women know they’re pregnant. Its measure, which needs 60% of the vote to pass, would roll back that ban by adding the right to an abortion up until viability to the state’s constitution. Providers could perform an abortion after viability if one is needed to protect a patient’s health.Florida Republicans’ tactics in the fight against the measure has alarmed voting rights and civil rights groups. Law enforcement officials have investigated voters who signed petitions to get the measure onto the ballot, while a state health agency has created a webpage attacking the amendment.MarylandLegislators, rather than citizens, initiated Maryland’s measure, which would amend the state constitution to confirm individuals’ “right to reproductive freedom, including but not limited to the ability to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end the individual’s pregnancy”. Like Colorado, Maryland has become an abortion haven because it permits the procedure throughout pregnancy. It is also relatively close to the deep south, which is blanketed in bans. MissouriAbortion opponents went to court to stop Missouri’s measure from appearing on voters’ ballots, but the state supreme court rejected their arguments and agreed to let voters decide whether the Missouri constitution should guarantee the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which is the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive healthcare, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions”.Missouri, which was the first state to ban abortion after Roe fell, only permits the procedure in medical emergencies. If the measure passes, it is expected to roll back that ban and permit abortion until viability.MontanaIn the years since Roe fell, Montana courts and its Republican-dominated legislature have wrestled over abortion restrictions and whether the right to privacy embedded in Montana’s constitution includes the right to abortion. Abortion remains legal until viability in Montana, but the measure would amend the state constitution to explicitly include “a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion” up until viability. Providers could perform an abortion after viability to protect a patient’s life or health.NebraskaNebraska, which bans abortion past 12 weeks of pregnancy, is the lone state with two competing ballot measures this November. One of the measures would enshrine the right to abortion up until viability into the state constitution, while the other would enshrine the current ban. If both measures pass, the measure that garners the most votes would take effect.NevadaAlongside Arizona, Nevada is one of the most closely watched states in the presidential election. Its measure would amend the state constitution to protect individuals’ right to abortion up until viability, or after viability in cases where a patient’s health or life may be threatened. Nevada already permits abortion up until 26 weeks of pregnancy.New YorkNew York state legislators added a measure to the ballot to broaden the state’s anti-discrimination laws by adding, among other things, protections against discrimination on the basis of “sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health”.Although sky-blue New York passed a law protecting reproductive rights in 2019, advocates say this measure could be used to defend abortion rights against future challenges. However, the ballot language before voters will not include the word “abortion”, leading advocates to fear voters will not understand what they are voting on. Democrats pushed to add the word “abortion” to the description of the measure, but a judge rejected the request, ruling that the amendment poses “complex interpretive questions” and its exact impact on abortion rights is unclear.South DakotaSouth Dakota’s measure is less sweeping than other abortion rights measures, because it would only protect the right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. Under this measure, South Dakota could regulate access to abortion “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman” in the second trimester of pregnancy. In the third trimester, the state could ban abortion except in medical emergencies. Right now, South Dakota only allows abortions in such emergencies.Although this measure will appear on the ballot, there will be a trial over the validity of the signatures that were collected for it. Depending out the outcome of the trial, the measure – and any votes cast for it – could be invalidated. More

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      Kamala Harris decries Trump’s abortion comments in first solo TV interview

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      Kamala Harris sat for her first solo interview as the Democratic presidential nominee on Wednesday, laying out her plan to boost the middle class and condemning her rival Donald Trump on his comments over abortion.During the interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, which was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the vice-president painted Trump as a candidate focused on the rich at the expense of the middle class, and herself as better equipped to handle the economy.“The top economists in our country have compared our plans and say mine would grow the economy, [and] his would shrink it,” she said during the interview.On his economic record, Harris said: “Donald Trump made a whole lot of promises that he did not meet.”Harris also showed disdain over Trump’s comments over abortion, expressing he needs to trust women to make their own reproductive decisions. Her comments came after Trump, at a Pennsylvania rally, called himself a “protector” of women, claiming American women will not be “thinking about abortion” if he is elected.“Donald Trump is also the person who said women should be punished for exercising a decision that they, rightly, should be able to make about their own body and future,” Harris said.On a lighter note, Harris confirmed that she worked at McDonald’s, pushing back against Trump’s allegations that she did not.“Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people who work at McDonald’s who are trying to raise a family,” she said, alluding to her economic policy plan to help working-class families.“I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility, then, is to meet those needs,” Harris added.The interview comes at a time when Harris faces harsh criticism over the lack of media interviews she has done. Earlier this month, Axios reported that the Harris-Walz campaign has so far given fewer interviews than any other candidates in modern history.Trump and JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential pick, have used it as ammunition during their campaign speeches. On X, Vance responded to news of Harris’s interview by saying: “This is legitimately pathetic for a person who wants to be president. Ruhle has explicitly endorsed Harris. She won’t ask hard Qs. Kamala runs from tough questions because she can’t defend her record. If you want open borders and high groceries, vote for status quo Kamala.”In August, Harris was interviewed on CNN alongside Walz. The interview was hosted by Dana Bash and was aired as a one-hour primetime special. After the interview, Republicans criticized the joint interview with Walz for being pre-recorded and not live.Since then, Harris has given a handful of interviews, mostly with local outlets or more niche forums, including an appearance with Stephanie “Chiquibaby” Himonidis, a Spanish-language radio host and podcaster.Harris also appeared in a live-streamed “Unite For America” event with supporters hosted by Oprah Winfrey last week. More

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      ‘One death is too many’: abortion bans usher in US maternal mortality crisis

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      In Louisiana, doctors will no longer be able to carry a lifesaving medication with them during pregnancy emergencies. In Texas, the infant mortality rate is soaring. In Idaho, pregnant people drive hours just to give birth. And in Oklahoma and Georgia, women are bleeding out in hospital parking lots and facing dangerous infections before they can find care – and sometimes, that care comes too late.The limitations and outright bans on abortion that have taken hold in half of the US in the wake of the Dobbs decision have wreaked enormous changes to the reproductive health landscape.The restrictions put a growing burden on the health and wellbeing of patients and providers, even as more Americans find it difficult to find and access care.“The United States is, and has been for quite some time, in the midst of a maternal and infant mortality crisis,” said Dr Jamila Perritt, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and president of Physicians for Reproductive Health.Banning access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion care, is “directly causing an increase in morbidity and mortality in our community”, she said. “We have really robust evidence that shows us that when people have sought abortion care and are unable to obtain it, their psychological, social, physical and emotional health is harmed.”Maternal and infant mortality will probably increase because of the restrictions – especially if national limitations, like enforcement of the Comstock Act, are put into place.“I expect in the next few years, we’re going to start to see the infant mortality, pre-term birth, maternal mortality, and maternal morbidity numbers rise for everyone, and particularly for folks from racially marginalized and low-socioeconomic communities,” said Rachel Hardeman, professor of reproductive health and founding director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota.Calculating mortality is often a complicated and controversial endeavor. When maternal mortality dropped in 2022, anti-abortion advocates credited the success to the Dobbs decision.But that’s not the case, according to new research in Jama Network Open.Maternal deaths surged during the first two years of the pandemic, when Covid, a deadly illness during pregnancy, accounted for one-quarter of all maternal deaths. But in 2022, that rate dropped to levels similar to pre-pandemic levels, from 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021 to 22.3 in 2022.That rate is still higher than maternal mortality rates in peer nations, and research indicates it will increase if officials clamp down on abortion nationally – which, with the Comstock Act, would require no additional anti-abortion legislation or bans.Right now, “people can still travel to other states, but once there’s a federal ban, that won’t be an option any more,” says Amanda Jean Stevenson, co-author of the new Jama research and a sociologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. “And there could be this very different set of outcomes when people’s options are gone.”In the United States, more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths and more than 60% of infant deaths in the first week are preventable – and those figures were estimated before the Dobbs decision.Because of abortion restrictions, there are already significant challenges to accessing reproductive healthcare – and it’s not just abortion care.In Louisiana, misoprostol – a drug used for medication abortion and other lifesaving purposes – will be labeled a controlled substance beginning on 1 October. One of its uses is keeping patients from bleeding out after childbirth, which is the No 1 cause of postpartum mortality.Yet physicians cannot keep controlled substances in their emergency carts, and they fear they won’t have enough time to fill prescriptions for patients when minutes and even seconds make the difference between life and death.In the year following Texas’s abortion ban, child mortality shot up by 12.9% – compared with a 1.8% increase in the rest of the country, according to a recent study. Congenital anomalies are the leading cause of infant death in the US – but while they went down by 3.1% in the rest of the country, they went up by 22.9% in Texas.“That study was chilling. That is a huge change,” Stevenson said.It echoed previous research finding that states with the most restrictive abortion laws saw 16% more infant deaths between 2014 and 2018.The trauma and costs of carrying to term pregnancies that are incompatible with life inflict an incalculable toll on families and providers.States are closing obstetric units and losing experienced providers who worry about not being able to offer lifesaving care as patients die on the table in front of them, and facing jail time if they provide care.More than two-thirds (68%) of obstetricians and gynecologists say the Dobbs decision has made it harder for them to respond to pregnancy-related emergencies, according to the non-partisan health research organization KFF. They also believe it has worsened mortality in pregnancy while increasing racial and ethnic inequities, and fewer doctors are now interested in entering the field.In 2022, soon after the Dobbs decision, medical residency applications dropped for states with bans.More than half of doctors surveyed in states with bans and limitations said they were very concerned about legal repercussions to providing the standard of care in pregnancy.“That can just exacerbate already pretty large gaps in the workforce,” said Usha Ranji, associate director for women’s health policy at KFF.In the past two years, more than 100 hospitals have closed their obstetric units entirely, according to a new March of Dimes report. More than one-third of US counties are now maternity care deserts, with no obstetricians or places to give birth. North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Oklahoma and Nebraska have the least access to maternity care.The majority of rural hospitals (57%) no longer deliver babies, with more than 100 of the rural hospitals ending labor and delivery services in the past five years.“We’ve created policy and legislation to limit access to abortions and also have closed the exact places that people need to go to get care if they are pregnant,” Hardeman said. That puts pressure on neighboring states that still provide care, she said.“Where you live matters for your health. And I think that the Dobbs decision and the fall of Roe have demonstrated that in a very real and very obvious way, because there are literally places in this country where there is essentially no access to reproductive healthcare,” she said.“It started out in rural spaces, but more and more, there’s reports popping up of labor and delivery units closing in, like, urban Chicago.”In states with restrictions on abortion, women of color and pregnant people from low-income communities often suffer the most, said Hardeman. “Taking away access to reproductive healthcare is exacerbating those disparities.”Black women die because of pregnancy at twice the national rate, and three times more than white women, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.“The fact that black women and birthing people are dying at three to four times greater risk than white women is shameful – and it’s preventable,” Perritt said.It’s important to shore up protections for reproductive health for all Americans before health complications and mortality rise even more, she said. “One death is too much. One is too many.” More

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      in US Politics

      Harris calls for end to Senate filibuster to restore US abortion rights

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      Kamala Harris has called for an end to the Senate filibuster to make good on her pledge to restore the right to abortion through legislation.The US vice-president, herself a former senator, told a radio station in Wisconsin that eliminating the filibuster – which sets a 60-vote threshold in the 100-seat upper chamber of the US Congress – would be necessary to codify the rights that were enshrined in Roe v Wade, the 1973 supreme court ruling that upheld the right to legal abortion throughout the US until it was overturned by a ruling two years ago.“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom, and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body – and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris told WPR, an affiliate of National Public Radio, on a campaign trip to Wisconsin, a key midwestern swing state where she has a wafer-thin lead over Donald Trump, according to recent polls.Her remarks accentuated her determination to put abortion rights at the heart of her campaign message amid polling evidence that it is a priority for many women voters.However, it cost her the support of the outgoing West Virginia senator, Joe Manchin – a former Democrat who left the party this year to become an independent – who said he would not endorse her candidacy because of her pledge.“Shame on her,” Manchin, who is retiring from the Senate at the end of the year, told CNN. “She knows the filibuster is the holy grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids.”Trump has been on the defensive on abortion because the 2022 supreme court ruling was achieved with the votes of three conservative justices he appointed to the bench when he was president. Harris has claimed that Trump would sign a nationwide ban if he re-captured the White House, although he insists he would leave it to individual states.Harris’s use of a radio interview to underline her commitment follows criticism that she was deliberately avoiding high-profile interviews – a charge Harris has sought to counter by making herself available to selected media in battleground states.Trump told a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday that he would be women’s “protectors” and that they would not “be thinking about abortion” if he won a second term.Harris’s filibuster remarks echoed a similar comment by Joe Biden immediately after Roe v Wade was struck down, when he said an exception to the time-honoured Senate rule had to be made to guarantee abortion rights.“I believe we have to codify Roe v Wade in the law,” he said. “And the way to do that is to make sure the Congress votes to do that. And if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights – it should be (that) we provide an exception to this … requiring an exception to the filibuster for this action to deal with the supreme court decision.”Harris has previously advocated overriding the filibuster to pass additional voting rights laws and Green New Deal legislation.In 2020, Barack Obama described the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic” from America’s racially segregated past and argued that it should be eliminated if used to block voting reform.The filibuster describes the use of prolonged debate to delay or prevent a vote on a bill. It can be invoked by any senator objecting to a bill and has been used with increasing regularity in recent decades.It can only be overridden by triggering “cloture”, which requires a three-fifths majority vote – or 60 of the 100 senators. If cloture passes, it enables a vote on the original measure the filibuster was designed to block.The longest filibuster in Senate history was achieved by Strom Thurmond, the pro-segregationist South Carolina senator, when he spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an effort to block civil rights legislation in 1957.Thurmond’s speech – described by his biographer as a “urological mystery” – was reportedly achieved with help of prior steam baths to dehydrate his body and preclude the need for regular bathroom breaks. He was also reported by a staffer to have had himself fitted with a catheter to relieve himself while he spoke. More