Today…
is National Joe Day and National No Homework Day. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to tell him. He’ll hate the former and love the latter too much.
A few things coming up…
I was scheduled for jury duty on Monday. Can probably take that off my calendar.
Tuesday, March 31 is Equal Pay Day (#equalpayday) and Transgender Day of Visibility (#TDOV).
This Sunday is the birthday of Pearl Bailey (1918-1990), legendary jazz and blues singer. Her “Tired” is one of my favorite songs. I love that knowing humor in her voice. The interlude is never too far from mind, and all the more fitting now:
Well, I guess by now, brother, you have the general idea. I am tired.
No need to be kidding myself, maybe you all right, but… I’m just tired.
Think I’ll go a psychiatrist, or one of those rich people doctors, you know?
And I guess he’ll tell me a lot of big words… all about chiatrics* and metaphysics…
…and a whole lot of stuff I don’t understand… wonder how much he’ll charge me for that?
Whatever he charges he’ll probably end up saying the same thing:
“Pearl. You’re just tired.”
And look how damn gorgeous she was.
Abortion
One, love that NYT and LAT ed boards have had it. Two, a hat tip to whoever wrote this LAT headline.
Editorial | A 'postponed' abortion? Yeah, that's called having the baby
Los Angeles Times
As attempts to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic go, here’s a reprehensible one: the effort by some conservative states to halt abortions by arguing that they are “nonessential” medical procedures. Sounds ridiculous, but that’s the way officials in Ohio and Texas have interpreted emergency health orders intended to conserve medical equipment and gear needed for hospitals during the crisis.
Editorial | Make Abortion More Available During the Pandemic — Not Less
New York Times
The stakes of any disruption to reproductive health care are always high, and especially so during a crisis. A lack of timely access to abortion, in particular, threatens the health and economic stability of women and families at a time when so many people are losing their income and their health insurance. But there doesn’t have to be a disruption. There are steps that states and the federal government can take now to ensure that women get the care they need.
Abortion Opponents Take Advantage of a Crisis
Katha Pollitt | The Atlantic
Who would have thought COVID-19 would give anti-abortion forces the quick victory they could not win in the courts, in the legislative process, or through the deployment of screaming protesters outside clinics?
Abortion provision thrown into doubt by coronavirus pandemic
Laura Smith-Spark, Valentina Di Donato & Stephanie Halasz |CNN
As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the globe, women's access to abortion is one of many healthcare provisions thrown into jeopardy.
That CNN article is more interesting than the headline suggests, looking at how the pandemic is affecting abortion access across the U.S. and Europe.
‘We had women pleading’: Coronavirus abortion bans leave patients stranded
Caroline Kitchener | The Lily
In an effort to reallocate medical resources to coronavirus, the CDC announced last week that all nonessential and elective medical procedures should be postponed indefinitely. While the CDC pointed to a few examples — carpal tunnel release, cataract surgery, colonoscopy — they did not release an exhaustive list, leaving room for states to make their own interpretations.
Telemedicine Abortion: What It Is and Why We Need It Now More Than Ever
Carrie Baker | Ms. Magazine
Antiabortion politicians in states across the country are using the COVID-19 pandemic to block access to abortion—arguing abortion is not essential health care and supporting limitations in the interest of conserving personal protective equipment for COVID-19 cases. Medical experts, however, are coming to the exact opposite conclusion.
The Coronavirus Becomes an Excuse to Restrict Abortions
Emily Bazelon | New York Times
To put public health first, state officials should listen and heed the experts. Instead, officials in Ohio and Texas are using the coronavirus crisis to achieve the longstanding political goal of reducing or ending abortion, even if it means putting patients at risk.
Mississippi's GOP governor halts abortions over coronavirus but bans cities from closing gun stores
Igor Derysh | Salon
Gov. Tate Reeves signed an executive order Tuesday that effectively overruled cities who shuttered non-essential businesses amid the coronavirus pandemic. Reeves labelled businesses such as gun stores, department stores and real estate offices as both "essential" and "critical" – but vowed to take action against the state's lone remaining abortion clinic if it provided abortions during the outbreak.
LGBTQ
Trump Admin Opposes Trans Girls' Participation in Girls' Sports
Trudy Ring | The Advocate
The Trump administration is taking a stand in a lawsuit over transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports — and, not surprisingly, not on their side. The Justice Department filed what is known as a “statement of interest” Wednesday in a federal lawsuit filed by the families of three cisgender female student athletes in Connecticut. The DOJ supports the families’ argument that trans girls should not be allowed to compete in girls’ interscholastic sports.
The 2020 Census Will Count Same-Sex Couples For The First Time
Kim Wong-Shing | GO
The 2020 U.S. Census will count same-sex couples for the first time, but still won’t record sexuality or gender identity. People will be able to choose whether they live with their “opposite-sex husband/wife/spouse,” “same-sex husband/wife/spouse,” “opposite-sex unmarried partner,” or “same-sex unmarried partner.” The Census Bureau explained this change by saying that it’s “better to collect more detailed data about types of coupled households.”
Republicans are using coronavirus to push anti-abortion and anti-trans agendas
Katelyn Burns | Vox
In some cases, conservatives are using the pandemic to further their long-stated goals, especially in restricting access to abortion care. In others, like their anti-trans actions, they’re moving quickly to pass their agenda while everybody else is rightly focused on dealing with the pandemic.
Pregnancy & Maternal Health
Coronavirus Threatens an Already Strained Maternal Health System
Eileen Guo | New York Times
As the U.S. struggles to respond to the Covid-19 crisis, tens of thousands of women across the country are giving birth in unprecedented circumstances. Hospitals are shifting their prenatal and postpartum care to telemedicine, limiting or outright banning visitors, offering elective inductions to full-term mothers and converting labor and delivery wards to coronavirus units.
Los Angeles Times: Women in New York giving birth alone may be facing their 'worst nightmare'
Millions of U.S. women are pregnant in a pandemic. Here’s what we know — and what we don’t.
Abigail Higgins | The Lily
There is still a lot we don’t know about the coronavirus and its effect on pregnancy. The current CDC guidelines for pregnant women are similar to those for everyone else: Wash your hands, avoid people with symptoms, cover your cough. But some doctors are advising women to go a step further: stay at home and minimize contact with the outside world.
Solo childbirth, halted fertility treatments: women's healthcare takes hit from coronavirus
Sharon Bernstein & Amanda Becker | Reuters
Women tend to carry more of the burden of caring for their children and elderly relatives - multiplying the strain the pandemic has put on their physical and mental health, experts said.
Pregnant and Worried About Coronavirus? Here's Everything You Need to Know
Sara Gaynes Levy | SELF Magazine
Being pregnant in the United States is rarely an easy thing—and that’s when we’re not in the midst of a global pandemic. So if you're pregnant and coronavirus is all you can think about, you're not alone. The U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world—and it’s the only one where that rate is growing.
Workplace Equality
Working parents struggle during COVID-19 pandemic
Meghan McCarty Carino | Marketplace
Working parents in this country are having a particularly tough time during the coronavirus crisis. With schools shut down in almost every state, more than 50 million kids have been sent home, complicating life for parents working inside or outside the home. And while the situation is extreme, it’s shining a spotlight on the ever-present challenges of balancing work and family in a society with no mandatory family or sick leave, unaffordable child care and an always-on work culture.
Flagging this next one. Elder and home health care workers are constantly getting the shit – and, because, of course, they’re almost all women, mostly Black and Latina, underpaid, no benefits, it is ridiculous. But I realize now, if you think grandma’s willing to die for the Dow, you’re probably not terribly concerned about her caretakers.
America’s Eldercare System Is a Tinderbox
J.C. Pan | The New Republic
The eldercare system increasingly relies on a low-wage home-care workforce that turns over quickly and burns out workers. ... As with many other low-wage occupations, home-care workers are disproportionately black and immigrant women—with many of the latter undocumented—who receive little in the way of training or employer benefits like health care or paid time off. They’re also excluded from a number of federal labor protections.
7 Ways the Pandemic Is Pushing America to Do Better for Parents
Maressa Brown | Parents
Although it can be difficult to see a global pandemic as anything other than bleak, COVID-19 has shed light on the many ways the U.S. can do better by families. Now, experts believe we're witnessing a paradigm shift that could lead to real progress for American parents.
Coronavirus is blocking the painstaking path to equal pay in sports
Minky Worden | Quartz
Aside from the many disruptions of Covid-19, the US Women’s National Team has had to grapple with another man-made—(literally)—source of uncertainty, which has involved having to fight its own federation in court for the past year.