Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged unplanned

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Javier E

The Fight for Unplanned Parenthood - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, studied what happened when Texas blocked Planned Parenthood grants and tried to move the money to other providers. Even when there were other clinics in an area, she said, “they were overbooked with their own patients. What happened in Texas was the amount of family planning services dropped. And the next thing that happened, of course, was that unplanned pregnancies began to rise.”
  • If an elected official wants to try to drive Planned Parenthood out of business, there are two honest options: Announce that first you’re going to invest a ton of new taxpayer money in creating real substitutes, or shrug your shoulders and tell the world that you’re fine with cutting off health services to some of your neediest constituents
Javier E

Police Retreat in Istanbul as Protests Expand Through Turkey - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • While the protest began over plans to destroy a park, for many demonstrators it had moved beyond that to become a broad rebuke to the 10-year leadership of Mr. Erdogan and his government, which they say has adopted authoritarian tactics.
  • “It’s the first time in Turkey’s democratic history that an unplanned, peaceful protest movement succeeded in changing the government’s approach and policy,” said Sinan Ulgen, the chairman of the Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies, a research group in Istanbul. “It gave for the first time a strong sense of empowerment to ordinary citizens to demonstrate
  • The Interior Ministry said it had arrested 939 people at demonstrations across the country, and that 79 people were wounded, a number that was probably low. After Friday’s protests, which were smaller and less violent than those on Saturday, a Turkish doctors’ group reported nearly 1,000 injuries.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Now Turkey is facing its own civil unrest, and the protesters presented a long list of grievances against Mr. Erdogan, including opposition to his policy of supporting Syria’s rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, his crackdown on dissent and intimidation of the news media, and unchecked development in Istanbul.
  • The widening chaos here and the images it produced threaten to tarnish Turkey’s image, which Mr. Erdogan has carefully cultivated, as a regional power broker with the ability to shape the outcome of the Arab Spring revolutions by presenting itself as a model for the melding of Islam and democracy.
  • people held beers in the air, a rebuke to the recently passed law banning alcohol in public spaces; young men smashed the windshields of the bulldozers that had begun razing Taksim Square; and a red flag bearing the face of modern Turkey’s secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was draped over a destroyed police vehicle.
  • “He criticized Assad, but he’s the same,” said Murat Uludag, 32, who stood off to the side as protesters battled with police officers down an alleyway near the Pera Museum. “He’s crazy. No one knows what he’s doing or thinking. He’s completely crazy. Whatever he says today, he will say something different tomorrow.”
  • “When he first came to power, he was a good persuader and a good speaker,” said Serder Cilik, 32, who was sitting at a tea shop watching the chaos unfold. Mr. Cilik said he had voted for Mr. Erdogan but would never do so again
Brian Zittlau

Roe V. Wade Turns 41 Next Week | News | Philadelphia Magazine - 0 views

  • In the first decades since Wade, the typical abortion patient was young and white; according to The American Prospect, “the typical abortion patient these days is a 20-something single mother of color.” The reasons for this are largely driven by greater socioeconomic barriers to contraception, and therefore, to abortion as well. “Women in the middle class continued to see unplanned pregnancies decline” in the 1990s when things began to change, according to The American Prospect.
  • Roe v. Wade decision was a landmark occasion for reproductive rights advocates and for women (though, as I noted above, women are not the only people affected.) Abortion, like birth control, is an issue that is framed as a “women’s rights issue,” when in reality, it affects women and their partners. Of course, a woman’s right to have autonomy over her body is at the heart of the debate on the pro-choice side, but intelligent conversations about sexual health and reproductive rights should be include men’s voices as well. By framing these discussions as “women’s issues,” it becomes a niche, special-interest concern, making the general public dismissive of the issues at hand at the expense of people who are most affected.
  • Both sides of the debate can agree that abortion is a divisive issue. It’s both personal and widespread in its nature — a basic question of how much ownership women have over their bodies, and what responsibility, if any, the government bears for the unborn — something that’s not so “one size fits all.” I’d say if you don’t believe in abortions, don’t have one; but the very option is universally unacceptable to some. As an all-or-nothing proposition, it’s impossible to find common ground.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Through careful strategy from anti-abortionist groups, “abortion” and “Planned Parenthood” have a close word association. Because of this, people often forget that the non-profit organization, now over 100 years old, does more than just terminate pregnancies.
Javier E

When Even the Starting Line Is Out of Reach - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • One reason American antipoverty efforts over the last half-century haven’t been more effective is that they mostly treat symptoms, not causes. To put it another way, we don’t invest nearly enough in helping children in the first few years of life as their brains are developing. If we miss that window, then adult interventions like higher minimum wages can never be fully effective.
  • Almost one-fifth of children here in West Virginia are born with drugs or alcohol in their systems, one study found. Those kids may never reach their potential as a result.
  • What would make a difference? We need an integrated set of early interventions, starting with family planning to help women and girls avoid unwanted pregnancy (four out of five births to teenagers are unplanned or unwanted). We need outreach efforts to help pregnant women curb use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco, as well as free at-home help for new moms who want to breast-feed.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Let’s push for home visitation programs that encourage parents to speak to children and read to them; many low-income homes don’t have a single kid’s book. We also need initiatives to reduce exposure to lead and other toxins. Finally, how about screenings for problems like hearing and visual impairment — all followed by a good prekindergarten.
  • all young children should have a primary care physician who screens them for eight barriers to learning: vision problems, hearing deficits, undertreated asthma, anemia, dental pain, hunger, lead exposure and behavioral problems.
  • Let’s broaden the conversation about opportunity, to build not just safety nets for those who stumble but also to help all American kids achieve lift-off.
B Mannke

BBC News - White House says Obama-Castro handshake 'not planned' - 1 views

  • President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro's handshake at Nelson Mandela's memorial service was unplanned, the White House has said.
  • "Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake, but when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raul Castro, it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant," Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is known for her opposition to the Castro government, told Secretary of State John Kerry. "Could you please tell the Cuban people living under that repressive regime that, a handshake notwithstanding, the US policy toward the cruel and sadistic Cuban dictatorship has not weakened."
  • On the fourth anniversary of his arrest, he wrote to Mr Obama to say he feared the US government had "abandoned" him, and asked the US president to intervene personally to help win his release.
sgardner35

What's wrong with the State of the Union (Opinions) - CNN.com - 0 views

  • The rest of the month we get the jockeying and posturing of presidential candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire. In countless town halls and meet-and-greets, as polls come in more frequently and the pressure intensifies, they'll all strive for that oxymoronic sweet spot of manufactured authenticity.What keeps us watching all this stagecraft is the possibility of something veering sharply from script -- the chance of a gaffe or a break in protocol, the unplanned moment that reveals the person beneath or that perfectly captures a conflict.
  • The occasion revealed just how wired people have become to hear what they want to hear. The President spoke of Australia, a country that in the aftermath of a gun massacre took societywide steps to reduce gun violence. His critics, gun-rights advocates, heard him calling for confiscation of firearms. He described reasonable steps to stem a public health crisis. His critics heard him trashing the Constitution.
  • Indeed, watching him made me wonder: What if politicians across the spectrum committed to a new ritual -- speaking to groups composed entirely of people from the other party? There would be no one to cheer your partisan points. No one would let you off the hook if you tried to avoid a tough topic.Bernie Sanders made a much-publicized speech last fall to the evangelical and conservative students at Liberty University in Virginia, then took questions. This was the right idea. How would the other Democrats have done in a true give-and-take on the Liberty campus?
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • For one thing, it would reveal which of our politicians is capable of actually listening to the other side. Who has something to say after the talking points are exhausted? Who is willing to learn in the midst of fierce disagreement? That's a far better measure of fitness for a governing role than whether you can fire up your base.
  • Yes, some politicians would avoid such a setup because of the risk of being exposed as a one-note ideologue. And some politicians in the lion's den might feel tempted to sharpen differences, to make a performance of their contempt for the mob from the other party. But this is where we, the people, come in: We'd have to act like something other than a mob. The setup of the ritual --- many of us, one of them --- would nudge us to treat the visiting political figure with a measure of civility and to engage her or him in good faith. With ground rules that allow the politician to speak without being bullied or drowned out, we could set in motion a contagion of respect.
Javier E

'The East Is Rising': Xi Maps Out China's Post-Covid Ascent - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Xi Jinping has struck a confident posture as he looks to secure China’s prosperity and power in a post-Covid world, saying that the country is entering a time of opportunity when “the East is rising and the West is declining.”
  • “The biggest source of chaos in the present-day world is the United States,” Mr. Xi said, a county official in northwest China recounted in a speech published last week on a government website. He quoted Mr. Xi as saying: “The United States is the biggest threat to our country’s development and security.”
  • he is seeking to balance confidence and caution as China strides ahead while other countries continue to grapple with the pandemic.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • Although China is growing stronger, Mr. Xi has said, there are still many ways in which “the West is strong and the East is weak,”
  • “Xi Jinping strikes me as ruthless but cautious in erecting a durable personal legacy,”
  • In the eyes of China’s leaders, he said, “the response to the coronavirus was really a textbook example to the party of how you could bring things together in a short amount of time and force through a program.”
  • The Biden administration has signaled that it wants to press China on human rights and compete with it on technological advancements and regional influence in Asia
  • At home, China is grappling with an aging population and trying to overhaul an engine of economic growth that uses too much investment and energy for too little gain and too much pollution.
  • the Chinese legislature appears poised to back plans to drastically rewrite election rules for Hong Kong, removing the vestiges of local democracy in the former British colony.
  • Mr. Xi, 67, appears likely to claim a third five-year term in power, bulldozing past the term limits that had been put in place to restrain leaders after Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
  • Having emerged triumphantly from the pandemic, Mr. Xi will look to further centralize his power,
  • The congress is part of the party’s stagecraft this year to reinforce the view that Mr. Xi is essential to safely steering China through momentous changes. Official Chinese media have recently hailed Mr. Xi’s campaign to end rural poverty as a major success
  • in July, Mr. Xi will preside over the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, celebrations that are likely to cast him as a historic leader like Mao and Deng.
  • Mr. Xi has portrayed China as moving closer by the year to regaining its rightful historic status as a great power, while established powers are riven by dysfunction.
  • “There is a vivid contrast between the order of China and the chaos of the West.”
  • officials have used such phrases markedly more often in recent months, underscoring the confidence — critics say hubris — enveloping the Chinese government.
  • The health of the economy will be crucial to whether that confidence survives. Government advisers have suggested that average growth could be 5 percent or higher over the next five years, if things go well.
  • But the country might not sustain that level of growth unless it becomes more innovative and reduces its reliance on investment in heavy industry and infrastructure,
  • China’s aging population will place growing demands on pension funds, health care and accumulated savings.
  • Such economic pressures could corrode public support for the party in the years ahead
  • Leaders in Beijing appear much more focused on the United States, which they see as remaining bent on hobbling China’s ascent, regardless of who is in the White House.
  • Chinese policymakers were alarmed when the Trump administration pulled back Chinese companies’ access to American technology. Many say that the United States will keep trying to hold back China by restricting its access to “chokehold technologies,” such as advanced semiconductors and the machines to make them.
  • “Containment and oppression from the United States is a major threat,” said Chen Yixin, a security official who served as Mr. Xi’s policy enforcer in Wuhan
  • “This is both an unplanned clash and a protracted war.”
  • Mr. Xi’s plan for addressing these shortcomings is to expand domestic innovation and markets to be less dependent on high-tech imports
  • He could dominate for years yet, making his decisions, or misjudgments, all the more consequential.
  • “Internally there are now few sources of opposition — no sources of opposition,” Xiao Gongqin, a historian in Shanghai, said in a telephone interview, “so the leader must be able to stay even-keeled.”
carolinehayter

How Belarus 'hijacking' will affect flights in Europe | CNN Travel - 0 views

  • In the week since Ryanair flight FR4978 from Athens to Vilnius was forcibly diverted to Minsk, travel in Europe already looks very different.
  • The directive, issued Wednesday by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) under the form of a Safety Information Bulletin (SIB), called on all airlines "with their principle place of business in one of the EASA member states" to avoid Belarusian airspace. They advised that all other airlines should do the same, wherever they are based.
  • There were other implications, with Russia -- an ally of Belarus -- taking several days to grant Air France and Austrian Airlines flights to Moscow the clearance to use Russian airspace to divert around Belarus, prompting cancelations.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • So how big a deal is this? Huge, say industry insiders -- big enough to have already shaken the aviation map of Europe, and big enough to have knock-on effects beyond the continent -- particularly if the situation escalates further.
  • If it did, passengers could see their flight times increased, a rise in fares across the networks, and even long-haul, nonstop flights needing to make refueling stops along the way.
  • "Now that they're not flying over its airspace, that's good -- governments have acted swiftly to restore confidence -- but I think it'll throw up questions for consumers over who they're flying with, which points they're flying between and how they're flying between them. If you were flying from Athens to Lithuania, or in the region around Russia, you might think twice.
  • The events, described by some governments as a state-sponsored hijacking, have "inevitably redrawn the aviation map of Europe," says one airline industry insider, who wanted to remain anonymous due to the risk of being identified. (
  • But the issues don't just end there, they say. "The problem you have is the challenge around where you draw the new map -- that whole region has restrictions."There are already restrictions flying over Ukraine"
  • "So Belarus had seen a huge increase in traffic because people were going around Ukraine."
  • "Airlines will either have to go very far north into the polar region, or to go down to the Gulf States -- but then most European carriers would avoid flying over Iraq and Iran. So, they'd probably go over Egypt, Saudi Arabia and across India.
  • "There's a big lump of airspace which is strategically important to airlines and is now being denied them -- and there'll be a knock-on effect on flight times, cost, and environmental impact."
  • Everyone in the industry agrees that if diversions become a long-term thing, it'll be a headache.
  • As well as the increased fuel burn and longer flight times, he says, any unplanned stops can send crews over their allotted hours. "They might need to be swapped out, with a new crew being flown in. There are significant consequences to this sort of disruption," he says.
  • The rules and regulations around airline safety are "absolutely sacrosanct," he says -- and have been enshrined in international law since 1944, in the Chicago Convention, which established freedom of the skies after the Second World War.
  • "This is the first time that a mechanism designed to ensure the safety and security of air travel has allegedly been used for political ends, and what's also worrying is that the political response to that has also been to use another mechanism designed to ensure flight security for political ends.
  • If you start playing politics with flight safety, you're setting out on a slippery slope, he argues.
  • "This symbolizes something really big -- since the Chicago Convention, freedom of the skies has been laid out. It's supposed to be universally accepted that airlines have a right to overfly a foreign country without being forced to land," they say.
  • "Clearly that has been violated. What Belarus is said to have done is really horrible -- and if it turns out to be a precedent, it's even worse. It's a terrible signifier of what could happen."
  • In short?"Everyone is worried about what this incident means for the future."
aleija

The alarming reason people aren't going to drug stores as often - CNN - 0 views

  • People have been filling fewer prescriptions in stores during the pandemic with some doctor's offices closed, many elective procedures on hold and more shoppers switching to mail order. This has also choked off impulse purchases and unplanned items that customers grab when they visit stores to pick up their prescriptions.
  • Visits to drug stores fell around 12.8% from the prior year for the four weeks ending on October 4, according to market research firm IRI.
  • Additionally, some people have been visiting doctors offices and health clinics less often than usual in the pandemic for annual and routine checkups, say experts.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • This has meant fewer people are being diagnosed or treated for health conditions and thus do not need to renew their medications or fill new ones.
  • For someone with high blood pressure or diabetes, "if you miss those medications and your blood pressure gets too high, it could lead to a heart attack or a stroke,"
  • efore the coronavirus hit, Americans shopped an average of 4.4 stores each week, according to consulting firm McKinsey. By late May, that number had dropped to 2.8.
  • For the 31 weeks ending on October 3, sales at drug stores have inched up 2.5% from the same stretch last year, while they have increased 19.9% at grocery stores, according to Nielsen.
  • CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid are trying to fight back by offering home delivery and curbside pickup and improving their food selection.
woodlu

The latest shock to China's economy: power shortages | The Economist - 0 views

  • At least 19 of China’s provinces, including many of its industrial heartlands, have suffered power shortages in recent weeks, with some unplanned and indiscriminate cuts.
  • the high price of coal is to blame. Ten provinces are also trying to meet strict environmental limits on energy consumption. Nomura, a bank, expects China’s GDP to shrink in the third quarter, compared with the second.
Javier E

The Theory of Hamas's Catastrophic Success - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • hree days after Hamas’s attack on Israel, I called the operation a “catastrophic success.” Now Hamas itself is saying something similar.
  • Qatar) quotes Hamas leaders admitting that they intended to commit heinous war crimes, but not at this scale. Hamas “had in mind to take between 20 and 30 hostages,” a source told the reporter. “They had not bargained on the collapse of [Israel’s] Gaza Division. This produced a much bigger result.”
  • The theory of Hamas’s catastrophic success (and its flip side, Israel’s strange defeat), if correct, informs what may happen next.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Hamas is making up a strategy as it goes. I disagree with Hussein Ibish’s claims that the massacres were “​​intended as a trap,” and that “the intended effect is precisely the ground assault Israel is now preparing.”
  • I do not see evidence that Hamas planned for the magnitude of the response it is getting. Is there evidence that Hamas was stockpiling weapons, preparing cells for hostages, and digging even more tunnels in preparation for October 7? So far I have not seen it.
  • Public statements by Hamas’s leaders, moreover, have been garbled and pathetic, by turns taking enthusiastic responsibility for the atrocities and suggesting that they either did not happen or were not intended.
  • The most unsettling aspect of the current moment is how deeply all parties have gone into strategically uncharted territory.
  • I have little doubt that the delay in starting the invasion was in part because no plans existed for the bizarre scenario—Shalit, times 240—that Israel currently faces.
  • Hamas might not be beyond deterrence. The decision to eliminate Hamas was made in a righteous fury after October 7. Israel could not abide the existence of a neighboring terrorist group with no apparent limitation on what it was willing to do.
  • To have a neighbor who breaks your windows now and then is one thing; to have a neighbor who steals your children and dismembers your husband is another
  • So is Israel. The job of military planners is to prepare for the worst. In Israel’s case that worst-case scenario is a multifront war, with Iran fully committed. But preparing for the worst is much easier than preparing for the weird. And it is decidedly weird when one’s enemy undertakes a sophisticated, disciplined, tactically brilliant operation—and then so bungles things that it exceeds its objectives and begins to defeat its own strategic goals.
  • The deaths in Israel and Gaza could cascade politically, affecting Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan—in ways that Hamas might welcome, or might not. Hamas may have stumbled much further into this darkness than it intended. Now Israel is stumbling in the same darkness, and the whole region is right behind.
Javier E

Their Mothers Were Teenagers. They Didn't Want That for Themselves. - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The decline is accelerating: Teen births fell 20 percent in the 1990s, 28 percent in the 2000s and 55 percent in the 2010s. Three decades ago, a quarter of 15-year-old girls became mothers before turning 20, according to Child Trends estimates, including nearly half of those who were Black or Hispanic. Today, just 6 percent of 15-year-old girls become teen mothers.
  • The reasons teen births have fallen are only partly understood. Contraceptive use has grown and shifted to more reliable methods, and adolescent sex has declined. Civic campaigns, welfare restrictions and messaging from popular culture may have played roles.
  • But with progress so broad and sustained, many researchers argue the change reflects something more fundamental: a growing sense of possibility among disadvantaged young women, whose earnings and education have grown faster than their male counterparts.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • At the same time, the share of high school students who say they have had sexual intercourse has fallen 29 percent since 1991,
  • The share of female teens who did not use birth control the last time they had sex dropped by more than a third over the last decade, according to an analysis of government surveys by the Guttmacher Institute. The share using the most effective form, long-acting reversible contraception (delivered through an intrauterine device or arm implant), rose fivefold to 15 percent. The use of emergency contraception also rose.
  • “They’re going to school and seeing new career paths open,” said Melissa S. Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland. “Whether they are excited about their own opportunities or feel that unreliable male partners leave them no choice, it leads them in the same direction — not becoming a young mother.”
  • Abortion does not appear to have driven the decline in teen births. As a share of teenage pregnancy, it has remained steady over the past decade,
  • If adolescent girls are more cautious with sex and birth control, what explains the caution? A common answer is that more feel they have something to lose. “There is just a greater confidence among young women that they have educational and professional opportunities,” Mr. Wilcox said.
  • t women in their mid-30s were nearly 25 percent more likely than men to have a four-year college degree, and at every educational level earnings had grown faster for women than men.
  • Skeptics see limits in the data and note that the payoff to education is growing.“I strongly disagree with the argument that teen births have no effect on social mobility,” said Isabel V. Sawhill of the Brookings Institution. “It’s a lot easier to move out of poverty if you’re not responsible for a child in your teenage years.”
  • The debate is more than academic. Some progressives worry that a narrow focus on preventing teen births will undermine broader anti-poverty plans and risks blaming adolescents for their poverty. Other see reducing poverty and teen births as complementary causes meant not to blame young women but empower them.
1 - 12 of 12
Showing 20 items per page