Published14 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Jake Olson/BBCBy Holly Honderichin WashingtonIn what is being celebrated as a victory for abortion rights advocates, Ohioans have decided to keep the minimum voter threshold of a bare majority for amending their constitution, rejecting an attempt to raise it to 60%. With most of the votes counted, US media projected on Tuesday evening that a majority of Ohio voters said ‘no’ to raising the threshold, including in big cities like Cleveland and Columbus, while around 43% voted ‘yes’. The campaign behind the ‘no’ vote, One Person, One Vote, told Politico in a statement that the amendment – called Issue 1 – was a “deceptive power grab designed to silence” the voice of voters.Ohio Democratic Party Chair Liz Walters told the Columbus Dispatch that the result is “a victory for the kind of state we want to see.”More than 600,000 submitted early ballots on the issue – a historically high turnout for August elections in the state.Issue 1 may sound tedious, but the rare summer election had potential implications for a later vote, scheduled in November, which could establish a state-wide right to abortion. If Issue 1 had passed, the abortion-rights amendment would likely have been blocked, with support falling below the proposed higher threshold. So was the vote on issue 1 about protecting the constitution, as its supporters claim, or was it really about abortion? What is Issue 1?Issue 1 was the only question on the ballot in Ohio’s 8 August special election.Before key abortion vote, Republicans try to change the rulesIf passed, it would have changed the threshold for approving amendments from 50% to 60%. And Issue 1 would have also made it harder to put amendments before voters in the first place, asking petitioners to gather signatures from 5% of eligible voters in each of Ohio’s 88 counties, instead of the current 44.In the 111 years since Ohio first granted voters the power to introduce citizen-led amendments, just 19 of 71 proposed measures have passed the 50% benchmark. Why is it controversial? Issue 1 was championed by Ohio’s Republican led-legislature and the state’s chief election official, Republican secretary of state Frank LaRose.Mr LaRose and his allies have said Issue 1 was about protecting the Ohio constitution from outside moneyed interests.”Constitutions are for fundamental rights, widely held beliefs,” he told the BBC this week. “Not just a controversial issue that may have 51% support.”Image source, Jake Olson/BBCBut opponents of Issue 1 – a diverse and bipartisan coalition – insisted it was actually an effort to block the abortion amendment. “They’ve seen polls in Ohio that show 58, 59% of Ohioans support this amendment,” said Kellie Copeland, executive director of Pro-Choice Ohio. “And so they were looking to put it just out of reach.”And at a private event in May, Mr LaRose seemed to confirm these widely-held suspicions. “I’m pro-life. I think many of you are as well,” Mr LaRose said, in a video recorded by Scanner Media. “This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”What are the likely consequences? Polls suggest that the abortion-rights amendment – which protects abortion access up until foetal viability (around 24 weeks of pregnancy) – would be likely to win a majority. But meeting the 60% threshold would be a long-shot. Without constitutional protection, the Republican-led statehouse will likely move forward with more anti-abortion legislation. Currently, a six-week ban is on hold while a legal challenge proceeds. If abortion becomes illegal in Ohio, the consequences will be felt by millions in neighbouring states, including Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, where abortion access has already been cut off. And beyond abortion, observers say the implications of Ohio’s August election could spill over into the state’s election for US Senator next year, in which Mr LaRose may be a candidate. Image source, Jake Olson/BBCMore on this storyBefore key abortion vote, Republicans try to change the rulesPublished11 hours agoFour ways the end of Roe v Wade has changed AmericaPublished24 JuneThe woman who wants to end abortion in AmericaPublished24 June

Published17 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Ross Mantle/BBCBy Holly Honderichin WashingtonWhen Kristan Hawkins was 23, she started sleeping in her office. It was years before her organisation, Students for Life of America (SFLA), would become one of the largest, most influential anti-abortion groups in the country. And it was more than a decade before she would stand outside the US Supreme Court to announce to her triumphant supporters that the nationwide right to abortion had been undone. But back then, in 2008, the SFLA headquarters were in Arlington, Virginia, and the closest town where Hawkins and her husband could afford to buy a house was 90 minutes away.At first, she tried the commute, leaving home at 5am and returning at 8pm. But the drives became too much, gas too expensive. So she bought a cheap loveseat from Ikea, figuring she could put in 30 hours of work over two days before driving home for a night. She used a nearby Gold’s Gym for showers, the new couch for naps. When Hawkins found the office was also inhabited by cockroaches, she bought an eye mask and started sleeping with the lights on to keep them away. “It was terrible, terrible,” her husband Jonathan said of that period, which was just two years into their marriage.But Kristan Hawkins was relentless. And she had a job to do, she was going to see the end of Roe v Wade, overturning the national right to abortion that had been protected for nearly half a century.Last June, she was successful. Pro-choice advocates say that her activism since then has already helped cut off abortion access for around 20 million women, and pushed the country into a public health crisis. But Hawkins has a new, more ambitious goal: she wants to make abortion unthinkable and unavailable across the US. In the year after Roe was overturned, Hawkins has gone into overdrive, growing the size and reach of SFLA and using that power to push state legislatures to pass increasingly severe bans.”That’s the momentum thing, right? Like, ok, all of America is watching, push the gas pedal down on everything, right now,” she said. “More, more, more, more, more.” Hawkins, now 38, is bolder and more unyielding than her predecessors, reflective of a new generation of activists moving towards their ultimate goal: a federal abortion ban, beginning at conception. “She’s representative of the rightward shift in the movement… and how far the movement can go,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and a leading expert on the US abortion debate. “Kristan is really important to understanding what comes next.”Hawkins’ plans are at odds with public opinion – a majority of Americans support access to legal abortion – and even some Republicans say she is going too far, too fast. But Roe’s reversal, too, was once considered a longshot. And now, one year after its demise, Hawkins believes she will lead the anti-abortion movement to another improbable win. Image source, Getty ImagesMost anti-abortion advocates have an origin story, a moment they say set them on a pro-life mission. Kristan Hawkins’ moment came when she was 15. At home in West Virginia, she started volunteering at a crisis pregnancy centre, the type of facility that dissuades women from having abortions by providing pro-life counselling, ultrasounds and material supplies like diapers and wipes.Before she was allowed to start work, Hawkins had to learn what abortion was, to understand what it looked like. Someone at the clinic gave her a VHS tape of the Silent Scream, a controversial 1984 anti-abortion propaganda film that purported to show a foetus on ultrasound experiencing distress during an abortion at 12 weeks. The film, denounced as a fraud by abortion rights activists, runs counter to findings from leading scientists who say a foetus does not have the capacity to feel pain until at least 24 weeks gestation.But Hawkins was horrified. She was also incredulous. In her view, she had just encountered the greatest human rights atrocity of our time: the routine killing of “preborn babies” – the term she uses to describe foetuses. So why wasn’t everyone trying to stop it?”I remember that first day at the pregnancy centre, walking out and saying ‘Oh my God, how is life going on as normal when this is happening?'” she said during an interview in May. “That changed everything.” After a summer at the clinic, Hawkins started a community anti-abortion group called Teens for Life. She joined the local Right to Life chapter, she joined the local Republican chapter. “I was the youngest one there by like four decades,” she said. By 2006, after college graduation and short stints at the Republican National Committee and the Department of Health and Human Services, Hawkins was recruited to run Students for Life, then a fledgling organisation with groups on 180 campuses. She was 21. Seventeen years later, Hawkins remains obsessive, prone to sending colleagues texts and emails at all hours. Her daily schedule, typed into her iPhone, is a nightmare, more than two dozen meetings and commitments blocked off in overlapping intervals. Her days are, occasionally, interrupted by calls from a health coach. “They’re trying to get me to drink water,” she said. “I always joke that Students for Life is built on Diet Mountain Dew.”She and Jonathan live in an RV with their four children so the entire family can join her on her frequent SFLA excursions. Jonathan, a former teacher, provides homeschooling.”I just go with the flow, that’s all you can do,” Jonathan said during a family outing at the Pittsburgh Zoo last month. “I think you’re sick of the word abortion,” Kristan said to him later that day. “When I say it sometimes, I swear I can see you twitch.”Watching her with followers and donors, Hawkins is sarcastic and often turns to humour, a sometimes unexpected habit from a woman pushing to outlaw abortion entirely. She also swears a lot and fidgets when she talks. She doesn’t have friends, she said, “in the traditional sense”. “Like, I don’t have girlfriends I go for brunch with… what would I talk about besides ending abortion?” Hawkins’ mission, born that day at the pregnancy centre, has proven to be all consuming, something she is well aware of. She has tried to teach her team the principle of DBW – Don’t Be Weird – which is code for: don’t freak people out.”You have to know when to display your passion,” she said. “If you carry around a pocketbook of graphic images of children who’ve been aborted and whip that out at the dinner table, some people are going to be pretty mad at you.” On a swampy June day in Washington, between clusters of teenagers on school trips and tour groups in matching t-shirts, six Students for Life members made their way to Capitol Hill, ready to lobby. They all wore red, half in SFLA branded clothing – “The Pro-Life Generation VOTES” emblazoned on their chests like a cheery warning. One wore a pair of dangly earrings, tiny gold feet meant to match the size of a foetus’s foot at 12 weeks. “It’s a picture into their humanity,” she said. Groups like this can be found at state legislatures and on college campuses across the US on any given week. Under Hawkins, SFLA has grown into more than 1,400 campus groups in 50 states, overseen by 80 paid staff. Since 2006, more than 160,000 anti-abortion activists have completed SFLA training. Experts say Hawkins’ particular power lies in her ability to get people to turn out – SFLA activists are now staples at anti-abortion demonstrations across the country. “We launched SFLA to be this post-Roe generation,” she said. “We were going to have that trained army.” And after Roe’s reversal last year, that army has mobilised, helping to steer dozens of anti-abortion bills through state legislatures. So far, 13 Republican-controlled states have outlawed abortion. Bans in at least six other states are in limbo pending legal challenges. Nearly one-third of American women of reproductive age now live in states where abortion is unavailable or severely restricted, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research group. Over the past year, stories have emerged about the apparent consequences of these bans – a 10-year-old rape victim denied an abortion in her home state of Ohio, 13 women in Texas who say they were denied abortions despite life-threatening pregnancy complications – further galvanising support for abortion access.She was denied an abortion – then she almost died”What SFLA and other anti-abortion groups promote is the worst, most damaging, most criminalising policy,” said Angela Vasquez-Giroux, vice-president at NARAL Pro-Choice America. “She [Kristan] is the embodiment of the extremeness of the movement.” “You’re making it unsafe to be pregnant in the United States,” she said. But where the anti-abortion movement goes now that Roe has been overturned is a matter of debate. Hawkins and most other leaders still share a unifying philosophy: a foetus is a rights-holding person. They share an objective too: a federal abortion ban. But there is disagreement on what that ban would look like and how, exactly, to get there.”The movement is really fragmented,” said University of California’s Mary Ziegler. “There is no consensus.” Image source, Ross Mantle/BBCSFLA has pushed what they call an “early abortion model”, drafting and championing legislation that bans abortion at conception or, at the latest, after early cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. Hawkins’ organisation, in other words, has abandoned the incrementalism that shaped earlier iterations of the anti-abortion movement, a strategy still favoured by some of SFLA’s peers. Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA) is one such group. A powerful and long-established presence in the anti-abortion lobby, SBA’s leader Marjorie Dannenfelser has said she will oppose any presidential candidate who does not embrace a 15-week national ban, a benchmark supported by 44% of Americans, according to a recent poll.That isn’t good enough for Hawkins. Candidates must pledge support for a federal ban at six weeks if they want SFLA’s support. It’s a tension Hawkins acknowledges. “Marjorie is the insider…and I’m the person who comes in and is like, ‘[Screw] it, we’re just doing what we know is right’,” Hawkins said, using an expletive. “We’re not fighting.”Hawkins is also more outspoken, more outwardly conservative, on other abortion-related issues. She opposes exceptions for rape and incest. And she opposes several forms of birth control, including oral contraceptives, a position another anti-abortion leader privately called “unhelpful”. “What has changed is they are willing to say the quiet part out loud,” said Elisabeth Smith, state policy director at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-choice group. “They are willing to be publicly extreme.” Image source, Getty ImagesHawkins’ uncompromising approach worries some Republicans, too. Politicians have been forced to choose between disappointing Hawkins and her allies and alienating a much more moderate electorate. “Republicans are politically in a much more defensive position than the Democrats because they keep talking about restrictions that are not supported by most Americans,” said John Feehery, a former Republican congressional aide. A predicted red wave at the 2022 midterms seemed to collide with a surge of support for abortion rights, carrying Democrats to unexpected victories in a series of high-profile races. Last year, pro-choice voters swept all six abortion-related ballot measures, including in conservative states like Kansas and Kentucky. “Women are watching Republicans post-Roe, and anything short of a compassionate strategy to win back suburban women and swing voters will severely set back the pro-life movement and the party as a whole,” Nancy Mace, one of the few House Republicans who has publicly called for more flexibility on abortion, told the BBC in a statement. But Hawkins does not see the Republican party as her problem. She has little patience for politicians she deems insufficiently pro-life, threatening primary challenges against Republicans who do not support early bans. Merv Riepe, a Nebraska state senator who voted against a six-week ban this year, “is going to be retired pretty soon”, Hawkins said. The three female Republican senators in South Carolina who opposed an outright ban face the same threat. Two supported a six-week ban, but that was not sufficient for Hawkins. Each of them was sent a plastic infant-size spine from SFLA earlier this year, with a note suggesting they grow a backbone.”I think that’s the difference between us and other pro-life organisations,” Hawkins said. “I don’t really care if so-and-so in Washington, DC, isn’t happy with me. It doesn’t even earn me any points in my demographic.”That approach – aggressive, uncompromising – has fuelled her dominance among anti-abortion activists, now lurching to the right in the absence of Roe. “The movement as a whole is moving towards asking for more extreme bans,” said Zelly Martin, a researcher at University of Texas’ propaganda lab, who specialises in the US abortion debate. “They feel like now that we don’t have Roe protecting abortion why would we pull back? And I think Kristan Hawkins is a big part of that.” Just how far Hawkins will get – how close to abolishing abortion she will come – remains an open question. “I don’t see a point in American history where Americans are going to want an absolute ban on abortion,” Ziegler said. “There is no sign of that.”But Hawkins and others are exploring ways to bypass both public opinion and political resistance, Zieger said. One, perhaps the most feasible, would be to ask the conservative-leaning Supreme Court to recognise foetal personhood under the Constitution. It seems improbable, but those are odds Hawkins is used to. Last month, in Northville, Michigan, Hawkins stood in a small first-floor conference room, neat rows of potential donors sitting in front of her. She began her speech with an anecdote from early in her career. A pro-life mentor had offered Hawkins some unsolicited advice: stop saying “when” Roe v Wade is overturned. By assuming Roe’s demise, he cautioned, she sounded “too immature, too naive”. Hawkins ignored him. She told her staff to double down, boost their messaging that promised to send Roe to the “ash heap of history”. “I always tell our team: winners envision the win.” More on this storyThousands gather for first post-Roe March for LifePublished21 JanuaryHow abortion became ‘winning issue’ in US electionPublished9 November 2022US Supreme Court preserves abortion drug accessPublished22 April

Published1 hour agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingThis video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.By Holly HonderichBBC News, WashingtonThe US Department of Justice has appealed against a Texas judge’s decision to suspend approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.The Biden administration lawyers said last week’s “misguided” ruling risked women’s health by blocking access to a pill long cleared as safe.The Texas judge last week halted authorisation of the drug, but gave the government seven days to appeal.Used in most US abortions, the pill has been allowed for over 20 years.The battle looks likely to head for the Supreme Court, placing a question mark over access to the drug for millions of women.The legal showdown could herald the biggest blow to abortion access since the country’s top court last summer ruled there was no nationwide right to terminate a pregnancy.For now, the pill is still available.This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.On Monday, the justice department filed an emergency motion, seeking to temporarily block last Friday’s ruling in Amarillo, Texas.The Biden administration lawyers have asked for a decision by 13 April – one day before the lower court’s decision is set to take effect.The government said the Texas ruling was “especially unwarranted” because it would subvert the scientific judgement of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which authorises medication in the US.The government’s motion, if successful, would preserve mifepristone’s approval until an appeal can be heard before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, told the BBC: “This is such a poorly reasoned decision, I would hope that the Fifth Circuit would immediately stay the injunction and ultimately – on merits – strike down the Texas decision.”But that’s not a certainty. This is probably the most conservative appellate court in America, so it’s possible they will validate the [Texas] decision.””If the FDA can’t approve this drug, I’m not sure what the FDA can approve,” Professor Gostin added. “It’s been on the market for over two decades, it’s got an impeccable health and safety record.”How safe is the abortion pill mifepristone?Man sues women for helping ex-wife get abortion Can these boxes found on US streets save babies’ lives?If the justice department does not win on this emergency motion, called a stay, its lawyers will take the case to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court within hours, legal experts predict.Mifepristone is part of a two-drug regimen that induces abortions.The pill effectively stops a pregnancy, while a second drug, misoprostol, empties the uterus.The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group that represented plaintiffs in the Texas lawsuit, argued that the FDA in its four-year approval process had ignored the potential impacts of mifepristone on the developing bodies of adolescent girls.Its senior counsel, Erin Hawley, said on Monday: “By illegally approving dangerous chemical abortion drugs, and imposing its mail-order abortion regime, the FDA put women in harm’s way, and the agency should be held accountable for its reckless actions.”Pregnancy is not an illness, and chemical abortion drugs don’t provide a therapeutic benefit.”Image source, ReutersMainstream medical organisations such as the American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists and the World Health Organization say mifepristone is safe and effective.Friday’s ruling by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas declared the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2000 to be invalid.In a 67-page opinion, the Trump-appointee said the FDA had violated federal rules that allow for accelerated approval of certain drugs.But just 18 minutes after the Texas decision, another federal judge, this one an Obama appointee in Washington state, ordered that access to mifepristone be preserved in 17 liberal states.William Eskridge, a law professor at Yale University, told the BBC: “The injunction in the Washington case applies to 17 states, and the injunction in the Texas case applies to 50 states.”That puts a lot of pressure on the Supreme Court to take review [of the case] sooner rather than later.”On Monday, more than 300 pharmaceutical executives, including Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, called for the reversal of the Texas decision, saying it was a “decision to disregard science”.With reporting from Madeline HalpertMore on this storyUS abortion pill access in doubt after court rulings2 days agoHow safe is the abortion pill mifepristone?2 days agoAfter Roe, anti-abortion activists eye new target12 July 2022

Published57 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Holly Honderichin WashingtonFive women who say they were denied abortions in Texas despite facing life-threatening health risks have sued the state over its abortion ban. Texas bars abortions except for medical emergencies, with doctors facing punishment of up to 99 years in jail.According to the lawsuit, doctors are refusing the procedure even in extreme cases out of fear of prosecution.In a statement, the office of Attorney General Ken Paxton said he would “enforce the laws” of the state. Mr Paxton “is committed to doing everything in his power to protect mothers, families, and unborn children”, the statement said.The Center for Reproductive Justice has filed the legal action on behalf of the five women – Ashley Brandt, Lauren Hall, Lauren Miller, Anna Zargarian and Amanda Zurawski – and two healthcare providers that are also plaintiffs. The pro-choice group said it is the first time pregnant women themselves have taken action against anti-abortion laws passed across the US since the Supreme Court last year removed constitutional protection for abortion rights.”It is now dangerous to be pregnant in Texas,” said Nancy Northup, the centre’s president on Tuesday. With Ms Northup outside the Texas Capitol in Austin on Tuesday, the plaintiffs – two pregnant – shared harrowing stories of their lost pregnancies. According to the legal action, all were told that their foetuses would not survive, but were not given the option of an abortion, which they described as “standard medical procedure” throughout the country and in the state before Texas’ ban came into effect.Ms Zurawski, 35, said she had become pregnant after 18 months of fertility treatments. She had just entered her second trimester when she was told she had dilated prematurely and that the loss of her foetus, whom she and her husband had named Willow, was “inevitable”. “But even though we would, with complete certainty, lose Willow, my doctor could not intervene while her heart was still beating or until I was sick enough for the ethics board at the hospital to consider my life at risk,” Ms Zurawski said. For three days, trapped in a “bizarre and avoidable hell”, Ms Zurawski was forced to wait until her body entered sepsis – also known as blood poisoning – and doctors were allowed to perform an abortion, according to the lawsuit. Ms Zurawski spent three days in intensive care, leaving the hospital after a week, the legal action says. The ordeal has made it harder for her to conceive in future, she said. The four other women had to travel outside Texas for an abortion. One of the plaintiffs, Ms Miller, said: “Healthcare should not be determined by some politician with no understanding of medicine or the critical role that abortion care plays in pregnancy. How is it that I can get an abortion for a dog but not for me?”Two of the women’s foetuses had conditions that meant they did not develop a skull, according to the lawsuit.These cases “are just tip of the iceberg”, the Center for Reproductive Justice’s Ms Northup said.Their 91-page complaint asks for a ruling that clarifies Texas’ law and its stance on “medical emergencies” for pregnant people facing grave health risks. “With the threat of losing their medical licences, fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and up to 99 years in prison lingering over their heads, it is no wonder that doctors and hospitals are turning patients away – even patients in medical emergencies,” the lawsuit reads.According to a survey by the Pew Research Center conducted last year, 61% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, though the opinion poll found public support for the procedure fell as a pregnancy progressed.Texas’ legislature, which is under Republican control, has been at the forefront of anti-abortion legislation, becoming the first state to enact a near-total ban. And the state will be home to another abortion battle soon: a Texas judge is expected to rule on a case about abortion pills this week. The Trump-appointed US District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will rule on whether Mifepristone – one of the two drugs used in an abortion pill regime – can continue to be sold in the US. More on this story12 US states sue to expand access to abortion pill24 FebruaryThousands gather for first post-Roe March for Life21 JanuaryAfter Roe, anti-abortion activists eye new target12 July 2022

Published6 hours agoSharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesAnthony Fauci will step down as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Dr Fauci, who served as director of the NIAID for 38 years, said he would leave both positions in December to “pursue the next chapter” of his career. “It has been the honour of a lifetime to have led the NIAID,” Dr Fauci, 81, said in a statement. He became the face of the nation’s Covid-19 response during the pandemic.On Monday, Mr Biden thanked him for his “spirit, energy, and scientific integrity”.”The United States of America is stronger, more resilient, and healthier because of him,” the president wrote in a statement.In July, Dr Fauci said he would retire before the end of Mr Biden’s current term. The face of America’s fight against Covid-19Dr Fauci first joined the National Institutes of Health in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson was president. He was appointed to director of the NIAID, the infectious national disease branch, in 1984, while the AIDS epidemic raged. He has served under seven presidents since – from Republican Ronald Reagan to Democrat Joe Biden. It wasn’t until 2020, with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, that he became the most famous doctor in America. Dr Fauci became a frequent media presence in the US and abroad as he emerged as the face of America’s fight against coronavirus. He also became polarising figure during that time. This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.While he gained fans – a petition to name him People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in 2020 gathered more than 28,000 signatures – he also angered some on the right who saw him as the public face of lockdowns and mask mandates.And he occasionally clashed with former president Donald Trump over the pandemic response. Though Dr Fauci is leaving government, he made clear on Monday that he was not retiring from medicine altogether. “I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field,” he said. Dr Fauci, who will turn 82 on 24 December, did not set an exact date for his departure. More on this storyKey moments: Fauci and the pandemic. Video, 00:02:45Key moments: Fauci and the pandemic16 January2:45Why are people talking about Dr Fauci’s emails?2 June 2021The face of America’s fight against Covid-1913 July 2020

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Mark StoryIn September 2021, Mississippi’s chief legal officer sat down for an interview with Pro-Life Weekly, a Catholic television programme featuring anti-abortion activists. Lynn Fitch looked how she almost always does during public appearances: dyed-blonde hair blow-dried straight and neat, tasteful jewellery and a monochrome suit, this time in powder blue. The attorney general was there to celebrate. The United States Supreme Court had just announced the date it would hear her state’s challenge to Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that has, for the nearly 50 years since, served as a nationwide guarantee to abortion access. The case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, centres on a Mississippi law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, even in cases of rape or incest. Under Ms Fitch’s direction, the state asked the Supreme Court to uphold the law and slash the landmark Roe v Wade decision in the process. A ruling is expected this month. A leaked draft suggests it is likely that Mississippi’s ban will be upheld, paving the way for other states to also outlaw abortion. Ms Fitch – who declined to be interviewed – had argued that overturning Roe v Wade would be “game-changing”, “uplifting” women by eliminating what she described as a false choice between family and career. “Fifty years ago, for professional women, they wanted you to make a choice. Now you don’t have to,” she said on Pro-Life Weekly. “You have the option in life to really achieve your dreams, your goals, and you can have those beautiful children as well.”If she wins the case, and Roe v Wade falls, some 40 million women may lose access to abortion, pro-choice advocates warn. It could also make Ms Fitch, a single working parent of three, a Republican superstar and poster-child for her own argument: modern women don’t need abortion to have it all.Image source, Getty ImagesAbortion was not always an animating theme of Ms Fitch’s political career. When she first took public office, as Mississippi state treasurer in 2011, she pushed for legislation that would guarantee men and women were paid equally.Her convictions were shaped in many ways by her upbringing, and especially her experiences as a single mother, says Hayes Dent, a long-time friend and colleague, who ran her first political campaign.When Mr Dent first met Ms Fitch, she had just been named executive director of the Mississippi State Personnel Board, a state agency, by then-governor Haley Barbour. Mr Dent was immediately impressed.”Having been around every major political figure in Mississippi for 40 years, I could just tell: she’s going to run,” Mr Dent said. “And when she pulls that trigger, she’s going to be successful.” It wasn’t for another couple of years that she did, launching a campaign for state treasurer. Whens he launched her first political campaign, for state treasurer in 2011, “she was an underdog,” said Austin Barbour, a national GOP strategist (no relation to former Governor Barbour). Mr Dent, who had kept tabs on Ms Fitch, reached out to her in the middle of that 2011 cycle and asked to come on board her campaign.”I said ‘Look, I think you can win this race,'” he recalled. She accepted, and the two ran an ambitious campaign, even driving the length of the state in a day, making a handful of different stops and placing fundraiser calls in the hours between. “Her attitude was ‘what is the task at hand,'” Mr Dent said. “It’d be like ‘Look, we’ve gotta go to the tobacco spitting festival.’ And she’d do great! She wouldn’t spit tobacco, but she was great.”The only reason Ms Fitch would turn down a campaign event was her kids, cutting out early to make a school basketball game or parent-teacher conference. She was a natural campaigner, but fundraising lagged, so Mr Dent asked her father for a personal donation. Image source, Getty ImagesBill Fitch still lived in Holly Springs, the small, rural town near the state’s northern edge where Ms Fitch spent most of her childhood. Her father had inherited land on the historic Galena Plantation and used the sprawling 8,000-acre property to restore the family farm, turning it into a premier quail hunting destination. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and Mississippi governors Barbour and Phil Bryant, became frequent guests. Visitors of Fitch Farms could elect to stay in the former home of Confederate general and first grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, which Mr Fitch had bought and transported onto the property. Ms Fitch has told local media of “special” childhood memories at her father’s farm, riding horses and hunting quail. As a teenager, she was the “prototypical popular girl”, Mr Dent said. “Leader, cheerleader, athletic, the whole nine yards,” he said. She went to the University of Mississippi, joined a sorority and graduated with a degree in business administration and later in law. When Mr Dent drove to her father’s farm to make his pitch for a campaign donation, he said: “I told him if I left there with a big cheque, she was going to win”. She won, and then won again four years later, securing a second term as state treasurer. In this office, she targeted state debt, expanded access to financial education in the state, and advocated for equal pay laws (Mississippi remains the only state that does not ensure equal pay for equal work between men and women). Rifts split America’s abortion ‘ground zero’ stateUS Democrats’ bid for federal abortion law failsAnd she developed her knack for connecting to voters, leaning on both her Holly Springs upbringing and an apparent ease in the public eye. In interviews and campaign videos, Ms Fitch looks preternaturally poised. She makes easy eye contact, her speech slow and relaxed, often thanking God and her family for the opportunity to serve her state.”Rural roots matter to voters in this state,” said Mr Barbour, the Republican strategist. “And she’s very likeable, she just is.” Ms Fitch also helped bolster her conservative credentials with her support for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, leading Mississippi’s Women for Trump coalition in 2016. When Mr Trump was in Jackson for a campaign rally, she sat in the front row. Two years later, Ms Fitch announced she would make a bid for Mississippi Attorney General – an office that had never been held by a woman.But she wasn’t the underdog, and glided to victory in November 2019 with nearly 60% of the vote on a promise to uphold “conservative values and principles”.Image source, Getty ImagesAs a devoted Republican in a solidly Republican state, where Ms Fitch stood on abortion was taken as given, even if she didn’t run on it. Across the country, about 60% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to data from the Pew Research Centre. But among Mississippi Republicans, nearly 70% believe abortion should illegal in all or most cases. “You don’t run in Mississippi, you don’t run in rural conservative states and not want to see Roe v Wade overturned,” said Mr Barbour, the Republican strategist. “It’s just ingrained”. The abortion ban before the Supreme Court was passed by Mississippi’s state legislature in 2018, two years before Ms Fitch took office as Attorney General. The law, which bans abortions outright after 15 weeks, was immediately challenged in court on behalf of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s last abortion clinic. A federal district court struck down the ban, saying it was unconstitutional, and that was upheld by a higher court in 2019. But in June 2020, five months into the job, Attorney General Fitch petitioned the US Supreme Court to review the 15-week ban. The court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, accepted and heard the case in December of last year. Now, she’s known nationally as the lawyer expected to topple Roe v Wade. At times, Ms Fitch has said her state is merely making an argument for the rule of law: asking the Supreme Court to turn over abortion policymaking to the states. But more often, she says the case is about women’s empowerment. Roe v Wade, she has said, made women believe they had to pick: family or career, not both. “The court in Roe pitted women against our children, and woman against woman,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. The choice is misleading and paternalistic, argued Ms Fitch. It’s an position seemingly drawn from her own life: a single mother who has ascended to the highest levels of state office, while remaining devoted to her children and grandchildren. “Being a single mom has sort of dominated her thought process, and her life experience,” Mr Dent said. “I think that’s one of the reasons she feels so strongly about this”. In a world without Roe v Wade, Ms Fitch said during a television interview last year, “babies will be saved” and mothers “get a chance to really redirect their lives. They have all these new and different opportunities that they didn’t have 50 years ago”. Image source, Attorney General Lynn Fitch/FacebookPro-choice activists have accused Ms Fitch of using feminist language to cover over an inherently anti-feminist policy.Her arguments lean “heavily into false claims that they are ’empowering women'”, said Dina Montemarano, research director for NARAL Pro-Choice America. This tactic, Ms Montemarano said, is often used by anti-abortion activists to assert control over women’s bodies and violate their fundamental freedoms. In an opening brief submitted to the Supreme Court, Ms Fitch wrote of “sweeping policy advancements [which] now promote women’s full pursuit of both career and family”. But in a counter-argument submitted to the Supreme Court, 154 economists warned in a brief that this optimism was “premature and false”. “Mississippi’s celebration of parental leave policies is particularly bizarre, as the United States is one of only two countries without a national paid maternity leave policy,” the economists wrote. Mississippi, specifically, has no state laws mandating paid family leave. It is the poorest state in the nation and has the highest rates of both infant mortality and child poverty.But if Roe is indeed thrown out, Ms Fitch will return to Mississippi a conservative hero. “I’m 99% sure she will run for attorney general again,” Mr Dent said. “And based on how the last three years have gone, it’s hard for me to imagine she’ll have any Republican opposition this time”. There are also early rumblings that she may one day run for governor. She has not yet commented on this speculation. If she wins, Ms Fitch would be the first female governor in Mississippi’s history. More on this storyOklahoma bans most abortions after conceptionUS Democrats’ bid for federal abortion law failsAmazon will pay staff travel expenses for abortions

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesNew data from a scientific “accident” has suggested that life may actually flash before our eyes as we die. A team of scientists set out to measure the brainwaves of an 87-year-old patient who had developed epilepsy. But during the neurological recording, he suffered a fatal heart attack – offering an unexpected recording of a dying brain. It revealed that in the 30 seconds before and after, the man’s brainwaves followed the same patterns as dreaming or recalling memories.Brain activity of this sort could suggest that a final “recall of life” may occur in a person’s last moments, the team wrote in their study, published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on Tuesday. Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a co-author of the study, said that what the team, then based in Vancouver, Canada, accidentally got, was the first-ever recording of a dying brain.He told the BBC: “This was actually totally by chance, we did not plan to do this experiment or record these signals.”So will we get a glimpse back at time with loved ones and other happy memories? Dr Zemmar said it was impossible to tell.”If I were to jump to the philosophical realm, I would speculate that if the brain did a flashback, it would probably like to remind you of good things, rather than the bad things,” he said.”But what’s memorable would be different for every person.” Dr Zemmar, now a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, said in the 30 seconds before the patient’s heart stopped supplying blood to the brain, his brainwaves followed the same patterns as when we carry out high-cognitive demanding tasks, like concentrating, dreaming or recalling memories. It continued 30 seconds after the patient’s heart stopped beating – the point at which a patient is typically declared dead. “This could possibly be a last recall of memories that we’ve experienced in life, and they replay through our brain in the last seconds before we die.”The study also raises questions about when, exactly, life ends – when the heart stops beating, or the brain stops functioning. Dr Zemmar and his team have cautioned that broad conclusions can’t be drawn from a study of one. The fact that the patient was epileptic, with a bleeding and swollen brain, complicates things further. “I never felt comfortable to report one case,” Dr Zemmar said. And for years after the initial recording in 2016, he looked for similar cases to help strengthen the analysis but was unsuccessful.But a 2013 study – carried out on healthy rats – may offer a clue.In that analysis, US researchers reported high levels of brainwaves at the point of the death until 30 seconds after the rats’ hearts stopped beating – just like the findings found in Dr Zemmar’s epileptic patient. The similarities between studies are “astonishing”, Dr Zemmar said. They now hope the publication of this one human case may open the door to other studies on the final moments of life. “I think there’s something mystical and spiritual about this whole near-death experience,” Dr Zemmar said. “And findings like this – it’s a moment that scientists lives for.” More on this storyNear-death experiences ‘explained’How new drugs are finally taming the virusThree ethical issues around pig heart transplantsHow HIV elimination is within Australia’s reach