SCOTUS recognized a woman’s right to bodily autonomy 50 years ago today with Roe v. Wade.
Last year, it overturned its landmark ruling, pushing the fight for those rights back half a century.
It’s been 7 months since the #Dobbs decision. This is how women have fared.🧵
At least 13 states have banned or severely restricted abortions since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Legal abortions dropped 95% in states with strict laws, especially affecting women of color who:
▪️have high abortion rates
▪️face many pregnancy-related deaths & health risks
Poverty and poor access to maternal care can kill up to 4x as many Black women as white women during childbirth/labor.
Limiting access to abortion disproportionately affects Black people, causing poverty rates to spike by up to 20%, per @blkwomenshealth.
80%+ of clinics in states with strict bans stopped offering abortions, tripling travel times.
18 of every 1,000 Black women in TX had an abortion in 2019. Now, the state has closed the most clinics, forcing pregnant people to travel 6+ hours for care.
It used to be 15 minutes.
Abortion bans can force undocumented people to travel for care, leading to fears of deportation, says @KFF.
There are 1.6M undocumented people in Texas, which fully bans abortion. These bans can force migrants and asylum seekers to spend more on care and ~50% have no insurance.
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Brazil's leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returns to power on Jan. 1.
Who is #Lula? And what might his return to the presidency mean for low-income people in Brazil, Amazon deforestation and even Palestinian statehood? 🧵
Lula first came to power in 2003, after decades as a union organizer.
The son of farmers, he was a metal worker by 14.
His first presidency's social welfare programs lifted millions from poverty, targeting high-poverty groups, farmers and Indigenous/Afro-Brazilian communities.
Poverty fell 55% when Lula's Workers' Party controlled Brazil from 2003-2016: from about 22 million people in poverty to under 10 million.
By the end of Jair Bolsonaro's 2019-2022 term, the poverty rate skyrocketed — from 4.8% when the Workers' Party left power to almost 30%.
Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation:
▪️ West Bank: surrounded by 200+ illegal settlements, 700+ barriers/checkpoints
▪️ Gaza: blockaded for 15 years, 50% live in poverty
▪️ East Jerusalem: face forced displacement
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians face huge restrictions on movement, surrounded by illegal settlements, checkpoints and Jewish-only roads.
Israeli forces:
▪️ conduct near-daily raids
▪️ killed 140+ Palestinians in 2022
▪️ destroyed homes of 3,100+ Palestinians since 2020
Palestinians in occupied Gaza have been under Israeli land/sea/air blockade since 2007.
Infrastructure is ravaged by Israel’s airstrikes and blocking of construction materials:
▪️ 50% live in poverty
▪️ 97% of water undrinkable
▪️ 33% of exit requests for medical needs denied
Israel says it won't cooperate in a reported U.S. investigation on the killing of Palestinian-American journalist #ShireenAbuAkleh. The U.S. has not yet confirmed the probe.
Israeli soldiers shot Shireen in May as she wore a press vest. Israel refused a criminal investigation.
Israeli forces have killed at least 45 journalists since 2000, say Palestinians.
0 Israeli soldiers were charged for killing them.
140+ journalists have been badly wounded by Israeli live fire and other weapons since 2018, some injuries resulting in amputation and blindness.
Family of #ShireenAbuAkleh welcomed news of a possible U.S. investigation into her killing:
"It is what the United States should do when a U.S. citizen is killed abroad... by a foreign military."
The U.S. has delayed a formal investigation for 6 months.
In the United Kingdom, the last few prime ministers were initially chosen by just 0.3% of voters (or less).
Here's why: 🧵
The UK PM is not chosen by all voters — usually only by members of the ruling political party or its MPs.
Currently, that is 150,000+ Conservative Party members (0.3% of all voters), who are overwhelmingly older, richer and more often male and white than the average voter.
The last 4 UK prime ministers all initially came to power without most voters getting any say:
▪️ Theresa May, after David Cameron resigned
▪️ Boris Johnson, after May resigned
▪️ Liz Truss, after Johnson resigned
▪️ Rishi Sunak, after Truss resigned