Sidney-winner Irin Carmon on the big abortion rights case before the Supreme Court. The court will decide whether states can create buffer zones around abortion clinics to protect patients and providers from confrontational anti-choice protesters, if the state can show that existing criminal law is not enough to protect the clinics.

[Photo credit: Infowidget, Creative Commons.]

A chemical spill in the Elk River left 300,000 West Virginians without water last week. Experts say the spill reveals systematic weaknesses in the state’s system for managing toxic chemicals:

“We can’t just point a single finger at this company,” said Angela Rosser, the executive director of West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “We need to look at our entire system and give some serious thought to making some serious reform and valuing our natural resources over industry interests.”

She said lawmakers have yet to explain why the storage facility was allowed to sit on the river and so close to a water treatment plant that is the largest in the state.

Ms. Rosser and others noted that the site of the spill has not been subject to a state or federal inspection since 1991. West Virginia law does not require inspections for chemical storage facilities — only for production facilities. [NYT]

Critics say that the state government of West Virginia has long been hostile to environmental regulation because of the outsize influence of coal and chemical companies. 

[Photo credit: “Elk River Falls,” for illustration only, dmott9, Creative Commons.]

Marlize Munoz and her husband Erick were paramedics, raising a young son and anticipating the birth of their second child. On Nov. 26, Erick found Marlize collapsed on the floor of their North Texas home. Her heart was stopped and she wasn’t breathing. Her doctors believe she was stricken by a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lung. Her brain was completely destroyed by oxygen deprivation. 

Marlize is dead according to medical science and Texas law. Yet a ventilator is forcing air into her body against her wishes and the wishes of her family because she is pregnant. Texas is one of several states that invalidates the advance health directives of pregnant women. 

Marlize told her family she never wanted to be hooked up to a ventilator under these circumstances. Yet, thanks to the hospital’s dubious interpretation of a Texas law, Marlize’s body is being ventilated for the benefit of the 14-week-old fetus inside of it. The law applies to patients living patients, not to dead bodies. But the hospital is holding firm. 

Social media presence and online branding are said to be critical to success in journalism today. Important questions are debated online and professional reputations are established in this arena. So, where does that leave female journalists whose work generates huge volumionus threats and abuse over twitter and other social media? Amanda Hess’s thought-provoking Pacific Standard essay on the online harrassment of female journalists should be read by everyone who cares about the future of journalism.

The web was supposed to disrupt established media power structures and give traditionally under-represented groups more ability to shape public opinion. To some extent, this promise has come true. However, women and other vulnerable groups (including young writers and writers of color) are disproportionately targeted for threats and abuse over social media. The very tools that enabled a broader reach also enable abusers to shame and harrass with terrifying precision.