Targeting, and killing, pregnant women

Hello! It’s Thursday, Dec. 4. Yesterday was the anniversary of the day in 1847 when Frederick Douglass — escaped slave, abolitionist, orator, and statesman — published the first edition of the anti-slavery newspaper The North Star, a title that referred to what runaway slaves trying to reach northern states or Canada were told: “Follow the North Star.” The paper’s slogan was:

Right is of no Sex — Truth is of no Color — God is the Father of us all, and all we are Brethren.

The sun rose in Boston at 6:57 a.m. and will set at 4:11 p.m. for 9 hours and 14 minutes of sunlight. The moon is full.

If you’re traveling for Christmas, The Old Farmer’s Almanac has published its annual Christmas travel weather predictions: It will be snowy in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, Lower Lakes, the eastern Ohio Valley, Alaska, and most of Canada, while it will be sunny and pleasant along the Atlantic Corridor, in the Southeast, Florida, the Heartland, Texas–Oklahoma, and Hawaii. So Nunavut no, Nānākuli yes. Here’s the Almanac’s outlook for the rest of the country.

🌦 What’s it like outside? Bundle up, buttercup: Those rude Canadians are pushing a polar vortex on top of us for the next day or so, probably in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs. The weekend should be warmer, but arctic air returns early next week.

📰 Breaking: The FBI has arrested someone for allegedly planting those two pipe bombs on Capitol Hill, near the national committee headquarters for both the Democratic and Republican parties, the night before the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in which Trump supporters tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Neither bomb exploded. The suspect could be arraigned later today. Here’s more.

🏈 Hey, sport: No Patriots game this weekend (they have a bye), so I guess I’ll watch “Bluey” reruns. As for AFC East games, on Sunday at 1 p.m. the 8-4 Bills host the Bengals, while the 5-7 Dolphins visit the 3-9 Jets. (The division-leading Patriots are 11-2.)

Side note: The 6-6 Ravens host the 6-6 Steelers on Sunday, a game that pits two head coaches who inexplicably still have their jobs against each other.

Baltimore’s John Harbaugh is a good regular-season coach who consistently fails in the playoffs. In his 18 years as head coach, the Ravens made it to the Super Bowl in 2012 (they beat the 49ers), but haven’t been back in the intervening 13 years. In 11 of his 18 years, they made the playoffs but lost in the wild card, division, or conference round. They missed the playoffs in five seasons, and this year will likely be the 6th.

Mike Tomlin has a similar profile. He’s been head coach in Pittsburgh for 19 years, and has been to the Super Bowl twice: Way back in 2008 (they won, beating Arizona), and in 2010 (they lost to the Packers). And they haven’t been back in the 15 years since. In 10 of his 19 years, they made the playoffs but lost in the wild card, division, or conference round. They missed the playoffs in seven seasons, and this year will likely be the 8th.

I say it’s time for a change for both teams. I hear that Jordan Hudson and her assistant, Bill Belichick, will soon be available.

🧠 On my mind

Let’s not focus on Trump’s hateful and xenophobic rants, his lawless murders in the Caribbean, his self-enrichment schemes, his lousy economy, his firehose of lies, or even his well-practiced role as the meek submissive to Putin’s dominant.

Instead, I want to highlight two major stories that are flying under the radar, probably because the Orange Menace’s daily outrages are sucking up all the attention: The pregnant women who are dying because of abortion bans in red states, and the frequent mass shootings that apparently have become nothing more than a low hum of background noise to daily life in the US.

Death before giving life

Tierra Walker was a 37-year-old dental assistant with high blood pressure and diabetes. So when she became pregnant, she knew she could very easily develop preeclampsia, a serious complication that could kill her. In fact, she had had the condition a few years before; it resulted in the stillbirth of twins.

As her pregnancy advanced, so did her sickness: Her blood pressure fluctuated wildly, she developed severe blood clotting in her leg, and she was having seizures. She raised the subject of abortion with numerous doctors. And under normal circumstances, any one of those doctors would have advised her to terminate the pregnancy to save her life.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. You see, Tierra Walker lived in Texas.

So yes, she died. At 20 weeks of pregnancy. From preeclampsia. Her son found her dead in her bed on his 15th birthday.

(Read more about Tierra’s short life and unnecessary death at ProPublica.)

Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old finance manager at a charter school system, had a miscarriage. But she was bleeding so much and passing such large blood clots that her mother-in-law, a former doctor, insisted that she needed an emergency D&C (dilation and curettage) to remove the remaining fetal tissue from her uterus and stop the bleeding. Instead, an obstetrician gave her misoprostol, medication that is fine for finishing low-risk miscarriages, but ineffective in Porsha’s dramatic circumstances.

She died 3 hours later. And yes, she lived in Texas. She left behind her husband and two boys, ages 5 and 3.

This and other cases are examples of doctors altering standard medical care out of fear of being arrested, charged, and sentenced to up to 99 years in prison for doing anything that could be remotely connected to an abortion. Even though Porsha and other women who died had already had miscarriages, D&Cs are so closely associated with abortions that many doctors shy away from using them in states with strict abortion bans until it’s too late.

This is Porsha’s story.

Amber Nicole Thurman, a healthy, 28-year-old medical assistant, faced a similar situation: She had taken abortion pills obtained in North Carolina, but all of the fetal tissue hadn’t been expelled, so her uterus bled. She also needed a D&C. But just her luck, she lived in Georgia, where lawmakers and the governor had made it a felony to perform the procedure — with very few exceptions. After she waited in a hospital bed, in pain, for 20 hours, doctors finally operated.

It was too late. She died during surgery. She left behind a 6-year-old son.

Here is Amber’s story.

Please note: All three of these women were Black. Not only is the rate of sepsis in pregnant women on the rise in states with abortion bans, but maternal mortality rates are also increasing, especially among women of color, who already had unacceptably high death rates. In Georgia, for example, Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women.

Abortion bans not only are killing women who want to terminate pregnancies but cannot; they also are killing women who have miscarried or have other complications and are unable to get the medical care they desperately need.

Here are more stories that ProPublica has written about this shameful health — or should I say death — crisis.

We’re still shooting up the country

November 1st was a busy day in America.

In Tucson, Ariz., 4 people were shot at a house party; 2 men died.

In New Haven, Conn., two 21-year-old men and two 18-year-old women were shot when they were caught in the crossfire between two guys with guns outside a Dunkin’ Donuts. One of the women died.

In Gretna, Fla., a 29-year-old woman was killed and several others wounded when a guy showed up at a memorial service for another murder victim and opened fire with a semi-automatic gun.

And in Sacramento, Calif., four adults were shot at a massive house party; all survived.

November 15th was even worse.

In Newark, N.J., gunfire killed a 10-year-old boy, a 19-year-old man, and a 21-year-old woman on a street corner; an 11-year-old boy and a 60-year-old man were wounded.

In Mantee, Miss., gunfire broke out at a commercial bonfire event, and five people — including a 14-year-old — were wounded.

In Las Cruces, N.M., a 16-year-old boy was arrested for shooting up a house party, killing a 21-year-old man and wounding three teens.