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How Roe v. Wade Survived 43 Years of Abortion Wars

by Alejand55Z Posted on January 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Forty-three years ago today, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. The landmark case established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Ever since then, anti-abortion politicians and activists have tried to chip away at Roe. States have passed more than 1,000 restrictions on the procedure and the Supreme Court has ruled on several other abortion cases, each time further limiting abortion access.

What is clear, however, is that after Roe v. Wade, the availability of safe and legal abortions radically changed health outcomes for women. In a book that collected stories from the illegal abortion era, a man who assisted with autopsies at a hospital described seeing many women die from botched abortions. “The deaths stopped overnight in 1973,” he said. “That ought to tell people something about keeping abortion legal.”

Today, discussions of women’s safety are more often heard in statehouses enacting further restrictions on abortion. The medical safety of women framed many of the arguments cited at the Texas Capitol in 2013, when the state Legislature debated, and ultimately passed, HB 2. This omnibus abortion bill imposed costly requirements on clinics—such as hospital-admitting privileges and stringent construction rules—which the medical community overwhelmingly deems to be unnecessary. Since its passage, 23 of the state’s 41 abortion providers have closed, and others are likely to follow if the measure is upheld after the Supreme Court reviews HB 2 this year. The high court’s ruling could deal a serious blow to the guarantee of the right to a legal abortion enshrined 43 years ago. Either way, many players will be affected—patients, providers, lawyers on both sides of the debate, legislators, the courts, and even lobbyists.

Over the years, Mother Jones has covered the abortion wars from many of their perspectives. Here’s a look back at some of those stories:

The women

In 2004, Eleanor Cooney wrote an essay entitled “The Way It Was” about the illegal abortion she had as a 17-year-old in 1959, 14 years before Roe. The year before her story appeared, President George W. Bush, flanked by smiling Republican senators and congressmen, had signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban into law, banning the dilation and extraction abortion method usually used in the second trimester. The measure heralded a new era of legislative efforts aimed at stifling abortion access. “Like some ugly old wall-to-wall carpeting they’ve been yearning to get rid of,” wrote Cooney, “they finally, finally loosened a little corner of Roe. Now they can start to rip the whole thing up, roll it back completely, and toss it in the Dumpster.”

The providers

In 1981, 14 clinics in Mississippi provided abortions. In 2013, only one remained, thanks to legislation that chipped away at the providers’ ability to keep their doors open. In “Inside Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic,” former Mother Jones reporter Kate Sheppard profiled the providers fighting to keep the clinic open, the doctors who flew in from out of state to perform the procedures, a woman who made the decision to terminate her pregnancy, and one of the protesters, who stood outside the clinic every day, tossing miniature plastic babies at car windows.

The doctors

In 2003, 76-year-old gynecologist Dr. William Rashbaum was still working, and his practice included providing late-term abortions, something he’d been doing for the 30 years since Roe. He was one of the oldest living providers of second-trimester abortions in the United States before his death in 2005. In “End of the Road,” Rebecca Paley profiled the doctor in the final years of his career, visiting his practice and chronicling his fierce commitment to helping women.

The courts

In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled on a pivotal abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Robert Casey was the governor of Pennsylvania at the time, and Planned Parenthood sued the state over five provisions in a recently passed abortion law. The high court ruled that states could pass abortion regulations, provided these did not place an “undue burden” on women’s access to the procedure. The ruling opened the door for a wave of abortion restrictions across the country. Right around this time, attorney Harold Cassidy was going through a drastic evolution: A former pro-choice liberal, he had started going to court to defend mothers, including surrogates and birth mothers of adopted kids. He then became one of the anti-abortion movement’s most prominent and successful lawyers. In “The Man Who Loved Women Too Much,” Sarah Blustain profiles Cassidy and his decades-long legal push to restrict abortion access by turning the pro-choice argument on its head: arguing that abortion violates women’s rights.

The states

Earlier this month, a Guttmacher Institute report pointed out that since 2010, more anti-abortion laws have been passed than in any other five-year period since the Roe decision. These restrictions have created a new landscape of severely restricted abortion access in a number of states. Last fall, former Mother Jones reporter Molly Redden traveled to report on what life is like for women facing unplanned or unwanted pregnancies in these states. She spoke to women who went thousands of miles or crossed state lines to get abortions, going from Texas to Washington, DC, from Indiana to Ohio, and more. “Most abortions today involve some combination of endless wait, interminable journey, military-level coordination, and lots of money,” wrote Redden. “Four years of unrelenting assaults on reproductive rights have transformed all facets of giving an abortion or getting one—possibly for good.”

Anti-abortion crusaders

At one point, the most visible members of the anti-abortion movement belonged to Operation Rescue, an extreme activist group that would protest in front of clinics. Increasingly, it became clear that the harassment of women and doctors at clinics distracted from the anti-abortion mission. But other organizations that focused on attacking abortion legislatively, rather than physically, gained prominence. One of them is Americans United for Life. Founded in 1971 and run mostly by women, AUL is “one of the most effective anti-abortion organizations in the country,” writes Kate Sheppard, even though its budget of about $4 million pales in comparison to many other anti-abortion groups. AUL’s mission is to end abortion in the United States, and its main strategy for doing so is helping states chip away at Roe by passing various abortion restrictions. Sheppard profiled AUL in 2012, right after it had one of its most successful years on record: In 2011, 92 restrictions on abortion were passed in states nationwide, 24 of which were either written or promoted by AUL.

Abortion politics

In the summer of 2015, the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress released a series of secretly recorded and deceptively edited videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal tissue—a practice that would be illegal. The videos inflamed the abortion debate and resulted in numerous state and congressional investigations and efforts to defund the largest women’s health care organization in the country. Six states tried to defund Planned Parenthood, seven states investigated the women’s health provider (none found evidence of fetal tissue sales), and three congressional committees launched their own inquiries.

One of these committees summoned Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards to testify in September 2015. House Republicans grilled Richards for more than four hours about how Planned Parenthood spends its federal funding. The most aggressive interlocutor was Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who—as Kevin Drum explained—also used a series of completely incorrect charts to make the erroneous point that Planned Parenthood’s primary business is abortion.

Pseudoscience

Florida marriage therapist Vincent Rue has appeared in a number of states in the past few years assisting them in defending anti-abortion laws. In a 2014 article, Molly Redden explains how his research—which claims to show that women who go through the procedure eventually suffer from mental illness—has been thoroughly discredited by several courts and health organizations. Still, states continue to pay for his expertise: “Republican administrations in four states—Alabama, North Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin—have paid or promised to pay Rue $192,205.50 in exchange for help defending anti-abortion laws,” Redden wrote.

The Supreme Court:

In March, the high court is set to hear arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole. The case, brought by Texas abortion provider Whole Woman’s Health and the Center for Reproductive Rights, challenges HB 2, the Texas abortion bill whose onerous restrictions could shut down all but 10 of Texas’ abortion clinics, leaving women in large swathes of the state without an abortion provider. Many advocates are calling this the most important abortion case in nearly 25 years. The plaintiffs are challenging HB 2 as a violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling that abortion restrictions can’t place an “undue burden” on abortion access. If the Supreme Court upholds the Texas law, it could widen the already murky “undue burden” standard, opening the door for similar regulations in other states. “This case represents the greatest threat to women’s reproductive freedom since the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade over 40 years ago,” wrote Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a November statement. “Laws like the ones being challenged in Texas are designed to subvert the Constitution and end the right to a safe and legal abortion.”

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How Roe v. Wade Survived 43 Years of Abortion Wars

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100 Women All Over the Country Just Shared Their Abortion Stories

by NeilMcgehee Posted on January 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, 100 women of all ages from around the country participated in a six-hour livestream to tell personal abortion stories and provide a voice for women advocating reproductive rights. The live stream was hosted by the 1 in 3 campaign, a movement aimed at reducing the stigma around abortion. The organization’s name comes from the fact that 1 in 3 women have had or will have an abortion at some point in their lives.

Former Texas Sen. Wendy Davis and Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards were among the women of all different backgrounds and ethnicities who spoke about the difficulty of making the decision, their access to care, and their feelings about their choice.

This is the second time 1 in 3 has hosted such an event. But Tuesday’s live stream comes at a time when reproductive rights activists have been under fire in continued attacks against Planned Parenthood and its centers around the country following the release of deceptively edited and widely discredited videos that appeared to depict the organization selling fetal tissue—a practice that is illegal.

The live stream also focused on Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, an important abortion case that will be decided by the Supreme Court this year. For more on the monumental case, check out our explainer here.

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100 Women All Over the Country Just Shared Their Abortion Stories

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Before Taylor Swift and Shania Twain, There Were Sara and Maybelle Carter

by KarolynTrenerry Posted on January 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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The original Carter Family trio. Courtesty Argot Films

How big a deal was the Carter Family? Well, even if you’re just a casual music fan, you’ve heard (and sung) some of their staples, songs such as “Can the Circle be Unbroken,” “Keep on the Sunny Side,” and “Wabash Cannonball.” And if you sing a snippet from the Carter’s “Will You Miss Me Me When I’m Gone,” your teenagers may well start singing along—they’ll know it from the Pitch Perfect movies, although the “Cups” version actually originated with the obscure British group Lulu and the Lampshades.

But this barely scratches the surface, as we learn in The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes, and the Course of Country Music. Directed by Beth Harrington—whose last doc, Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly, was nominated for a Grammy—the Carter film explores the hardscrabble origins and enduring legacy of America’s original supergroup.

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Before Taylor Swift and Shania Twain, There Were Sara and Maybelle Carter

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These Men’s Rights Activists Are Suing Women for Meeting Without Men

by ClydeFeakes Posted on January 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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In April 2014, Stephanie Burns’ company, Chic CEO, was gearing up for a networking event at an Italian restaurant in San Diego. Chic CEO hosts online resources for women starting their own businesses, and this spring evening it had teamed up with a local networking group to throw a mixer at Solare Lounge, where women could mingle over cocktails and appetizers while talking business.

During the event, Rich Allison, Allan Candelore, and Harry Crouch appeared at the restaurant door. They had each paid the $20 admission fee, and they told the hosts they wanted to enter the event. Chic CEO turned them away, saying that “the event was only open to women,” according to the men’s version of events, explained later in a legal complaint. Within two months, the three men had filed a discrimination lawsuit against Burns and her company alleging that the event discriminated against men. They are each members of the nation’s oldest men’s rights group, the National Coalition for Men, and Crouch is the NCFM’s president.

The lawsuit is a recent example of a trend that several men’s rights activists have repeatedly deployed in California, one made more successful by their strategic use of the Unruh Act, a decades-old civil rights law named after Jesse Unruh, the progressive former speaker of the California Assembly. The law is quite broad, outlawing discrimination based on markers such as age, race, sex, or disability. In dozens of lawsuits, several NCFM members have invoked it to allege discrimination against men by such varied groups as sports teams and local theaters. And the strategy has worked.

Since 2013, these men have used the law to file two lawsuits, and threaten several more, against groups encouraging gender diversity in tech and business, worlds that have been historically dominated by men, with women holding only about 4 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions and making up only about 13 percent of computer engineers for the last 20 years. As the movement for more gender diversity in these fields has gained traction, some men’s rights advocates have questioned the need for such a movement at all.

“Women typically earn more than do men” in industrial engineering and “all other engineering disciplines,” Harry Crouch, the NCFM’s president, writes on the group’s website. (Census data says the opposite: As of 2013, median earnings for men in computer, science, and engineering occupations were about $13,000 more than the median earnings for women.) “Surely, networking mixers to encourage more men to take part in those fields are needed, but not at the exclusion of women,” wrote Crouch.

Critics in legal circles contend that these lawsuits appear to be as much about making an easy buck as they are about defending aggrieved men.

The NCFM members’ lawsuit alleged that by holding a networking event marketed toward women, Burns and Chic CEO were in fact illegally discriminating against men. The 2014 complaint filed in San Diego Superior Court focused on the event’s marketing, noting: “Imagine the uproar by women business owners and entrepreneurs, feminists, and other equal rights advocates if a business consulting company in partnership with a business networking firm brazenly touted a no-women-allowed business networking event as follows.” It illustrated the point with a rewritten version of the ad for the event, substituting references to women with men.

(Later in the complaint, the last names of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, two of the highest-ranking women in Silicon Valley, are misspelled.)

This was not the first lawsuit these men had filed against a women’s professional group. In 2013, they sued Women on Course, a group that introduces women to golf, after the Virginia-based organization held a golf clinic and networking event at a San Diego golf club. Once more, Allison, Candelore, and Crouch asked to attend the event—this time in advance via email—and sued the organization after they were told they could not come because the event was for women.

Both Donna Hoffman, the president of Women on Course, and Chic CEO’s Burns settled with the plaintiffs for an undisclosed sum. As a result of the suit, Burns got a new job and shrunk the business she’d built over six years, suffering a “significant” financial and personal toll. (She wouldn’t elaborate on her legal costs, out of concern for potentially violating the terms of her settlement. Rava also said he could not comment on settlements due to confidentiality.) “All Chic CEO is trying to do is provide women with the information they need to get a business started,” Burns writes in an email. “Just because we help women, doesn’t mean we hurt men.”

NCFM members disagreed. They alleged that they were illegally excluded from a business opportunity that was “closed to struggling single dads, disabled combat veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and other business men and male entrepreneurs who, just like business women and female entrepreneurs, hoped to and had the right to meet and mingle with entrepreneurs, CEOs, directors, savvy business people and other entrepreneurial-minded people.”

In response to the argument that events like Chic CEO’s help address the pay gap, Crouch wrote on the NCFM’s website that according to “the plethora of real social science research…only a minute amount of the pay gap may be due to sex discrimination.”

Alfred G. Rava—a San Diego-based attorney who is also the NCFM’s secretary and free legal consultant—has been suing on behalf of aggrieved men for more than a decade and represented the NCFM members against Chic CEO. The 59-year-old attorney has filed more than 150 sex discrimination lawsuits in the last 12 years, many citing the Unruh Act. In 2003, seven San Diego nightclubs paid Rava and his paralegal a $125,000 settlement after they brought a series of lawsuits challenging the clubs’ “Ladies Night” and other woman-specific discounts. (Part of this sum also went to their attorney fees.) In 2004, the San Diego Repertory Theater paid Rava’s paralegal $12,000 after he wrote to it, with Rava’s help, alleging that its ticket discounts—half-priced tickets for women on specific nights—were illegal. In 2009, Rava won a half-million-dollar settlement from the Oakland A’s for a class-action suit that contested a Mother’s Day promotion where the A’s gave the first 7,500 women to arrive at the ballpark that weekend a sun hat. Rava told Mother Jones that he’s never been paid by the NCFM for his “advocacy for equality for men.” He also said he could not disclose how much money, if any, he or his clients made from various settlements over discrimination claims because the settlements are confidential.

Rava’s most high-profile victory was a sex discrimination case that, in 2007, made it all the way to the California Supreme Court. In the lawsuit, four men, including several NCFM members, alleged that the ticket prices charged by a Los Angeles restaurant and night club were discriminatory—in some instances women got a $5 discount or got in free. The issue that the Supreme Court had to decide was not whether the men were discriminated against, but whether the men had the standing to file the suit at all. The club argued they didn’t because men never asked to be charged at the ladies’ rate. But California’s Supreme Court ruled in the men’s favor, so they were free to sue the club. The NCFM members were then awarded a judgment by a lower court—but Rava says they were unable to collect because the club had gone out of business. This Supreme Court victory laid some of the legal groundwork for Rava’s recent cases against women’s professional groups.

In May 2015, Leslie Fishlock, the CEO of Geek Girl, a tech training company, got a letter from the NCFM alleging that the female-focused marketing for her upcoming Geek Girl tech conference was discriminatory. Copied on the letter were some of her conference’s biggest sponsors, including the University of San Diego and Microsoft. Fishlock was shocked, and she worried her sponsors would pull out at the last minute. They didn’t, but Fishlock says she spent thousands of dollars on attorneys to avoid a lawsuit.

“It’s a fear-based shake down strategy,” Fishlock says. “I couldn’t sleep. I worried that they would show up to my events, even though we allow guys to come. After the conference, I thought, ‘I don’t even know if I want to do this anymore.’ I shouldn’t have to live in that kind of fear.”

Since then, Fishlock has been warning other women in tech about how to tweak their marketing language to avoid the NCFM’s challenges. She says she has sent emails to “all of the women I know who have networking groups.”

The NCFM has also written similar letters to a number of other groups, including a local YMCA and a Monterey bike race, contesting woman-specific promotions. It’s unclear if Rava has been behind the drafting of all these letters, but the legal citations and lines of argument in portions of the letters are strikingly similar to those in the Chic CEO and Women on Course lawsuits. A cached page featuring the letter sent to Geek Girl on the NCFM’s website thanks Rava for his help. Rava confirms he has consulted for the NCFM about businesses that treat men and women differently, and notes that the letters are signed by the NCFM’s president, Harry Crouch.

Rava has lost cases as well, including a much-publicized suit opposing a Mother’s Day giveaway by the Anaheim Angels. But when it comes to male discrimination cases, his overall track record is impressive.

“I’m shocked that he has gotten any traction at all,” says Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at Stony Brook University who has written extensively on men’s rights groups. Kimmel cites the example of Roy Den Hollander, a men’s rights activist and New York attorney who has filed sex discrimination suits on behalf of men over the past decade. He sued over ladies’ nights at a number of New York nightclubs, the Violence Against Women Act, and Columbia University‘s women’s studies department. All three of these cases were dismissed.

But the Unruh Act’s protections are broad, which some say makes California fertile territory for Rava’s work. Robert Dato, an Orange County attorney who defeated Rava in the Angels case, says the act can encourage frivolous lawsuits, in part because it contains a one-sided provision requiring losing defendants to pay back the plaintiff’s attorneys fees, but not vice versa. Rava doesn’t agree that the breadth of the Unruh Act encourages sex discrimination lawsuits, in part, he tells Mother Jones, because his litigation and advocacy have led to a dearth of parties to sue. “These gender-based promotions and business practices have been virtually eliminated in California,” writes Rava in an email, “and no sex discrimination promotions or events means no sex discrimination lawsuits.” Rava told Mother Jones that he’s not working on any Unruh Act cases at this time.

California courts have suggested that Rava and his plaintiffs are exploiting the breadth of the Unruh Act to make money off settlements. They “have been involved in numerous of what have been characterized as ‘shake down’ lawsuits,'” wrote a California appeals court in dismissing Rava’s case against the Anaheim Angels. “They proclaim themselves equal rights activists, yet repeatedly attempted to glean money…through the threat of suit.” The California Supreme Court raised the same issue in its opinion on Rava’s supper club case, noting, “We share to some degree the concerns voiced by the trial court and the appellate court…regarding the potential for abusive litigation being brought under the Act.”

Rava dismisses the courts’ references to the potential shake-down nature of his lawsuits. He explains in an email that the courts are merely repeating “personal attacks” made by his opponents when the law is not on their side: “Perhaps because California’s anti-discrimination laws and the facts are so much against these serial sex discriminators and their attorneys,” writes Rava, “that in some cases the parties and their attorneys have little choice but to make personal attacks against or ‘pound’ the discrimination victims and their attorneys.”

Candelore, Allison, and Crouch are undeterred. As noted by Yahoo and in San Diego court records, Candelore has been a plaintiff in 12 civil cases since 2011. In 10 of those 12 cases, he was represented by Rava. In nine of those, Crouch was also a plaintiff, and in eight of them Allison was a plaintiff.

But the question remains: Why have tech and business become targets for the men’s rights movement? Kimmel offered a theory.

“The STEM field has been, for better or worse, one of the last bastions of uncriticized masculinity,” says Kimmel. “You still find that in Silicon Valley. There’s a kind of crazy nerd macho where your masculinity is proved by how little sleep you get and how much work you can do. So for these men, it’s exasperated entitlement. ‘Those were our jobs; why are you taking those too?'”

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These Men’s Rights Activists Are Suing Women for Meeting Without Men

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Are Young Women Complacent About Abortion Rights?

by DaleneX56466 Posted on January 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here is DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

Do you notice a difference between young women and women our age in their excitement about Hillary Clinton? Is there a generational divide?

Here’s what I see: a complacency among the generation of young women whose entire lives have been lived after Roe v. Wade was decided.

I won’t even pretend that I understand this answer. Complacency about what? Abortion? Politics in general? And what does this have to do with Hillary Clinton?

Beats me. But it doesn’t really matter. Everyone assumes that DWS was talking about complacency toward abortion rights, and young feminists aren’t happy about her sweeping criticism of an entire generation. Generally speaking, though, the response has been that there are plenty of young women who work hard on abortion rights these days, which is certainly true. But DWS isn’t denying that. What she’s saying is that there are fewer young women today working hard on abortion rights. Or perhaps that they don’t have as much passion as they used to have.

That got me curious. Is this true? Is there any evidence for it? Unfortunately, I couldn’t really figure out how you might measure it. I doubt there’s any historical data on the number of abortion activists broken up by age and gender. There’s plenty of poll data on attitudes toward abortion, but that doesn’t help—and attitudes haven’t changed a lot anyway. Is there any kind of survey data (broken up by age and gender) that shows how strongly people feel about abortion rights? Or how often it’s a significant factor in voting? Not that I could find.

This isn’t really very important, and I suppose someone could just ask Wasserman Schultz to explain what she meant. But I’m still curious: is there any data at all that might point in one direction or another when it comes to generational attitudes toward abortion activism? Anyone have any ideas?

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Are Young Women Complacent About Abortion Rights?

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The Supreme Court Just Got Deluged With Arguments Against Texas’ Stupid Anti-Abortion Law

by KraigHailey3 Posted on January 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, a wide-ranging group of organizations and individuals asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Texas anti-abortion law that threatens to close the majority of clinics in the state. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for the case in March and make a decision this summer.

The groups, which included medical professionals, legal experts, economists, religious organizations, the Obama administration, and more than 160 members of Congress, filed 45 briefs explaining their opposition to HB 2, the sweeping 2013 anti-abortion law that has been caught up in legal battles ever since it was passed. More than half of the state’s 41 clinics have closed as a result of the law. If the Supreme Court does not overturn HB 2, the number of clinics in the state could drop to just 10.

“For many women in Texas, HB 2 would create a legal regime in which a real choice about whether to carry a pregnancy to full term ‘exists in theory but not in fact,” argued attorneys at the Department of Justice in a brief, adding that the restrictions imposed by the law “do not serve—in fact, they disserve—the government’s interest in protecting women’s health.”

Both abortion rights opponents and advocates say the case will affect existing restrictions on abortion across the country and will also determine to what extent states can restrict abortion. The case, Whole Women’s Health v. Cole focuses on two aspects of HB 2: one that requires abortion facilities to meet hospital-like architectural standards, and another requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges with a nearby hospital.

“There is incontrovertible evidence that imposing these unjustified burdens on abortion providers is impeding women’s access to quality, evidence-based medicine,” wrote a number of the leading physician’s organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, in their brief. “HB 2 has delayed, and in some cases blocked, women’s access to legal abortion. Both outcomes jeopardize women’s health.”

The 45 briefs filed on Tuesday were an unprecedented demonstration of opposition to anti-abortion laws, according to Nancy Northrup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

“Never before has such a diverse array of organizations and leaders from the fields of medicine, government, law, business, and religion stepped forward to condemn abortion restrictions at the US Supreme Court,” Northrup told reporters. “These briefs present a thorough record of the undeniable damage Texas’ sham law has and will continue to cause, and an indisputable legal argument for why it must be struck down. This deceptive law is an affront to science-based medicine, an insult to women’s dignity, and reflects a total disregard for the rule of law and the rights of millions.”

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The Supreme Court Just Got Deluged With Arguments Against Texas’ Stupid Anti-Abortion Law

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The Top MoJo Longreads of 2015

by KerrieMcVicars Posted on December 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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In 2015, MoJo readers proved yet again that great long-form reporting belongs online. These richly detailed reports are sparking discussions and inspiring readers to share stories in greater numbers than ever before. Many of our most popular articles published over the past year were heavily researched investigations and deeply reported narratives that originally appeared in the magazine. Here, for your holiday enjoyment, is a selection of our best-loved longreads from the past year. (And once you’re done reading through them, click here for last year’s list, here for our 2013 list, and here for our 2012 list).

What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?
Negative consequences just make bad behavior worse. But a new approach really works.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

The True Cost of Gun Violence in America
The data the NRA doesn’t want you to see.
By Mark Follman, Julia Lurie, Jaeah Lee, and James West

The War on Women Is Over—and Women Lost
While you weren’t watching, conservatives fundamentally rewrote abortion laws.
By Molly Redden

The Shockingly Simple, Surprisingly Cost-Effective Way to End Homelessness
Why aren’t more cities using it?
By Scott Carrier

The Scary New Science That Shows Milk Is Bad For You
Why does the government still push three servings a day?
By Josh Harkinson

How the Government Put Tens of Thousands of People at Risk of a Deadly Disease
If it killed politicians instead of prisoners, this illness would be public enemy No. 1.
By David Ferry

Here’s How Bernie Sanders May Be Changing Politics for Good
Inside the wild-haired socialist’s unlikely rise.
By Tim Murphy

The Terrifying Truth About Air Pollution and Dementia
Scientists now suspect that a major cause of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s could be in the air.
By Aaron Reuben

America’s Most Notorious Coal Baron Is On Trial. Here’s the Epic Tale of His Rise and Fall.
The biggest mine disaster in 40 years occurred on Don Blankenship’s watch at Massey Energy.
By Tim Murphy

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The Top MoJo Longreads of 2015

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We Talked to Hope Solo About Why the US Women’s Soccer Team Skipped a Game in Protest

by NickiSpeegle Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Saturday, Hope Solo and the US women’s national soccer team were getting ready for practice at Honolulu’s Aloha Stadium, where they were scheduled to play Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday in the seventh game of their World Cup Victory Tour. As the goalkeeper surveyed the artificial-turf field, she noticed the hardened white paint on the football yardage markings near her goal and the rocky surface that made practicing her footwork all the more difficult. Solo even reached down and pulled up the turf:

Megan Rapinoe, the team’s star midfielder, was on the players’ minds—just a day earlier, she’d torn the ACL in her right knee while training at the grassy practice field without contact. On top of that, there was the months-long fight with FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association over the use of artificial turf at women’s soccer venues.

And so the team decided not to play Sunday, laying out its decision in an open letter on the Players’ Tribune. On Tuesday, US Soccer president Sunil Gulati apologized, noting that the federation had “screwed up” and had failed to make sure field conditions were adequate for the Trinidad and Tobago match. In Gulati’s apology, Solo says that she saw the federation pushing for change. Gulati said that all US games leading up to the Olympics would be played on grass.

In the run-up to tonight’s game against Trinidad and Tobago at San Antonio’s Alamodome—on another artificial-turf pitch—we spoke to Solo about the team’s decision to not play and the larger issue of inequality between men’s and women’s sports.

Mother Jones: How do the field conditions at the Alamodome compare to that of Aloha Stadium?

Hope Solo: Laughs. They are night and day. I mean, it’s playable. That’s a huge difference in itself. But it’s still turf, and one day I just hope we could move away from turf. Maybe not completely, but maybe 80 percent of the time, I think I might be okay with that. I can speak for myself and the players: Nobody likes to play on turf.

MJ: Why do players prefer natural grass to turf?

HS: We’ve been fighting this battle for quite some time. Soccer, to be honest, is not meant to be played on turf. The ball rolls differently. There are dead spots on every turf field that you play on. It’s a lot harder on the joints, on the body, on the shoulders, on the knees. It’s a just a different playing game. With that said, you don’t see the men ever playing on turf. You don’t see any World Cups being played on turf—even when the major club teams come to America to play on a turf stadium, they lay sod.

MJ: I saw some stats that showed that 100 percent of men’s national games in the United States were played on grass since 2014, whereas 70 percent of your team’s games were played on grass. What do you make of that disparity?

HS: It’s not just the field conditions. There are major disparities between men’s and women’s sports across the board, but the playing conditions are a major one for us. The field that we stepped out on in Hawaii, that wasn’t just turf versus grass. That had to do with player safety. We knew we couldn’t risk ourselves with the Olympic Games being around the corner. We have careers to protect, and we knew that in Hawaii, we absolutely had to take a stand. We lost Megan Rapinoe to a subpar practice field, although it was grass. It was pretty magnified what was at stake for us, and it was time to be vocal about it.

MJ: Who on the team was the person who said “enough was enough”?

HS: Megan Rapinoe hurt herself a day before. There was this weird feeling at practice of “What the hell is going on?” We knew the drainage grates was way to close too the line. Our fields were bumpy. We weren’t sure if Rapinoe stepped on the grate or in the hole beside it, but it was a noncontact injury. It was really scary. The players were upset. The coaches were upset. The staff was upset. And right then, I started taking pictures of the practice field. You know, there were rumblings amongst the players.

We go to the stadium field. We start looking a little bit more at the field and bending over and picking up the little rocks. We see the huge bumps in the line, and the field turf actually pulls up. The media’s behind the goal, and they start seeing us looking at the field. And then we see our coach yelling at somebody, and our general manager starts thinking, “This isn’t okay.” We still practiced, because the fans were right there. I remember saying, “I’m not going to practice in that goal.” The far end was worse than the near end, so we moved everything to one end. But I told my goalkeeper coach, “I will not go into that goal.” I think I just had visions of another knee injury. We shortened the practice, and then right when we got on the bus, it was kind of like, “Hey guys, what are we doing?” We all discussed it right there on the bus, and right there we were just like, “We can’t do this.”

MJ: And like you said before, it’s not just the field conditions that are troublesome.

HS: It’s a number of different things. You look at the marketing money put into the men’s team vs. the women’s team. You really have to kind of tip your hat to the women’s team for selling out stadiums, because oftentimes you do that with less marketing dollars. We did a side by side analysis of the men’s contract and the women’s contract, and it’s very unbalanced, just the way that US Soccer’s money is invested from year to year. It’s just completely unbalanced. The argument is, well, women should not get paid as much as men, because they don’t bring in as much revenue. We hear it all the time. Our argument back is that we have the best ratings between the men’s team and the women’s team, and had we gotten more marketing dollars, we would have more ticket revenue. When we push for equality, we don’t want the exact same thing. We just want it more balanced.

When you look at the salaries for the men versus the women, when you look at the bonuses, and particularly for the men’s World Cup versus the women’s World Cup, we got a $1.8 million dollar bonus for winning the World Cup, and we had to disburse it among the 23 players. And then we piece out some bonuses for our support staff who don’t get paid a whole bunch. The men, for losing, got $8 million to share among the players, and they also received millions of dollars for every point that they received in the World Cup. We got paid nothing per point in group play. We got paid nothing for making it into the knockout round. We basically didn’t get a bonus until we won the entire thing, which is incredibly difficult thing to do, and that bonus was quite a bit less than what the men got.

MJ: What has the federation done to address that since the World Cup ended?

HS: We were able to take the side-by-side analysis, and we were able to say to US Soccer, “These are the facts. It is unbalanced. What are we going to do about it? Because you guys are a progressive federation, and you value the women’s team. Well, show us that you value us. Don’t just tell us. Show us.” We are able to have more meaningful conversations.

It’s a great starting point that they are willing to have these conversations. Before, we’ve tried to have these conversations, and the door had been shut. But I think right now, it has to do with the players being unified, but I also think it’s the times that we live in. We have some of these incredible female role models who are standing up and feeling unapologetic about it. And I think it’s empowered us to do the same.

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We Talked to Hope Solo About Why the US Women’s Soccer Team Skipped a Game in Protest

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Military Opens All Combat Jobs to Women

by RudolphMott Posted on December 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced on Thursday that the military will open all of its combat jobs, including those in special operations, to women for the first time.

Those combat jobs, including in infantry, artillery, tanks, and other front-line roles, will be open to women after a 30-day waiting period, Carter announced at a press conference. “Today I’m announcing my decision…to proceed with opening all these remaining occupations and positions to women,” he said. “There will be no exceptions.”

Carter cast the decision as a vital tool in recruiting talent and keeping up the military’s capabilities. “Our force of the future must continue to benefit from the best people America has to offer,” he said. “In the 21st century, that includes drawing strength from the broadest possible pool of talent.”

The military opened some indirect combat jobs to women in 1993, including flying combat aircraft and serving on Navy fighting ships, but kept front-line roles closed to female service members. That translated to about 220,000 positions across the military in 2015, Carter said. The change began in 2013, when the Obama administration said the military would have three years to study the role of women in combat and provide any reasons why they should still be barred from jobs such as infantry, artillery, and other direct combat roles. In that time, the military conducted studies and tests in which women participated in grueling combat schools, including Marine infantry officer training and the Army’s Ranger School, which three female officers passed this year. Carter said all the services except the Marine Corps recommended full integration. That includes Special Operations Command, which oversees elite forces like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force.

Carter said he was confident that the inclusion of women would not reduce combat effectiveness, and that physical and performance standards would not be altered for women. Some military standards, including the scores on mandatory physical fitness tests, are scaled differently for men and women. “Women will be subject to the same standards and rules that men will,” he said. “Combat effectiveness is why we’re here.”

Carter acknowledged that the transition may be rocky. “While at the end of the day this will make us a better and stronger force, there still will be problems to fix and challenges to overcome,” he said. “We shouldn’t diminish that.” he said.

The Marine Corps was the service most vehemently opposed to integration. It released a study this year saying mixed-gender units performed worse in combat than all-male units, a conclusion that some analysts rejected. Carter said that study, which he called “not definitive,” and other data provided by the Marines were ultimately not enough to convince him that the service should get its own exemption from integrating combat unit. “We are a joint force, and I have decided to make a decision that applies to the entire force,” Carter said, noting that Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had made the same recommendation. Dunford, however, did not attend the press conference, and reporters pointed out that in his previous job as the Marine Corps’ top general, he opposed full gender integration for the Marines.

Carter said Dunford will work with him as the military integrates all its units, but he seemed to dodge a question about whether Dunford supported the move. “You’ll have to speak to him about that, but he understands what my decision is, and my decision is my decision,” Carter said.

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Military Opens All Combat Jobs to Women

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The Press Needs to Stop Encouraging Republican Lunacy Toward Muslims

by KerstinBowling Posted on November 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is still Donald Trump, trying to gain attention by saying obviously outrageous things. But his latest outrage looks a little contrived. Here’s the full context of his recent interview with Yahoo’s Hunter Walker:

Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures.

“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.

“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”

It would be one thing if Trump floated the idea himself of warrantless searches and special IDs. It’s quite another if a reporter brings them up and Trump tap dances a little bit. Needless to say, in a better world Trump would have explicitly denounced all these ideas. Obviously we don’t live in that world. Still, the only thing Trump actually said here is that we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. The rest was just a reporter fishing for a headline.

To state the obvious: no, we don’t need to do anything that was “unthinkable” a year ago. As my colleague Miles Johnson notes, “of the 745,000 refugees resettled in the US since the September 11 terrorist attacks, only two have been arrested on terrorism-related charges.” The American Muslim community has been instrumental in preventing jihadist violence in the US since 9/11, and to deliberately alienate them, as Trump and many other Republicans are proposing, is just about the most dangerous thing we could do.

We know how to fight dangerous people. We know how to fight terrorism. And we don’t have to shred the Constitution to do it. Instead of fishing for headlines and stoking the latest round of fatuous fearmongering from Republicans, maybe we’d be better served if reporters started asking them hard questions instead.

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The Press Needs to Stop Encouraging Republican Lunacy Toward Muslims

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