Author: Syndicated

Around two days a week, Natalee Hartwig leaves her home in Madison, Wisconsin, before her son wakes up to travel across the border into Illinois. “Luckily it’s summer,” said Hartwig, a nurse midwife at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. “For now, he can sleep in. But any getting ready that has to happen will be on my spouse.” She drives at least two hours each way, immersed in audiobooks and podcasts as she heads back and forth from a clinic in this northern Illinois suburb. She spends her days in the recovery room, caring for patients who have had abortions...

Last September, New York City was so thoroughly inundated by Hurricane Ida that some commuters waded through water up to their waists just to get in and out of the subway station. Across the country, extreme heat battered the West Coast, melting Portland’s streetcar power cables. This summer has seen similar headlines, with heatwaves warping the BART train tracks in San Francisco and sudden rainfall interrupting Northeastern commutes. These extreme weather events, which are increasing in severity and frequency due to climate change, pose a problem to the millions of Americans who rely on public transit to get to...

In the shadow of the art deco Los Angeles City Hall, musicians jammed onstage, kids got their faces painted, and families picnicked on lawn chairs. Amid the festivity, people waved flags, sported T-shirts, and sold buttons that were all emblazoned with a familiar slogan: “My Body, My Choice.” This wasn’t an abortion rights rally. It wasn’t a protest against the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gutted Roe v. Wade. It was the “Defeat the Mandates Rally,” a jubilant gathering of anti-vaccine activists in April to protest the few remaining covid-19 guidelines, such as mask mandates on mass transit and vaccination requirements...

At a recent rally in Nashville, Tennessee, Planned Parenthood organizer Julie Edwards looked out at some of the “back-alley abortion” imagery on signs, including bloody coat hangers. Edwards reminded the crowd, driven into the streets by the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision on abortion rights, that it’s not like the old days before Roe v. Wade. Nearly a decade ago, Edwards was a teenager and got medication from older friends to end an unintended pregnancy. “I’m standing in front of you having had a self-managed abortion, having gotten abortion pills from people in my community. And I’m safe,”...