Innehållsförteckning för December 16, 2019 från The Nation

Off Base Come on, folks—you can do much better than this. I’m referring to the article “Moneyball Bites Back,” by Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier [October 21]. I made it to the section that reveals that the players (the oppressed) were averaging a salary of $4.5 million in 2018, after which I struggled to keep reading about their “plight.” I had to pinch myself again and again to remind myself that I was reading not Forbes but The Nation, the historical vanguard of the nonelite underclasses. There is a shocking, widening income gap in this country fueled by the corporate sector, and the sporting industry is no exception. Come on, Nation! I am thoroughly disappointed. ROBERT GARAVELBROOKFIELD, CONN. Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier Reply We agree with Mr. Garavel that…

8 States that have passed laws to make abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy 8 States that have passed laws to make abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy 1 Number of states that have passed laws to make abortion illegal upon conception, with no exceptions for rape or incest 452 Number of clinics that provided abortions in the United States in 1996 272 Clinics that provided abortions in 2014, the last year for which data is available 6 Number of states with only one abortion clinic 20% Percentage of women who would need to travel more than 40 miles to reach the nearest clinic that provides abortions 3 Number of states that passed laws in 2019 affirming the right to an abortion…

In A Warning, the new book by an anonymous senior official in the Trump administration, the author writes that as the number of undocumented men, women, and children entering the United States via the Mexican border increased, President Trump proposed declaring them enemy combatants and sending them to Guantánamo Bay. On one level, this is just more gibbering from a man who routinely proposes nonsensical—and clearly illegal—strategies. But on another level, it’s hugely important. It signals that Trump is willing to turn his vast propaganda tools toward convincing his base that immigrants are enemy combatants, as bad and fearsome as the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center, and that they should be treated the way we treat terrorism suspects, many of whom were waterboarded at black sites or continue…

IN THE SPRING OF 2011, TWO FETUSES TESTIFIED BEFORE THE OHIO HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES’ HEALTH COMMITTEE. AT LEAST THAT’S how the spectacle was described by the anti-abortion-rights activists who had recruited two pregnant women to receive ultrasounds, live, while the representatives watched. Small dots flashing on a projection screen were described as beating hearts, and their sound was broadcast to the room—one coming through clearly, a reporter noted, the other “only faintly audible and hard to distinguish.” A month earlier, a Republican state representative had introduced legislation to make abortion illegal as soon as fetal cardiac activity (colloquially but disingenuously described as a heartbeat) could be detected—usually around the sixth to eighth week of pregnancy, sometimes before a woman even knows she’s pregnant. The bill captured an ascendant mood: After…

ON A MUGGY EVENING IN MID-SEPTEMBER, I DROVE FROM MY HOME IN CINCINNATI TO A RALLY 15 MINUTES WEST AT A PLANNED Parenthood health center that was slated to close. Earlier that week, news broke that because of a reduction in funding, Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio would shut down two of its nine clinics in the state. In August the organization was forced to withdraw from the federal Title X family planning program after an unprecedented Trump administration rule prohibited those funds from going to facilities that provide abortions or refer patients to abortions elsewhere. Title X subsidizes birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and other medical care for 4 million low-income patients. The soon-to-be-shuttered clinics, both of them in Cincinnati, served over 6,000 patients a year, with…

Magdalene, the latest album from the English artist FKA Twigs, sounds unnatural as it seeps out of a simple set of speakers: It’s too weighty, too ornate for just a casual listen. That much is clear during the opener, “thousand eyes,” in which her piercing choral arrangements ring out beatifically amid crashes of what could be a golden opera gong. It’s easier to imagine songs like these unraveling in a lavish, ruby-encrusted theater somewhere, one fit for the excess, the nakedness, and the fury of Twigs’s high drama. Twigs’s real name is Tahliah Barnett, and she has made a career of contorting herself into different shapes. A professionally trained ballerina, she entered the music industry as a backup dancer for pop singers like Jessie J and Ed Sheeran. Quietly,…

A merica is a country that telegraphs profoundly conflicting ideas of what life as a woman should be. There are five female candidates for president. Women are fully integrated into the paid labor force: Almost half of workers are women. Seventy percent of mothers with children work outside the home; the vast majority working full-time. Across income groups, but especially among low-income families, the wages women earn increasingly represent half—or more—of what their families live on. America depends on women’s labor, paid and unpaid, and expects women to dream big, just as men do. And yet in 2019 alone, state after state has passed laws that, if enforced, would completely undermine the United States’ notion of itself as a country that embraces gender equality. These laws ban abortion, and now…

American workers are fed up. So fed up that they’re taking one of the most radical steps available to them: refusing to work. This year kicked off with public school teachers in California going on strike to demand higher pay, more support services, and smaller class sizes. In October, Chicago’s teachers followed suit, staging their longest strike in decades. Then teachers in Little Rock, Arkansas, struck for just the second time in the city’s history. In between the teachers’ strikes, 46,000 General Motors workers walked off the job for 40 days, the longest strike by autoworkers in half a century, to call for higher pay, better benefits, investment in American plants, and a path to full-time status for temporary workers—all meant to reverse the belt-tightening implemented during the Great Recession.…

NILOFAR GANJAIE OFTEN HAS TO ASK PEOPLE WHAT BELONGINGS THEY CAN SELL TO HELP PAY FOR THEIR ABORTIONS. HER ORGANIZATION, the Northwest Abortion Access Fund (NWAAF), helps people in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska who are struggling to afford the hundreds or, later in pregnancy, thousands of dollars that an abortion costs. Each week, the fund sets aside a portion of its budget to help those with upcoming appointments. And each week, generally by Wednesday, the money is gone. So volunteers like Ganjaie walk callers through a set of calculations: Are there friends or relatives they can ask for money? Expenses they can delay? Callers have sold their clothing or children’s toys. She offers patients the option of delaying their appointments, but even then, the fund can’t guarantee help. “Those…

Right now reproductive freedom is under constant assault. Through a coordinated effort to trigger a Supreme Court challenge to Roe v. Wade, in 2019, more than 300 dangerous and unconstitutional bills to gut abortion access have been introduced in states throughout the country—including Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee—and some have already become law. On top of that, the Trump administration imposed its unethical Title X ‘gag rule’ and forced Planned Parenthood—the largest Title X provider since its creation—to withdraw and forego millions of dollars in critical funding. However, the rush to spread cruel lies and strip away women’s reproductive freedom is drastically out of touch with the seven in 10 Americans that believe Roe v. Wade should stand. The majority of Americans believe these are rights worth protecting, and for…

Perhaps no other area of political controversy is spoken about with such a strange distance from the experiences of those who have gone through it. I own a tote bag that says “I had an abortion” in blue block letters. I also have a T-shirt that says “Everyone loves someone who had an abortion.” You can get a pro-abortion holographic fanny pack as part of a fund raiser for the National Network of Abortion Funds. In Shout Your Abortion’s online store, there’s a gold necklace that reads “Abortion” in the script font of a nameplate and sweatshirts that read “El aborto es normal” in gothic letters reminiscent of the New York Times logo. There are simple statements, like the T-shirts that implore “Ask me about my abortion” in plain sans…

I hate this sweater but I’m too cold notto wear it as a metaphor for my career. My therapist says yes corporations take advantageof human beings’ ambitious nature. My insurance says they will coverzero dollars for our visits. What a thrill. I cut my finger while washing the blenderat the exact second that I think of you. We went to the protest, I bought those powderblue shoes with the green alligator on them. Handmaid’s Tale jokes at the VMAs. Clean versions of songs.Picking out baby names for babies that will never be born. You bought the diamond necklace for mom at the mall,you have great taste. You bought it at a store called Accessory Place. Recurring nightmare that I missed the whole summer.Walks I took on my lunch break with…

ACROSS 1 Athlete’s company getting back inside (just kidding!) (4) 3 Flip game console recording and support accommodations for pets? (9) 8 Tormented soul, slain by some innuendos (9) 10 Master list includes reading, for one (5) 11 Car overturned a coach with endless regret (6) 12 Mom puts down “Iowa” as a country (8) 14 Pirate at sea gaining victory with little hesitation! (9) 15 Before awkward pout (2,2) 18 Pronounces 16 in French, we hear (4) 19 12, more or less, hunt stealthily, catching creature’s head in tree (9) 21 Priestly vestment, suitable for former diplomat (8) 23 Fool someone at first into a jump-and-run (6) 26 Channel a certain amount of data into something that should be banned (1-4) 27 Return abbreviated documents about marathoner, perhaps, as…

For nearly six months, protesters in Hong Kong have struggled for democratic rights and against the increasing influence of the Chinese government. In response, the US Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (HKHRDA) by unanimous consent. The act, championed by Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, commits the United States to supporting the protests. It also requires sanctions and other diplomatic actions if Hong Kong—which has its own legal system—is judged to be insufficiently autonomous. (Trump has threatened to veto the bill, claiming it would affect trade talks with China, but it received enough votes in Congress to override that.) At first glance, the HKHRDA seems laudable. Hong Kong is a haven for free expression and assembly in an increasingly authoritarian China, as well as…

We often talk about abortion as if it’s a thing unto itself. If we connect it to anything, it’s usually to sex education, contraception, and other contested ways of preventing unwanted births. What gets much less attention is the removal of everyday rights from willingly pregnant women. For opponents of abortion, who grant personhood to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses, it’s not a stretch to go from saying “You have to have that baby” to “You have to produce a healthy baby, therefore your wishes, needs, and constitutional rights are of no account.” Moreover, if anything goes wrong, they’re going to assume it’s your fault alone. Consider forced surgery. You might have thought the issue was settled in women’s favor in 1987, when a court ordered Angela Carder, a terminally…

Alabama’s new ban would punish those performing an abortion with up to 99 years in prison. Under Ohio’s ban, a doctor could be imprisoned for up to a year. A new wave of abortion bans has swept statehouses in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah. Many of these states have banned abortions at such an early stage of pregnancy—six to eight weeks—that many women won’t even know they’re pregnant yet. Because these laws are now being challenged in court, none of them have taken effect. Some of the nation’s prosecutors are considering deliberate inaction. In mid-April, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel made a public pledge: Should Roe v. Wade be overturned and her state’s pre-1973 ban on abortion come back into effect, she would not prosecute…

IN VIRGINIA, 2019 DAWNED AS THE YEAR THE DEMOCRATS COULD TAKE BACK THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A GENERATION. In 2015, a beaten-down party fielded only 56 candidates for the state’s 100-seat House of Delegates, letting the GOP win 66. Two years later, a fiery surge of activism in response to Donald Trump’s presidency led to 88 Democrats running. That November, they almost took the House, electing 15 pro-choice delegates, including 11 women. But in January, party leaders botched their messaging about an abortion-rights bill, and suddenly the state’s anti-Trump political momentum was in grave danger of being reversed. Virginia, you’ll recall, is the state where Republicans tried to force women to undergo an invasive transvaginal ultrasound in order to get an abortion (even though involuntary sexual…