In their peer-reviewed study “Unsafe Abortion: Unnecessary Maternal Mortality,” researchers at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, explained the correlation between outlawed abortion and an increase in female mortality during live births, citing Romanian laws banning the procedure in the 1960s and its reversal in the 1980s. Researchers say deaths per 100,000 ballooned from 20 to 148. Within only a year of the reversal, researchers say the number dropped to 68 deaths per 100,000 live births. The ratio was down to nine deaths per 100,000 by 2002, they write.

A blanket ban of abortion in the U.S. would lead to a 21% increase of pregnancy-related deaths overall, a study from the University of Colorado Boulder found. Researchers only included numbers related to the actual pregnancy and delivery, saying: “Any increased death due to unsafe abortions or attempted abortions would be in addition to these estimates.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently estimates about 700 U.S. women die from pregnancy-related deaths each year. The CDC explains carrying a pregnancy to full term is 33 times more dangerous than having an abortion.

Advocates of legal abortion argue that ending Roe won’t affect the number of abortions performed, only the number of safe abortions performed. Guttmacher Institute reports abortion rates in illegal-abortion countries are 37 per 1,000, while rates in legal-abortion countries are 34 per 1,000.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/how-many-women-die-from-unsafe-abortions/

In 1919, my 7-year-old grandmother was startled awake in the early hours by her father. “Come say goodbye to your mother,” he told her. He brought her and her siblings into the kitchen, where their mother lay dying on the kitchen table. The room, table, and her mother’s lower half were awash with her blood. This is the only memory my grandmother had of her mother. Any positive memories were shocked from her system in that moment.

My grandmother’s father killed her mother performing an illegal abortion. He was never charged with a crime. After the death of his wife, he kept his younger daughter and his young boys with him. He sent my grandmother to work as a farmhand for a relative. To him, the abortion was a necessary risk. They already had too many kids.
...
My adult child has never had sex without contraceptives. Currently, my child is wild with fear after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion indicating a plan to overturn Roe. Their health and life is too complicated to successfully manage a pregnancy or a child. This gentle soul is in a state of panic on behalf of all fertile people with uteruses. In speaking with my offspring, I had to promise that if Roe is overturned, I would form a pipeline to help people make their way to a country where abortion is legal. My kid can’t sleep for worrying about those who will fall through the cracks — those who will die due to unsafe abortions. My child knows the story of my great-grandmother.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/great-grandma-killed-illegal-abortion_n_62754440e4b046ad0d7ba081

Searches on Google for abortion medication, including the terms "abortion pill, "Mifepristone," and "Misoprostol" all increased following Politico's report about the Supreme Court's draft opinion that would overturn Roe v Wade.

Mifepristone and Misoprostol are both medications that come in pill form that can be used for abortions. According to a 2020 survey from the Guttmacher Institute, over half of the abortions done in the US involve the use of pills.

In the last several years, as some state restrictions on abortion have become tighter and the Supreme Court was benched with Trump appointees, abortion pills have become a way for people to side-step state restrictions on abortion. As reported by The Atlantic, some people have also pro-actively attained abortion pills in preparation for a potential repeal of Roe v Wade.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/roe-v-wade-supreme-court-decision-overturn-leaked-rcna27067#rcrd1352

Per ABC News:
Looking to November, registered voters divide essentially evenly between Democratic and Republican candidates for Congress, 46-45%. That’s a comedown for the GOP from its lead of 7 points in February and 10 points last November -- the latter, the largest Republican midterm advantage in ABC/Post polls back 40 years. The change is led by a close contest among political independents, swing voters in most national elections, from a 50-32% Republican lead in November to an even 42-42% now.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gop-strong-crime-boosted-trust-inflation-poll/story?id=84403842


I wonder how much tonight's news will accelerate the GOP slide?

California Attorney General Thursday announced an investigation to fossil fuels and the petrochemical industry for allegedly exaggerating the role of recycling in curbing global plastic pollution and exacerbating the crisis.

Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office subpoenaed Exxon Mobil for information relating to the company’s alleged role in defrauding the public and exacerbating plastic pollution. The office did not specify which other companies it is investigating. Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When state and local legislatures began considering bills restricting or banning plastic products in the 1980s, fossil fuel and petrochemical companies launched an “aggressive” and “deceptive” campaign to convince the public that they could mitigate the waste problem through recycling, which the industry knew was not true, Bonta said in a press release.

“For more than half a century, the plastics industry has waged an aggressive campaign to deceive the public by perpetuating the myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis,” Bonta said. “The truth is that the vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled.”

https://newsquick24.com/business/california-sues-exxon-for-details-on-role-in-plastic-pollution/

He claims it's to "unlock" Twitter, because free speech is necessary to a functioning democracy.


I wonder if he is going to unblock all those people he blocked for criticizing him....

The Ukrainian Air Force has added about 20 more operational aircraft to its fleet because of an influx of spare parts, according to a senior US defense official.

Though the official wouldn't specify which country had provided the aircraft parts, the official said Wednesday that the US and other countries had worked "to get them the parts they need to get them in the air."
...
In early March, about two weeks into the war, the defense official said Ukraine has 56 fighter aircraft, which composed about 80% of its fixed-wing fighters. But the Ukrainians weren't using their aircraft much, flying only five to 10 missions per day, the official said.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/20/politics/ukraine-aircraft-spare-parts/?iid=ob_mobile_article_footer_expansion

Federal officials in Texas are investigating beachgoers’ harassment of a stranded female dolphin that later died.

According to witnesses, some individuals on Quintana Beach on the Gulf of Mexico some 6 miles east of Freeport dragged the bottlenose dolphin back into the water last Sunday, then “attempted to swim with and ride the sick animal,” the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network said in a statement on Facebook.

All pertinent information about the dolphin has been forwarded to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which investigates cases of harassment. Violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act is punishable by up to a year in prison and as much as $11,000 in fines.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-beach-harassed-dolphin-death_n_625a39eae4b0723f80190e9b

If you see a stranded dolphin, or any beached marine mammal, call 1-800-9MAMMAL. Don't try to push the AIR BREATHING sick mammal back in the water, or try to ride it for Instagram posts.

Among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s many fantastical pretexts for invading Ukraine, the urgent need for its “denazification” may be the most preposterous. Ukraine isn’t free of domestic extremists, but Putin’s claims are pure disinformation. In fact, the Russian strongman has been supporting neo-Nazis and white supremacists for years, including mercenaries and separatists who have waged war on Ukraine since 2014. 

Putin isn’t fighting neo-Nazism. He nurtures it, making his gaslighting about Ukraine even more repellent.

Perhaps Moscow’s most notorious military proxy is the Wagner Group, mercenaries the Kremlin has used to wage deniable war and otherwise promote its interests in places like Syria, Libya and Mozambique. Recently the Wagner Group deployed to the Central African Republic, and it has shown up in Mali, where its brutal methods appear to be replacing previous efforts by the international community to fight terrorists active in the country.

The Wagner Group is named after the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner, whose music Adolf Hitler adored. The group’s leader, Dmitry Utkin, reportedly wears Nazi tattoos, including a swastika, a Nazi eagle and SS lightning bolts. Wagner mercenaries are reported to have left behind neo-Nazi propaganda in the war zones where they’ve fought, including graffiti with hate symbols. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/putin-nazi-pretext-russia-war-ukraine-belied-white-supremacy-ties-rcna23043

A group of truck drivers protesting COVID-19 mandates on roads and highways around the Washington, D.C., area in recent weeks will head to California next, an organizer announced Sunday night.

During a livestream of the People’s Convoy nightly rally Sunday, organizer Mike Landis read a list of measures aimed at controlling COVID-19 in California, The Herald-Mail reported.

“I think stopping those is more important at this point in time than getting the emergency declaration repealed because that’s already in place and we need to stop stuff like these bills from getting in place,” Landis said, “otherwise, the rest of us that don’t live in California are going to end up subject to the same situation.”

https://ktla.com/news/california/truck-convoy-protesting-covid-mandates-heading-to-california/




Just what California needs, a bunch of idiots in semis fucking up our already FUBAR traffic. California has dropped just about all the covid mandates, so I don't know what the fuck they're protesting.