Author: Reporter

Taylor Cagnacci moved from California to Tennessee with hopes of starting a new chapter in a state that touts a low cost of living and natural beauty. But she is infuriated by Tennessee’s meager social services, which leave her and many other moms struggling in a state where abortion is banned with limited exceptions. “I was going to have my child no matter what, but for other women, that’s kind of a crappy situation that they put you in,” said Cagnacci, a 29-year-old Kingsport mom who relies on Medicaid and a federally funded nutrition program. “You have to have...

Opponents of abortion are increasingly focusing on restricting access to pills, which are the most common way to end a pregnancy in the United States. In December, the Texas attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit against a New York doctor, saying she violated Texas law by prescribing abortion pills to a patient there via telemedicine. The suit represents the first lawsuit of its kind and could lead to a legal test for the New York law designed to protect providers there who prescribe the drugs to patients in states with abortion bans. Anti-abortion officials are taking other steps, too,...

They called it the “monkey trial.” It was supposed to be a publicity stunt.= = =A hundred years later, it is remembered as far more. In March 1925, Tennessee became the first state in the country to ban the teaching of evolution in public school classrooms. Strong reactions rippled across the United States. The eventual upshot: a legal battle that became one of the most renowned in the nation’s history. Historians say the trial started as a tourism gambit on behalf of the small town of Dayton, Tennessee — where the landmark case unfolded. The town’s leaders were eager...

As the colossal replica of the biblical Noah’s Ark rises incongruously from the countryside of northern Kentucky, Ken Ham gives the presentation he has often repeated. The ark stretches one and a half football fields long, “the biggest freestanding timber-frame structure in the world,” Ham said. It holds three massive decks with wooden cages, food-storage urns, life-size animal models, and other exhibits. It is all designed to argue that the biblical story was literally true, that an ancient Noah really could have built such a sophisticated ship. That Noah and a handful of family members really could have sustained...