As efforts to address the country’s maternal mortality crisis have stalled at the federal level, advocates and lawmakers are increasingly turning to statewide maternal mortality review committees to make progress — and try to save lives. Guttmacher Institute, one of the nation’s largest reproductive health research organizations, reports that almost all states have a maternal mortality review committee that’s tasked with investigating pregnancy-related deaths and their causes and making prevention recommendations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 1,205 maternal deaths in ..read more

The 19th is excited to announce that veteran journalist Fernanda Santos is joining as managing editor to help shape our coverage during this crucial election year and beyond. Fernanda has spent her career elevating the stories of underrepresented and misrepresented communities, working as a staff writer for The New York Times, contributing columnist for The Washington Post, editorial director at Futuro Media and professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She is a writing coach in the Poynter Institute’s Power of Diverse Voices prog ..read more

Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges was overturned Thursday by the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.  The stunning 4-3 decision said that “the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.” Because of this and other errors made by the trial judge, the appellate court said, Weinstein had not in fact received a fair trial — which necessitated the overturn of the verdict against him.  The choice of prosecutors to use testimony by witne ..read more

Taliyah Murphy, a transgender woman living in Colorado Springs, studies accounting and finance. She co-owns two small businesses with her fiancé and eventually wants to start a financial education nonprofit for marginalized people.  For Murphy, starting her gender transition helped her focus on her education as she developed her career — but she faced near-impossible barriers at every turn. She started her transition while incarcerated with the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC), which repeatedly denied her gender-affirming care. She had to make multiple appeals before she could ac ..read more

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY and FREDERICK, Md. — Angela Alsobrooks starts off her stump speech with an anecdote about her grandmother Sarah, whose dream was to go to Washington to work for the federal government. Lacking a keyboard, she learned to type with a piece of paper taped to her fridge.  It’s a story about striving and the value of work, Alsobrooks says, that is familiar to many Marylanders, many Americans. Other parts of her story are familiar, too: how she is juggling the care of her aging relatives, including her mother, who has dementia. How she is worried about the fate of her dau ..read more

After three weeks of trying, the Arizona House of Representatives has voted to repeal a near-total abortion ban that was written in 1864 after the state Supreme Court earlier this month ruled that it could be enforced, setting the stage for the end of abortion services in the Grand Canyon State. The 32-29 vote came after three Republican legislators, Reps. Tim Dunn, Matt Gress and Justin Wilmeth, crossed party lines to join Democrats in backing the bill.  Dunn and Gress supported parliamentary maneuvers that brought the repeal legislation to the House floor for an immediate vote. Wednesda ..read more

Climate change and reproductive justice aren’t often linked – but they should be. To close out Earth Month, Errin sits down with Jessica Kutz, the 19th’s gender, climate and sustainability reporter, to talk about her latest reporting on climate and reproductive justice, the missing perspectives in climate journalism, and the future of the climate movement. Listen or subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. On today’s episode Our host Errin Haines is The 19th’s editor-at-large and writer of ..read more

Four Texas advocacy groups announced Monday that they’re joining a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Criminal Justice, which they say is failing to address life-threatening temperatures inside its prisons. The joint lawsuit expands on a complaint filed against the state in August 2023 on behalf of Bernie Tiede, a 65-year-old man with diabetes and high blood pressure, whose health has been affected by the heat, according to the complaint. The groups are calling for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to implement a policy that matches the state’s requirement for jails, which ..read more

At a national park in Virginia on Monday, President Joe Biden announced that people can start applying to the American Climate Corps, a program that is expected to connect workers with over 20,000 green jobs.  “You’ll get paid to fight climate change, learning how to install those solar panels, fight wildfires, rebuild wetlands, weatherize homes, and so much more that’s going to protect the environment and build a clean energy economy,” Biden said at the Earth Day event.  The American Climate Corps (ACC) is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which was created by Pre ..read more

Last month, six autistic academics published a letter in “Autism,” a journal dedicated to autism research, with an explosive assertion: Sociologist Judy Singer, who has been described as the “mother of neurodiversity,” should not be regarded as such and did not originate the concept she has built her career on.  The claims come on the heels of a rocky year for Singer, who has been accused of making transphobic statements on social media, allegations she denies. The letter’s authors say it has been those comments that spurred them to speak out.  “She was getting away with taking credi ..read more