persuasive speech about abortion in the philippines

When In Manila Search

We asked pinoys “should abortion be legal in the philippines” and the answers might surprise you.

The discussion of abortion has always been a difficult one, with people everywhere around the world being strongly divided on the subject. Recently, the state of Alabama in the USA passed an anti-abortion law that totally bans the procedure—a news that made headlines and resulted to a global discussion on the subject.

With all these recent talks surrounding abortion laws, it got us to thinking: how do Filipinos feel about abortion ? Should it be legal here?

Right now, it isn’t. And as a country with such strong religious (and not to mention conservative) roots, it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. But we wanted to find out how Pinoys feel on the subject and whether they think it should be legalized here or not. So, we asked our readers a question: “ Should abortion be made legal in the Philippines? ”

ALSO READ: 6 Married Couples Who Met on Dating Apps, Proving You Can Find Love Online

We kept our respondents’ names off this article to protect their identities, but all answers found below are authentic and are real responses submitted to us through our WIM Squad community on Facebook .

DISCLAIMER: The responses below are individual opinions from our community of readers and therefore do NOT necessarily reflect the opinions of WhenInManila.com as a whole.

Here’s what people said.

1. “No, I don’t think abortion should be made legal in the Philippines. If women think they’re practicing their right because “it’s their body”, then who are we to take away the right of the unborn child? Shouldn’t we protect their rights to live, too?

2. “I think abortion should be made legal, especially to those women who are rape victims. Because having a child after a traumatic experience can be detrimental for them for life.”

3. “My body, my choice. Regardless of tradition or religion, every woman must have the right to choose whether to get an abortion or not, should they want or need to. The hypocrisy of forcing women to have children they don’t want is absurd, especially for those who impose these rules and not upholding them after the child is born. Basically: pro-lifers only care about unborn babies. They stop giving a shit after, which begs the question: were they really pro-lifers in the first place or are they just controlling women?”

4. “Abortion as an option. Consider those who are victims of sexual abuse and those who have to terminate the pregnancy due to complications or possible threat to women’s health.”

5. “Yes, I believe it should be legal. People can’t keep using the “put the baby up for adoption” when they won’t acknowledge just how f*d up the system is. People have to understand that abortion is rarely, if ever, done out of spite or hatred of another living being. It’s acknowledging a person’s capability and/or their desire to be pregnant and raise a child.”

6. “Yes, but educate the public on safe sex more than abortion as an option especially for a country where poverty and population are issues.”

7. “Yes, it should be legal. I wouldn’t do it personally, but it should be an option to every women.”

8. “No. Philippines’ religion influence is higher than any other factors. Many contradictions will exist so as hard core debates in any further means of abortion topics etc.”

9. “For special cases, YES. Like for rape victims or health issues. Pero kung ang rason ay dahil gusto lang at hindi handa sa pinagbubuntis , oh com’on! Why did you do it without protection?”

10. “I am pro-choice. While I would never choose an abortion for myself, I do support other women’s right to do so as long as the legalities are clearly defined i.e. no late-term abortions, special provision for cases of rape and incest. Keeping it illegal doesn’t stop it from happening. It only means women are forced to undergo unsafe, fatal procedures.”

About The Author

Managing Editor of WhenInManila.com. Connect with her on Instagram: @nicvillaluz

Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Crafting a Convincing Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Published on: Feb 22, 2023

Last updated on: Apr 22, 2024

How To Write a Persuasive Essay About Abortion?

Abortion is a controversial topic, with people having differing points of view and opinions on the matter. There are those who oppose abortion, while some people endorse pro-choice arguments.

It is also an emotionally charged subject, so you need to be extra careful when crafting your persuasive essay .

Before you start writing your persuasive essay, you need to understand the following steps.

Step 1: Choose Your Position

The first step to writing a persuasive essay on abortion is to decide your position. Do you support the practice or are you against it? You need to make sure that you have a clear opinion before you begin writing.

Once you have decided, research and find evidence that supports your position. This will help strengthen your argument.

Check out the video below to get more insights into this topic:

Step 2: Choose Your Audience

The next step is to decide who your audience will be. Will you write for pro-life or pro-choice individuals? Or both?

Knowing who you are writing for will guide your writing and help you include the most relevant facts and information.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That's our Job!

Step 3: Define Your Argument

Now that you have chosen your position and audience, it is time to craft your argument.

Start by defining what you believe and why, making sure to use evidence to support your claims. You also need to consider the opposing arguments and come up with counter arguments. This helps make your essay more balanced and convincing.

Step 4: Format Your Essay

Once you have the argument ready, it is time to craft your persuasive essay. Follow a standard format for the essay, with an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Make sure that each paragraph is organized and flows smoothly. Use clear and concise language, getting straight to the point.

Step 5: Proofread and Edit

The last step in writing your persuasive essay is to make sure that you proofread and edit it carefully. Look for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or factual errors and correct them. This will help make your essay more professional and convincing.

These are the steps you need to follow when writing a persuasive essay on abortion. It is a good idea to read some examples before you start so you can know how they should be written.

Continue reading to find helpful examples.

Persuasive Essay About Abortion Examples

To help you get started, here are some example persuasive essays on abortion that may be useful for your own paper.

Short Persuasive Essay About Abortion

Persuasive Essay About No To Abortion

What Is Abortion? - Essay Example

Persuasive Speech on Abortion

Legal Abortion Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Persuasive Essay about legalizing abortion

You can also read m ore persuasive essay examples to imp rove your persuasive skills.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Abortion

An argumentative essay is a type of essay that presents both sides of an argument. These essays rely heavily on logic and evidence.

Here are some examples of argumentative essay with introduction, body and conclusion that you can use as a reference in writing your own argumentative essay.

Abortion Persuasive Essay Introduction

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Conclusion

Argumentative Essay About Abortion Pdf

Argumentative Essay About Abortion in the Philippines

Argumentative Essay About Abortion - Introduction

Abortion Persuasive Essay Topics

If you are looking for some topics to write your persuasive essay on abortion, here are some examples:

Should abortion be legal in the United States?
Is it ethical to perform abortions, considering its pros and cons?
What should be done to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortions?
Is there a connection between abortion and psychological trauma?
What are the ethical implications of abortion on demand?
How has the debate over abortion changed over time?
Should there be legal restrictions on late-term abortions?
Does gender play a role in how people view abortion rights?
Is it possible to reduce poverty and unwanted pregnancies through better sex education?
How is the anti-abortion point of view affected by religious beliefs and values?

These are just some of the potential topics that you can use for your persuasive essay on abortion. Think carefully about the topic you want to write about and make sure it is something that interests you.

Check out m ore persuasive essay topics that will help you explore other things that you can write about!

Tough Essay Due? Hire Tough Writers!

Facts About Abortion You Need to Know

Here are some facts about abortion that will help you formulate better arguments.

According to the Guttmacher Institute , 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion.
The majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester.
Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with less than a 0.5% risk of major complications.
In the United States, 14 states have laws that restrict or ban most forms of abortion after 20 weeks gestation.
Seven out of 198 nations allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
In places where abortion is illegal, more women die during childbirth and due to complications resulting from pregnancy.
A majority of pregnant women who opt for abortions do so for financial and social reasons.
According to estimates, 56 million abortions occur annually.

In conclusion, these are some of the examples, steps, and topics that you can use to write a persuasive essay. Make sure to do your research thoroughly and back up your arguments with evidence. This will make your essay more professional and convincing.

Need the services of a persuasive essay writing service ? We've got your back!

MyPerfectWords.com that provides help to students in the form of professionally written essays. Our persuasive essay writer can craft quality persuasive essays on any topic, including abortion.

So, just ask our experts ' do my essay ' and get professional help.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should i talk about in an essay about abortion.

When writing an essay about abortion, it is important to cover all the aspects of the subject. This includes discussing both sides of the argument, providing facts and evidence to support your claims, and exploring potential solutions.

What is a good argument for abortion?

A good argument for abortion could be that it is a woman’s choice to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It is also important to consider the potential risks of carrying a pregnancy to term.

Caleb S. (Marketing, Linguistics)

Caleb S. has been providing writing services for over five years and has a Masters degree from Oxford University. He is an expert in his craft and takes great pride in helping students achieve their academic goals. Caleb is a dedicated professional who always puts his clients first.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That’s our Job!

Keep reading

We value your privacy

We use cookies to improve your experience and give you personalized content. Do you agree to our cookie policy?

Website Data Collection

We use data collected by cookies and JavaScript libraries.

Are you sure you want to cancel?

Your preferences have not been saved.

COVID-19 Full Coverage
Cover Stories
Ulat Filipino
Special Reports
Personal Finance
Other sports
Pinoy Achievers
Immigration Guide
Science and Research
Technology, Gadgets and Gaming
Chika Minute
Showbiz Abroad
Family and Relationships
Art and Culture
Health and Wellness
Shopping and Fashion
Hobbies and Activities
News Hardcore
Walang Pasok
Transportation
Missing Persons
Community Bulletin Board
GMA Public Affairs
State of the Nation
Unang Balita
Balitanghali
News TV Live

Abortion in the Philippines: A true story

"I can not forget. I'm trying but I know I can't. I look back, from time to time, sometimes kahit hindi intentional. It makes me sad but it also makes me more determined to make this 'second chance' a better shot at life."

The baby was conceived out of wedlock. The guy who got her pregnant abandoned her: no phone calls, no messages, just a recent photo of him and his wife uploaded on Facebook. The message was clear: “Stay away from me and my family.” "I hate the word regret. For the longest time, I stand by my decisions however stupid they are. Live and let live. Live and learn. But at that time, I felt remorse and regret. I know I could have made a better decision not to have sex with that guy." Of course she thought of a way out, but abortion wasn’t the first choice. Maybe adoption? She said she could not bear to give her child away to a stranger. Raise the baby with her beki friends? Possible. Tell her parents? Not a chance. Her parents would literally have a heart attack on the spot. Her father would lose his position in the church, their family ostracized and detested by their religious community. She said she could handle the pregnancy, even maybe keep the baby for good if her life was the only thing at stake here. But she thought of her parents — surely she would break not only their hearts but their trust as well. She knew that she could never, ever, go back. The thought of losing her family only strengthened her decision. She used to be a strong-willed girl: hard-headed and unafraid to commit mistakes. But on that night, she was weak and vulnerable. And that’s when it happened. -- YA, GMA News

Hon Sophia Balod is a segment producer for GMA News. She is also a finalist in the 2010 GMA President's Medal Award. A longer version of this article was first published in subselfie.com , a collective blog and a passion project of nine news professionals from GMA Network.

By providing an email address. I agree to the Terms of Use and acknowledge that I have read the Privacy Policy .

Why decriminalizing abortion is not possible in the Philippines

Before the last national elections, as I was going through the platforms of senatorial and congressional candidates, I noticed that some of them said they will work for the “decriminalization of abortion.”

With the June 24, 2022 landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court on the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, which ruled that there is no such thing as a “constitutional right to abortion,” those intended moves on the part of these now elected lawmakers would seem to be passé. Now, the trend in the United States is to protect the life of the unborn by enacting state laws that will prohibit abortion.

The majority opinion of the US Supreme Court was written by Justice Samuel Alito. It is a masterpiece of philosophical and legal reasoning, and research on the history of the criminal nature of abortion in English and American jurisprudence. We can say that it is common sense which tells us that abortion is the killing of an innocent person who does not even have the capacity to defend himself. In our own language, we call a pregnant woman “nagdadalang-tao” (someone who is carrying within herself another human being). We naturally think she has inside her another person.

Decriminalizing abortion means removing the status of abortion as a crime. Laws have a role to play in the moral education of a society. When the laws remove the criminal status of a crime like abortion, it is teaching society that you may commit abortion and the state will not punish you. Go ahead. You can do it. The act is not banned.

In the context of the Philippines, the decriminalization of abortion is not possible because of our basic law, the Constitution . In Article II Section 12 it says, “[The state] shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.” How else can the state protect the life of the unborn except by banning abortion and imposing penalties on those who take away the life of the unborn? In the same way that Justice Alito repeated several times in his piece that there is no such thing as a right to abortion, it might be worth repeating that it is not possible to decriminalize abortion in the Philippines given our Constitution and given our culture and traditions.

Because abortion is prohibited in the Philippines, it is very difficult to get accurate data on the number of abortions performed in the country. There are only estimates that range from 600,000 to even over a million for the last year. This is not a small number to say the least. This is a real problem for our society. But decriminalizing abortion is not the solution. As the experience of the US shows, decriminalizing it made the problem worse.

Like poverty, abortion is a complex problem that will require a complex and manifold solution. It is above all a moral problem. The Catholic Church has always advocated the moral education of people so that their mores might conform to right reasoning about their sexuality and morality. At the root of the problem about unwanted pregnancies and abortions is difficulty about virtues related to human sexuality. Chastity is the virtue that is at stake here. It is grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted as meaning “don’t do this or that” or “being a killjoy.” Understood well, it means love, affirmation, and happiness in life.

The Church has also fought for the defense of the dignity of each human person. In the case of abortion, she has fought for respecting the dignity of both the mother and the unborn child. What happens in an abortion is that both the mother and the baby are reduced to and manipulated as commodities. Their personhoods are destroyed and eliminated. The existence of the post abortion stress syndrome attests to the destruction of the person of the women who committed abortion. They find it very difficult to live with the thought, “I killed my own baby!”

It might be better for our lawmakers to think about how to help those mothers who are contemplating having an abortion solve their problems and difficulties. They need counseling, financial help, moral support, livelihood, education. They don’t need the decriminalization of abortion.

FR. CECILIO L. MAGSINO [email protected]

MORE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Clueless about land transport?

The challenge after the 2022 election

Subscribe to our daily newsletter

Education’s transformative results in 4Ps

Fearless views on the news

Disclaimer: Comments do not represent the views of INQUIRER.net. We reserve the right to exclude comments which are inconsistent with our editorial standards. FULL DISCLAIMER

We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. By continuing, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. To find out more, please click this link.

Skip to main content
Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Why Biden gave a speech about abortion rights

Mara Liasson

Alejandra Marquez Janse

Sarah Handel

Roberta Rampton

Ailsa Chang

President Biden gave a speech about abortion rights Tuesday, billed as a political event ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

President Biden made a full-throated plea to young voters today, urging them to cast ballots in the upcoming midterm elections and promising that if Democrats win Congress, they will enshrine into law the right to an abortion. It's something that Democrats have elevated as a central issue since the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Let me tell you something. The court and the extreme Republicans who have spent decades trying to overturn Roe are about to find out.

BIDEN: As they say in one of the towns I grew up, they ain't seen nothing yet.

CHANG: Biden was speaking at Howard University in Washington, D.C., a historically Black institution. And NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson was listening in. She joins us now. Hey, Mara.

MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.

CHANG: OK. So abortion is something that Democrats have already been talking a lot about on the campaign trail. What struck you the most about Biden's remarks on abortion today?

LIASSON: What struck me is how directly he addressed the current worry for Democrats, which is their concern that the fervor over the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturning Roe is now subsiding. Twice in his speech, once near the beginning and again at the end, he invoked what he called, quote, "the anger, the worry, the disbelief" that Democrats felt when the Supreme Court ended the longstanding constitutional protection for abortion. Here's what he said.

BIDEN: I'm asking the American people to remember how you felt, how you felt the day the extreme Dobbs decision came down and Roe was overturned after 50 years.

LIASSON: Yeah, remember how you felt. This was the moment that spurred a lot of new Democratic voters to register. And for a while, Democrats seemed energized because of the abortion issue. But now, there's a sense among Democrats that they might have peaked too soon. Biden wants to take people back to that moment when Democrats seemed to be successfully turning this election from a referendum on Biden and his performance in office into a choice between extremist Republicans and more moderate Democrats. Lately, it seems like some of that momentum has ebbed. And the issues that are now coming back to the fore are inflation and crime and immigration, where Republicans have big advantages. And also, don't forget, it was no accident that he went to Howard because in his audience were two important constituencies for Democrats, young voters and African American voters.

CHANG: OK. Well, with respect to the issue of abortion, I understand that President Biden made a couple of promises in his speech. Let's take a listen to the first promise.

BIDEN: If Republicans get their way with a national ban, it won't matter where you live in America. So let me be very clear. If such a bill were to pass in the next several years, I'll veto it.

CHANG: I mean, Mara, what did you make of that argument - I'll just veto it?

LIASSON: That struck me as very odd. If you are trying to revive the importance of abortion as a motivating issue for Democratic voters, that sounds counterproductive...

CHANG: Right.

LIASSON: ...Saying that, don't worry, if Republicans pass a nationwide ban, I'll veto it. You have nothing to worry about. If the whole point is to scare the daylights out of Democratic voters and get them to the polls, that doesn't sound like a really good way to do it.

CHANG: Exactly. OK. So what did you make of the other promise that President Biden made today - if Democrats take the House and Senate, they will pass a law to codify Roe v. Wade in January?

LIASSON: That would be very popular. You know, polls show about two-thirds of voters want abortion to be legal up to a point, with exceptions and restrictions. Roe is a kind of middle ground. And the problem is for Democrats, when they put these bills up, the reason why it failed recently in the Senate is they often go further than merely codifying the protections in Roe. But yes, a bill to just codify Roe, that would be very popular.

CHANG: And we should know that Biden - I mean, he spoke very directly to young voters in this speech. Can you explain why young voters are such an important part of the Democratic strategy for the midterms?

LIASSON: Young voters just don't turn out as much for midterm elections, and Democrats want them to go to the polls. Biden talked about how critical young voters were to his own victory in 2020. He listed all the things he's done that are priorities for young voters, like climate initiatives and the Inflation Reduction Act, gun safety laws, forgiving up to $20,000 of student debt. So far, 12 million people have applied for that, including 4 million yesterday. He also reminded them that he kept a promise to pardon people convicted of marijuana possession under federal law. The big question is, will that actually motivate young voters to go to the polls or is voter behavior just driven so much by negative partisanship, the only reason they go to the polls is to vote against the other side?

CHANG: That is NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you, Mara.

LIASSON: You're welcome.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Subscribe Now

CHR against abortion except in ‘extreme circumstances’

Already have Rappler+? Sign in to listen to groundbreaking journalism.

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

CHR against abortion except in ‘extreme circumstances’

CHR. The facade of the Commission on Human Rights office.

MANILA, Philippines – The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) is against abortion except in “extreme circumstances,” the commission confirmed in a letter to Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri on Wednesday, November 15.

The letter came a day after the Senate deferred the discussion on the CHR’s 2024 budget. Senator Alan Peter Cayetano had brought up the issue of abortion during the plenary discussion of the CHR’s budget, and pressed the agency on an earlier statement made by Executive Director Jacqueline Ann de Guia supporting the decriminalization of abortion.

CHR budget sponsor Senator Jinggoy Estrada said the statement was made by the CHR’s fifth commission under the late former chairperson Chito Gascon .

Cayetano said such a statement was “dangerous” and against the Constitution, while Estrada said the CHR could receive “zero budget” if it did not clarify its stand on abortion.

“The Commission on Human Rights…considers paramount the right to life. The commission similarly adheres to the 1987 Philippine Constitution specifically, to ‘equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception,’ and is therefore, AGAINST abortion, save for extreme circumstances,” the CHR said in its letter, which was signed by Chairperson Richard Palpal-latoc, and commissioners Beda Epres, Fayda Dumarpa, and Monina Zenarosa.

“Extreme circumstances” was annotated with a footnote that said “termination for medical reasons.”

International bodies for decriminalization

In a September 2022 statement , De Guia pushed for the decriminalization of abortion, among other policies, as a piece of legislation that would advance gender empowerment and women’s rights.

In the budget hearing on Tuesday, November 14, Cayetano had said that pushing for the decriminalization of abortion for when the mother’s life is in danger is a “weak excuse.”

“ ‘Pag dine-criminalize mo, [para mong sinabi na] puwede na ‘yun. How can you protect the unborn if you’re not going to put any penalty [on] people who abort the fetus o baby? Jaywalking nga lang mayroon tayong penalty eh ,” said Cayetano.

(If you decriminalize it, [it’s like you’re saying] that it’s fine. How can you protect the unborn if you’re not going to put any penalty [on] people who abort the fetus or baby? Even jaywalking is something we have penalties for.)

But several international bodies have recognized abortion as a reproductive health rights issue, and have recommended its decriminalization.

As early as 2006 , the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee of the United Nations’ human rights office recommended that the Philippines remove punitive provisions on abortion. Almost two decades later, in a 2023 report , the committee “noted with concern” how there was a lack of progress in the Philippines to decriminalize abortion and address the high number of unsafe abortions.

The committee recommended that the Philippines “ensure that women and girls, including rural women and girls, unmarried women and women and girls with disabilities, have adequate access to sexual and reproductive health services and information, including family planning, modern forms of contraception, and safe abortion and post-abortion services.”

It also recommended the amendment of articles 256 to 259 of the Revised Penal Code to legalize abortion in cases of risk to the life or health of pregnant women, as well as rape and incest survivors, and decriminalize abortion in other cases.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization also recommends the full decriminalization of abortion, and includes comprehensive abortion care in its list of essential health services.

“These recommendations are not mere suggestions but reflect the human rights obligations of the government to fully realize reproductive rights in the country where over half of the female population are women of reproductive age,” said Jihan Jacob, associate director for legal strategies in Asia at the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a release from the Philippine Safe Abortion Advocacy Network (Pinsan).

Prevalence of unsafe abortions

The Philippines has highly restrictive laws against abortion, but this does not stop Filipino women from trying to induce them. According to Pinsan coordinator and lawyer Clara Rita Padilla, around 1.26 million Filipino women induce abortion yearly, and around three women die each day due to lack of access to safe abortion.

“Penal law is not the answer. The restrictive archaic penal law on abortion has never reduced the number of Filipino women who induce abortion but only places their lives at risk due to lack of access to abortion. Maintaining this restrictive law perpetuates discrimination against women, undermines a woman’s personal decision, and imposes conservative religious beliefs on others,” said Padilla.

The lawyer added that restrictive abortion laws not only affect women inducing abortion, but women who suffer from naturally occurring pregnancy complications, such as spontaneous abortions or miscarriages, intrauterine fetal demise, and incomplete abortion, where women are denied access to legal therapeutic abortions and post-abortion care.

“Furthermore, the Commission on Human Rights is an independent constitutional body as enshrined in the Philippine Constitution. The Philippine government must comply with the UN Paris Principles to maintain the independence of CHR,” Padilla said.

[OPINION] Why we need to decriminalize abortion

The decriminalization of abortion, even in emergency cases, remains a contentious topic among Catholic-majority Philippines. In the 2022 campaign period, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. disclosed his pro-abortion stance for severe cases, but the women’s rights sector continues to urge the President to manifest his progressiveness in his policies. – Rappler.com

Add a comment

Please abide by Rappler's commenting guidelines .

There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.

How does this make you feel?

Michelle Abad

Recommended stories, {{ item.sitename }}, {{ item.title }}, commission on human rights, cebu sk councilor, activists urge chr to probe series of red-tagging incidents.

Cebu SK councilor, activists urge CHR to probe series of red-tagging incidents

CHR warns Bacolod vs QR code proposal for entertainers

Activists call on CHR to assert authority as it probes Negros killings

CHR launches probe into harassment vs journalists covering Angeles demolition

AFP, PNP deny CHR-Negros access to public documents on encounter-related cases

Reproductive Health

Arizona republicans uphold 1864 abortion ban, democrats still seek repeal.

Trump says abortion laws should be decided by US states

Recent years’ economic woes made Filipinos want kids less – study

Polish president halts law easing access to ‘morning after’ pill

[Dash of SAS] Making abortion a constitutional right

Senate of the Philippines

Gov’t: fugitive quiboloy still in the philippines | the wrap.

Hontiveros, Gatchalian urge DILG to suspend Bamban mayor

Malacañang sounds alarm over Marcos deepfake audio | The wRap

Former senator Rene Saguisag dies at 84

Hontiveros: What’s taking PNP so long to revoke Quiboloy’s gun licenses?

Checking your Rappler+ subscription...

Upgrade to Rappler+ for exclusive content and unlimited access.

Why is it important to subscribe? Learn more

You are subscribed to Rappler+

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission

How Close to Death Must a Person Be to Get an Abortion?

A woman in Oklahoma was told to wait in a hospital parking lot until she was sick enough to qualify for an abortion. A Florida patient ended up on a ventilator after being turned away from the ER when her water broke early in her second trimester. A woman experiencing a miscarriage was filling diapers with blood and still was sent away from an Ohio hospital. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade , hospital staff who are either confused by their state’s abortion bans or fearful of running into legal trouble have turned away pregnant people experiencing medical emergencies, and a legal challenge before the Supreme Court may make the landscape even worse.

The justices heard oral arguments Wednesday in their second major abortion case since Dobbs. It revolves around a Reagan-era law that requires hospitals receiving federal funding to stabilize patients who need emergency treatment. The Biden administration has said the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA , applies to pregnant people who need emergency abortions; in practice, however, hospitals in states with abortion bans have not followed the standard of care. Experts say the ruling could affect pregnant people nationwide, regardless of whether abortion is legal in their state, and potentially set the stage for the Court to recognize fetal personhood in the future. Here’s everything you need to know about the case.

What is EMTALA, exactly?

EMTALA was enacted in 1986 to ensure that hospitals receiving federal funding (think Medicaid and Medicare) provide stabilizing care to any patient who arrives at an ER department with an emergency condition — regardless of their insurance coverage or whether they can pay. Patients can file a complaint against a hospital if it violates the law, which leads to an investigation. “Quite a lot of hospitals are seriously afraid of EMTALA complaints because if you lose federal funding for being out of compliance, that’s enormous,” says Melissa Murray, a reproductive-rights expert and law professor at New York University. “Because of the broad sweep of the law, it is actually a very strong deterrent.”

EMTALA doesn’t have an explicit carve out for abortions. But the Biden administration issued guidance after Dobbs affirming that the law applies to patients in need of emergency abortion care even if state legislation bans the procedure. “We’re talking about situations where the person’s health, life, or fertility is on the line,” says Rabia Muqaddam, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of women who have been denied care. “These are not cases where a pregnancy will result in a child that a person could take home. Denying them care is just punishing people at their most vulnerable moment.”

Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, which went into effect in August 2022, allows for a pregnancy to be terminated only when “ necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman ” and makes performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The Biden administration later sued the state, arguing that, regardless of how narrow Idaho’s exception is, EMTALA requires hospitals to provide emergency abortion care when a patient’s health is “ in serious jeopardy .” A district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the state from enforcing the ban in medical emergencies while the challenge played out. In a separate case in Texas, lower courts decided that EMTALA does exclude abortions. Amid these conflicting rulings, the Supreme Court announced it was taking up the Idaho challenge. The Court also allowed the state to enforce its ban while the case is being heard, effectively nullifying EMTALA for patients who need emergency abortion care.

How did the overturning of Roe v. Wade affect emergency abortion care?

Muqaddam says the overturning of Roe was the catalyst for these cases. “Everybody understood that if a patient showed up in an emergency room with preterm premature rupture of membrane, for example, that EMTALA required the hospital to provide an abortion to stabilize them. This was uncontroversial for decades,” she says. “Why is that controversial now? Dobbs .”

In the nearly two years since, pregnant people have been denied an abortion in cases where their lives are at risk , leading them to bleed profusely , experience sepsis, and become infertile . Some of these patients have sued their state, saying medical exceptions to abortion bans do not work in practice. Patients in Idaho have faced similar struggles, according to a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of four people who were forced to travel elsewhere for abortion care, two local OB/GYNs, and the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians, which represents more than 600 health-care providers in the state.

“Idaho is saying, ‘Well, we don’t need EMTALA. We have these exceptions,’” Muqaddam says. “Except the exceptions are so confusing that half the doctors who are maternal-fetal medicine specialists have abandoned the state .”

The ban has put doctors in an impossible position, according to Caitlin Gustafson, a family physician in Idaho. “Can I continue to replace her blood loss fast enough? How many organ systems must be failing? Can a patient be hours away from death before I intervene, or does it have to be minutes?” she writes in a piece for Time . “These are the callous questions doctors are now forced to think through, all the while our patient is counting on us to do the right thing and put their needs first.”

Even with EMTALA in place, abortion bans have led to widespread confusion and fear among health-care providers in hospitals across the nation. A recent Associated Press report looking at EMTALA complaints in 19 states found an increase in the number of cases involving pregnant patients who were turned away from emergency rooms in the months after Dobbs . One case involved a woman in Texas who miscarried in the restroom of an emergency-room lobby after staff refused to check her in. Another complaint was filed after a North Carolina woman went to the ER complaining of stomach pain and staff said they couldn’t perform an ultrasound; she gave birth in a car while en route to another hospital, and her baby died. Muqaddam says these complaints offer a preview of “the dramatic harm that will result from a negative ruling” in the case .

How does fetal personhood come into play?

Idaho is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom — the same conservative Christian legal organization that helped overturn Roe and brought a legal challenge against the FDA’s approval of mifepristone , one of the two drugs used in medication abortions. In its brief , the ADF pushed the idea that, from the moment of conception, fetuses have the same rights as people. The group argues that EMTALA actually applies to the pregnant person and “the unborn child,” making hospitals responsible for stabilizing both. Because abortion always terminates the “life” of a fetus, the ADF says it is never necessary treatment for pregnant patients in emergency situations.

The arguments could open the door for the Court to further embrace fetal rights, Murray says. She points out that the majority opinion in Dobbs , which was written by Justice Samuel Alito, gave many nods to the concept of fetal personhood. “He referred to the prospect of unborn children. He noted that there are those in the public who would regard the fetus as an unborn person,” she says. “He was acknowledging the fact that fetal personhood is a massive element of the anti-abortion movement, and I think he emboldened other federal judges to go even further.” U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s opinion in the mifepristone case, for example, was riddled with anti-abortion language and misinformation.

While Murray doesn’t see this as the case that will establish fetal personhood in the U.S., she believes the justices could use it to create precedent. “This case could be a vehicle for laying a very firm foundation for recognizing fetal personhood in a few years,” she adds.

What did the justices say?

The Court appeared divided as it questioned Idaho Deputy Solicitor Josh Turner and U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. The three liberals on the bench — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — pressed Turner from the get-go, asking whether he’d concede that abortion is the standard of care for certain medical emergencies and saying EMTALA clearly establishes that hospitals are required to stabilize patients to prevent their condition from worsening, not just to save their lives.

Both Sotomayor and Kagan cited cases of patients who’ve been denied emergency abortions. Sotomayor spoke about a woman in Florida whose water broke at 16 weeks of pregnancy; the condition is known as preterm premature rupture of membrane (PPROM) and can lead to infection and hemorrhage. “This is a story of a real woman. She was discharged in Florida because the fetus still had fetal tones and the hospital said she’s not likely to die, but there are going to be serious medical complications,” she said. The woman ended up being sent home and bleeding profusely the next day, becoming increasingly sick before physicians gave her an abortion, Sotomayor said.

While conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito seemed to buy into Idaho’s arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett seemed more skeptical. After Turner said that the state’s near-total abortion ban does not contradict EMTALA’s requirements, Barrett asked him bluntly: “Why are you here?”

When it was Prelogar’s turn, she emphasized the difference between EMTALA’s protections and Idaho’s current abortion ban. “In Idaho, doctors have to shut their eyes to everything except death,” she said. “Whereas under EMTALA, you’re supposed to be thinking about things like, Is she about to lose her fertility? Is her uterus going to become incredibly scarred because of the bleeding? Is she about to undergo the possibility of kidney failure? ” But some of the conservative justices pushed back against her arguments, suggesting that they believe that the Biden administration can’t force hospitals that receive federal funding to circumvent state law.

Alito also leaned into Turner’s fetal personhood arguments, raising the fact that the text of EMTALA includes the phrase “unborn child.” He suggested that according to the law, “the hospital must try to eliminate any immediate threat to the child, but performing an abortion is antithetical to that duty.” Prelogar responded by clarifying that when EMTALA was amended in 1989 to include the words “unborn child,” Congress was addressing cases in which the fetus was at risk even though the pregnant person was not in danger.

“That includes common things like a prolapse of the umbilical cord into the cervix, where the fetus is in grave distress, but the woman is not at all affected. Hospitals otherwise wouldn’t have an obligation to treat her and Congress wanted to fix that,” she said. “But to suggest that in doing so, Congress suggested that the woman herself isn’t an individual and that she doesn’t deserve stabilization — I think that is an erroneous reading.”

How could the decision impact abortion care?

Muqaddam says the Court’s decision to take up the case while allowing the Idaho ban to stand was “alarming,” with one possible adverse outcome being that the justices rule EMTALA doesn’t preempt state law. The Court could also rule that EMTALA never applied to abortion care. If that is the case, hospitals across the country would be able to turn away pregnant people who need emergency abortion care, even if their state laws allow the procedure.

“The Court could make it so that every single person in this country, no matter what is happening to them, is entitled to stabilizing treatment in a hospital for an emergency medical condition except for people whose pregnancies are threatening their life,” Muqaddam says. “That’s just untenable.”

The case could have implications beyond abortion care. “There are all manner of health-related services that have been demonized by people,” Muqaddam says, pointing to barriers the LGBTQ+ community, low-income patients, and people struggling with addiction already face when seeking any kind of treatment. “If we say that there are ideological reasons to allow people to deny others stabilizing care, it is a very slippery slope.”

If the justices rule that EMTALA doesn’t override Idaho’s abortion ban, it would open the door for legal challenges around whether other federal measures preempt certain state laws, says Murray. She adds that the possibility of setting a new precedent when it comes to the question of federal supremacy may dissuade the Court’s institutionalist justices who are worried about the crisis of credibility they face themselves: Recent polls found that around 60 percent of Americans disapproved of the Court’s job.

“This is a Court that has made clear its antipathy for reproductive rights and its antipathy for women in a million different ways,” Murray says. “I don’t know that the prospect of women bleeding out in parking lots is going to sway them particularly, but I’m hoping that the institutional concerns and concerns about the Court’s legitimacy in the eyes of the public will be a more persuasive argument.”

The Court is expected to issue its decision in June.

The Cut offers an online tool that allows you to search by Zip Code for professional providers, including clinics, hospitals, and independent OB/GYNs, as well as abortion funds, transportation options, and information for remote resources like receiving the abortion pill by mail. For legal guidance, contact Repro Legal Helpline at 844-868-2812 or the Abortion Defense Network .

life after roe
reproductive rights
supreme court

The Cut Shop

Editor’s Picks

persuasive speech about abortion in the philippines

What is your email?

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

Lower case letters (a-z)
Upper case letters (A-Z)
Numbers (0-9)
Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

The Point Conversations and insights about the moment.

Share full article

Jonathan Alter

Contributing Opinion Writer

The Schemes to Squelch Trump’s Scandals Were Hardly Commonplace

As he finished his second cross-examination of David Pecker at Donald Trump’s felony trial on Friday, Emil Bove — a smart, aggressive defense attorney — tried to build on earlier testimony in which Pecker praised Trump as his mentor and said he still valued their friendship.

This was not a smart move, because it reminded the jury that unlike Michael Cohen, Pecker, a former publisher of The National Enquirer, bore Trump no ill will, which made his devastating testimony even more credible.

Bove ended by asking whether Pecker understood that some of his testimony “was stressful to his family,” referring to Trump.

The prosecution objected, the objection was sustained, and the cross-examination of Pecker was suddenly over. It began strong, went south fast on Thursday and limped to its conclusion shortly after lunch on Friday. Bove had tried to prove that Pecker was a liar and failed.

On Thursday, Bove developed a strong, hard-nosed rhythm and got Pecker to admit that in recent decades tabloids have negotiated “hundreds of thousands” of nondisclosure agreements and so-called source agreements like the ones The Enquirer used with Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model with whom the prosecution says Trump had an affair.

The message to the jury was that the August 2015 arrangement at Trump Tower to kill scandalous stories before they could reach the public, which is central to the prosecution’s case, was just standard operating procedure in the celebrity “journalism” business.

But Bove made two mistakes on Thursday. He badgered Pecker for seeming to be coached, then handed him a document related to Hope Hicks, a former Trump aide, to refresh his memory about testimony that he claimed contradicted what he told the grand jury.

But the document turned out to be unrelated to the question at hand. When alerted by the prosecution, Justice Juan Merchan admonished Bove, “If there wasn’t anything in that document, it’s misleading.”

On Friday morning, Merchan made Bove apologize directly to the jury for suggesting that cooperating witnesses are not allowed to coordinate with prosecutors beforehand and for the document gaffe. It was a humiliating moment for one of Trump’s best lawyers.

Bove recovered his footing a bit and trapped a placid Pecker into admitting again how common The Enquirer’s unsavory methods were in his bottom-dwelling line of work.

But on redirect, Joshua Steinglass steered the prosecution’s case back on track, asking whether the various deals on Trump stories were really all that common.

If there were “hundreds of thousands” of nondisclosure and source agreements, Steinglass asked, “on how many of those N.D.A.s did the C.E.O. coordinate with a candidate for president?”

“That was the only one,” Pecker said, and his original testimony was now largely intact.

Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

Four More Years, Pause

In 1992, as President George H.W. Bush was campaigning for re-election during a recession, he made the mistake of apparently reading a little too fully from a cue card. “ Message: I care ,” he said to an audience in Exeter, N.H. The gaffe became a subject of endless mockery and, as the political writer Mark Leibovich later observed , served as a kind of epitaph for a doomed campaign.

On Wednesday, it was déjà vu all over again. Speaking to a union conference at the Washington Hilton, President Biden rattled off a list of his ambitions for a second term. “Folks, imagine what we could do next,” he said, trying to rouse his audience. “Four more years — pause.”

The president seemed to quickly realize his mistake, at least to judge by the self-knowing grin that came over his face a few seconds later. An initial White House transcript of his remarks omitted the “pause,” claiming the word was inaudible. But as video of the remarks went viral, someone seems to have thought better of that elision and restored the word to the current transcript .

If the Biden team is wise, they’ll get the president to repeat the line a few times in the form of a wisecrack, much as they cleverly turned the anti-Biden “ Let’s go, Brandon ,” taunt into a cool “ Dark Brandon ” meme. Biden’s announcement Friday that he would be “happy to” debate Donald Trump in the fall might also help allay concerns about his mental acuity — assuming, of course, that he performs reasonably well in a debate.

But the larger problem for the Biden campaign is that perceptions about the president’s physical and mental fitness are hardly baseless. Axios reports that White House aides now surround the president as he walks across the South Lawn to his presidential helicopter — all for the purpose of disguising his shuffling walk. The New York Times has issued a statement calling it “troubling” that the president “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.” One can reasonably speculate as to why the president and his staff would want to avoid such questions.

There was a time in American life when the White House and the press colluded to hide the infirmities or indiscretions of the sitting president: Woodrow Wilson’s stroke, Franklin Roosevelt’s wheelchair, John F. Kennedy’s chronic back pain (and philandering). It’s past time for this White House to accept that that time is over.

An earlier version of this article misstated the day of President Biden’s speech. It was last Wednesday, not Thursday. It also misstated which president said, “Message: I care.” It was George H.W. Bush, not George W. Bush.

How we handle corrections

Spencer Cohen

Opinion Editorial Assistant

An Essential Set of Cold War Era Treaties Is Falling Apart

On Wednesday afternoon, the United Nations Security Council voted on a U.S.-Japan resolution prohibiting weapons of mass destruction, namely nuclear weapons, in space. But Russia vetoed the measure . It is perhaps the latest sign that the essential pieces of nuclear arms control are falling one by one. Soon, the patchwork of Cold War era treaties and agreements that have kept nuclear war at bay may be all but lost .

“Today’s veto begs the question: Why? Why, if you are following the rules, would you not support a resolution that reaffirms them?” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., after the vote. “What could you possibly be hiding?”

Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., said the council is “involved in a dirty spectacle prepared by the U.S. and Japan.” He called it “a cynical ploy,” arguing that the resolution sponsors had other objectives in focusing only on W.M.D.s.

The fear of space-based nuclear weapons shot into the spotlight this year, when Representative Michael Turner of Ohio, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, cryptically warned of a national security threat . U.S. intelligence officials briefed allies on suspected plans by Russia to possibly launch a nuclear weapon — or dummy — into space. Vladimir Putin denied the reports. But Russia’s veto calls his denial into question.

All of this may be bluster. The effects of the sort of weapon feared by American intelligence officials — a nuclear-capable antisatellite device — would most likely harm Russian assets too . While such a weapon could “add a dangerous capability,” wrote Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, “it would not alter the existing military balance of terror.”

Even so, nuclear threats have fortified Putin since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this year, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that after extensive losses in the war, Russia “will be more reliant on nuclear and counterspace capabilities for strategic deterrence as it works to rebuild its ground force.”

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, he declared that we have failed to rid earth of the scourge of war. “But if we cannot yet achieve this goal here on earth,” he said “we can at least keep the virus from spreading.”

These safeguards were always imperfect, but the veto on Wednesday stands as the latest sign that they are far too fragile for comfort.

Jyoti Thottam

Editorials Editor

Why UNRWA Is Vital to Gaza’s Future

The United Nations Refugee and Welfare Agency, which has been running schools and basic health care services in Gaza for decades, has so far survived calls for its abolition, but its long-term future remains far from certain without the full support of the United States.

The editorial board met this week with Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, and he was blunt about the agency’s challenges, which include the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and a funding shortfall that emerged after Israel accused a dozen of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees of being involved in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.

An independent review commissioned by the United Nations, released on Monday, made several recommendations about reforms to the agency. It also found that Israel has not provided evidence to support its accusations of wide links between UNRWA and terrorist groups. (The report did not address the dozen accused UNRWA employees; 10 were fired after the accusations were made, and two had died.)

The United States and several other countries suspended their funding from UNRWA, and, while other countries, including Germany, the second-largest donor, have since restored their contributions , the U.S. will not resume its funding until March 2025 at the earliest. The State Department has said it is still reviewing the report.

Lazzarini said private donors have made up much of that shortfall, allowing UNRWA to continue its work, but the funding gap remains a significant worry relative to the need.

He has managed to secure the agency’s budget through June, he said, but the second half of the year is uncertain. “I know that we won’t be able to count on the U.S. contribution,” he said. “So obviously it brings the agency closer to the edge of financial collapse.”

There are other U.N. agencies and international aid organizations, including the World Food Program and UNHCR, that could address humanitarian needs in Gaza. But UNRWA serves another function: It provides “state-like” services, paying the salaries for teachers, health workers and other civil servants. To hand over those public services, “we would need a functioning administration,” Lazzarini said, and it is unclear who could assume that responsibility.

UNRWA, he said, is open to working with a revitalized Palestinian Authority, a possibility the United States has supported. But until the Palestinian Authority or another governing body takes shape, UNRWA plays a necessary role. Without it, the situation in Gaza after the conflict ends could be dangerously unstable. Six months into this conflict, “the day after” may seem like a distant prospect, but in the meantime, it is in no one’s interest to hobble one of the few remaining stabilizing forces in Gaza.

David Pecker, Trump’s Trash Collector, Got Cold Feet

“How’s our girl doing?” Donald Trump asked David Pecker at Trump Tower in December 2016, the month after he was elected president.

According to Pecker’s testimony at Trump’s felony trial on Thursday, the “girl” was 45-year-old Karen McDougal, the former Playboy Playmate who had been paid $150,000 not to talk about her 10-month affair a decade earlier with the man who was now the president-elect.

At the end of his direct testimony on Thursday, Pecker described Trump as his “mentor” and someone who, “even though we haven’t spoken, I still consider him a friend.”

We’ll never know if Trump’s early-morning threat to Pecker to “be nice” — a clear violation of the judge’s gag order preventing the defendant from discussing witnesses — had anything to do with Pecker’s reference to the bright side of their relationship.

Pecker testified that during the December 2016 visit, Trump told him, “I want to thank you for handling the McDougal situation.” Pecker continued: “He was thanking me for buying them and not publishing any of the stories and helping the way I did.” As a reward, Trump invited Pecker and his wife to a celebratory private dinner at the White House. He attended; his wife begged off.

By this time, Pecker was getting cold feet. He thought the ghostwritten articles McDougal “wrote” for his magazines and her other services for his publications were worth only $25,000, not the $150,000 he said that he, Michael Cohen and Trump had paid to silence her. His company lawyer told him that the shell companies that he and Cohen planned to use for the $125,000 reimbursement from Trump could put him on the wrong side of campaign finance laws.

Sure enough, in 2018 Pecker avoided federal prosecution by admitting, in the words of the agreement with the government, that his company overpaid McDougal to “suppress the model’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”

Trump wanted Pecker to continue collecting and disposing of trash that might hurt him.

Having felt burned by the McDougal hush-money deal, Pecker didn’t want to get involved in paying off Stormy Daniels. But he did hear Trump rant about it. On the phone, Pecker said, “Trump said we have an agreement with Stormy Daniels that she can’t mention my name and each time she does, she owes us one million.”

Pecker’s testimony about the Playboy model has little direct bearing on the charges against Trump, which involve falsification of business records in the Stormy Daniels payoff. But it set the table for the bounty of evidence to come.

Jessica Bennett

Contributing Opinion Editor

Harvey Weinstein and the Limits of ‘He Said, She Said’

I will admit that the Harvey Weinstein ruling Thursday caught me off guard.

Those following this case always knew there was a possibility for his conviction for sexual assault to be overturned , but many — including some of Weinstein’s own accusers — had happily stopped worrying. It seemed the age of accountability had already come, not just for Weinstein, but also for the many abusers who’d come after him: Bill Cosby, R. Kelly. Maybe it would even come for Donald Trump.

And yet the decision by an appeals court to overturn Weinstein’s conviction reveals something about the way “Believe women” has evolved.

Outside the courtroom, believability has come to be synonymous with numbers — a preponderance of voices, joining together to corroborate an accusation, is how the public determines a single woman can’t be lying. And yet inside the courtroom, sometimes the opposite is true: She said, she said, she said, she said can be ruled inadmissible .

The collective nature of the Weinstein case, and those that followed, seemed to solve a problem that activists had labored over for decades: How do you combat the “he said, she said” nature of these cases? How do you get people to believe that, more often than not, a woman who speaks out is telling the truth?

As it turned out, persuasion came in the form of numbers — both in establishing a pattern and in helping women feel safe to come forward. Yet though Weinstein’s accusers could fill an entire courtroom, and the women who proclaimed #MeToo in their wake could populate a small country, a portion of Weinstein’s appeal rested precisely on the argument that allowing testimony from those other women — specifically, four who testified about his behavior but were not part of the charges — violated a legal precedent that limits evidence about a defendant’s other alleged crimes if it can be prejudicial to a defendant’s presumption of innocence.

Which left me wondering: When are we going to evolve past “he said, she said,” too?

Jesse Wegman

Editorial Board Member

For Justice Alito, Presidents Stand Above the Law

Justice Samuel Alito was in his usual seat on the Supreme Court bench on Thursday morning, hearing arguments in Trump v. United States — the final case of the court’s term and one of the most consequential in American history — but it wasn’t hard to imagine him on the other side of the lectern, arguing on behalf of the former president.

From the outset, Alito, along with several other conservatives on the bench, was highly skeptical of the government’s indictment of Trump for his role in fomenting the Jan. 6 insurrection, going so far as to suggest not only that Trump may be immune from prosecution but also that the federal fraud conspiracy law he is charged with violating may not be valid, either.

The justice was especially concerned with the idea that former presidents would be targeted for political prosecution by their rivals. A former federal prosecutor himself, Alito did not seem to think very highly of the effectiveness of the grand jury process. When the government’s lawyer, Michael Dreeben, argued that prosecutors don’t always get grand juries to agree to indictments, Alito responded, “Every once in a while there’s an eclipse too.”

The risk of such prosecutions poses the biggest threat, Alito suggested: “If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?”

As Dreeben correctly responded, that is the literal inversion of the Jan. 6 case, which involves a defeated former president who, after pursuing several legal avenues to challenge the outcome and losing all of them, chose very clearly not to “go off into a peaceful retirement,” but rather tried to overturn the election by illegal and unconstitutional means that resulted in a violent attack on Congress.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was also perplexed by Alito’s upside-down hypothetical, which actively avoided the facts of the case before the court. “A stable democratic society needs the good faith of its public officials, correct?” she asked, adding that the crimes Trump is charged with committing “are the antithesis of democracy” and that his immunity argument cast doubt on the principle “that no man is above the law, either in his official or private acts.”

This is the bottom line, no matter how hard Alito squints and pretends otherwise.

Paul Krugman

A Not-So-Great Economic Report

On Thursday morning the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its advance report on gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2024, and it was a bit of a downer. Economic growth, at 1.6 percent, came in well below expectations, while inflation came in somewhat higher. And I’m a little more pessimistic about the U.S. economy than I was when I woke up.

But only a little.

The disappointing growth number was mainly a result of volatile components — changes in inventories and imports — which are often revised in later reports and in any case don’t tell us much about the underlying trend. Some economists like to look at “core” growth as measured by final domestic demand, which grew at a more-than-solid 3.1 percent .

Inflation was a bit more concerning. The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of underlying inflation, the cost of personal consumption excluding food and energy, rose at a 3.7 percent annual rate, up from just 2 percent in the previous quarter. On the face of it that looks bad.

But I don’t believe that inflation has really accelerated that much. What we’re probably seeing is mostly statistical noise that understated inflation in late 2023 but is overstating it now.

For one thing, the sheer size of the inflation jump is just implausible. Even in a highly overheated economy, which we don’t seem to see in other data, we wouldn’t expect underlying inflation to rise that fast, which suggests that there’s something funny about the numbers.

Furthermore, if inflation were really exploding, you’d expect to see that explosion reflected not just in official numbers but in “soft” data — surveys of business experiences and expectations. But we don’t. Purchasing managers’ indexes , which generally track official inflation, are still suggesting inflation not much higher than it was before the pandemic:

And business inflation expectations have remained low, just slightly above prepandemic levels:

So this was not a good report, but it shouldn’t change your narrative. The best bet is that we’re still on track for a soft landing.

Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Phoenix

If Arizona Repeals Its Abortion Ban, the Far Right Won’t Blame Trump

On Wednesday, anti-abortion activists packed the gallery of the Arizona House to protest plans to repeal the state’s unpopular 1864 abortion ban. Before the day’s legislative business began, a man in a white cowboy hat, invoking a tradition from Donald Trump rallies, pointed at the media section and led the crowd in angry chants of “shame!”

This seemed to me ironic, since it was Trump himself, far more than any journalist, who encouraged a small but decisive faction of Republicans to break with anti-abortion leaders and erase Arizona’s sweeping abortion prohibition, which the House did on a 32-to-28 vote. The Senate could vote on the issue next week.

I’d gone to the Capitol in part because I was curious about whether the anti-abortion movement felt betrayed by Republicans. After all, for decades the party has mostly done the movement’s bidding, but on Wednesday, bowing to popular pressure, three Republicans joined Democrats in favor of repeal. Arizona is thus almost certain to become the first state with a Republican legislature to back off its most draconian post-Roe abortion restrictions.

This might never have happened had Trump not come out for scrapping the Victorian-era statute, followed by Kari Lake. (Though she’s since flip-flopped again, lamenting the refusal of Arizona’s attorney general to enforce the 1864 ban.)

After the vote, activists were furious at the Republican lawmakers who broke ranks. A few were unhappy with Lake. No one who I spoke to, however, blamed Trump. Several were unaware that Trump opposed the 1864 law.

“I didn’t hear that, no,” said Karen Mountford, a Republican precinct committeeman — Arizona Republicans don’t use gender-neutral titles — wearing a “Trump Girl” T-shirt.

Anthony Kern, a far-right Republican state senator, who was pontificating outside the Capitol about the need to return to America’s Christian foundations, pledged that the three Republicans who voted to scrap the abortion ban would be unseated. Lake, he said, is “wrong on this issue.” But Trump? “I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt because he has been the most pro-life president ever,” said Kern.

Perhaps this flexibility isn’t surprising: later on Wednesday, Kern was indicted by the state, accused of fraud and forgery for his role in Arizona’s fake Trump electors scheme.

In 2016, Christian conservatives argued they had to vote for Trump in order to ban abortion. Eight years later, Trump has become an end in himself; for him and only him, wobbliness on abortion can be overlooked.

Michelle Cottle

Opinion Writer

Trump Didn’t Really Do That Well in Pennsylvania

In the category of things that make you go hmmm: President Biden and Donald Trump romped to victory in their primaries in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, and yet …

Trump lost nearly 17 percent of the Republican vote to Nikki Haley — who, you may recall, dropped out of the presidential race a month and a half ago. (As a point of contrast, Biden’s defunct primary challenger, Representative Dean Phillips, pulled not quite 7 percent.) Such a lively showing by Haley’s zombie campaign is a big ol’ red flag for Team Trump.

“What the primary results show is Trump’s continued weakness among suburban voters,” said Berwood Yost, the director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College, in an email. Yost cited Haley figures for “Chester (25 percent), Delaware (23 percent) and Montgomery (25 percent) Counties, in particular” but also noted that “there were many suburban areas in Central Pennsylvania where she received a sizable share of the vote. And don’t forget about Erie County (20 percent).”

Don’t forget about Erie, indeed.

Trump’s problems in the state may stretch beyond purplish suburbia. Haley won more than 20 percent of Republicans in Lancaster County, a dark-red enclave, and pulled double digits in other conservative counties such as Westmoreland and Northumberland.

And keep in mind that Pennsylvania holds closed primaries, in which only registered members of a party can vote in that party’s primaries, so it’s not as though independents or mischief-making Democrats were muddying up the Republican pool.

How many of these Haley Republicans will turn out in the general election to vote for Biden? Or for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Or for no one at all? Impossible to say.

But these are the questions that should be keeping the former president’s people up at night.

David Firestone

Deputy Editor, the Editorial Board

Amy Coney Barrett Jumps In on Abortion

Justice Amy Coney Barrett was one of six members of the Supreme Court who voted to end the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, so she has very little credibility among those who support a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. Nonetheless, she may yet play a significant role in determining the new landscape of abortion rights and has recently sounded skeptical of those on the extreme right who want to criminalize every form of abortion.

Granted, comments by justices at oral arguments are never reliable guides to how they will vote. But on Wednesday she appeared to be quite critical of a lawyer for the state of Idaho who was defending the state’s near-complete ban on abortion against the Biden administration’s case that all federally funded hospitals are required to provide emergency medical care, which can sometimes include abortions.

The Idaho lawyer, Joshua Turner, had been under fire from the court’s three liberal justices for not being willing to state the plain implications of the state’s ban — that in some circumstances, the health of women could be endangered if doctors are prohibited from ending dangerous pregnancies. Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited several real-life examples of women who suffered sepsis or later had to have a hysterectomy because doctors wouldn’t perform an abortion. Turner kept dodging about whether that was the effect of the law, saying it was a case-by-case decision. Finally, Barrett jumped in, saying she thought Idaho’s position was that abortions could be justified in those circumstances.

“I’m kind of shocked, actually,” she said, “because I thought your own expert had said below that these kinds of cases were covered, and you’re now saying they’re not?” Her comments, accusing Turner of “hedging,” suggested that she didn’t believe the state’s guidance to doctors was clear. She even got Turner to admit that an anti-abortion prosecutor could go after a doctor who made a difficult decision to end a pregnancy.

The overall impression she gave was that she doubted the state’s law superseded federal law on emergency care. Last month, in an even more important case involving the legality of abortion drugs, she also suggested a crackdown on such pills would be an overreach, as long as doctors who oppose abortion would have the right not to prescribe them.

If she and one other conservative justice — possibly John Roberts or Brett Kavanaugh — side with the three liberals on these cases, that could mitigate some of the worst effects of her earlier misjudgment to overturn Roe v. Wade.

David Brooks

Why I’m Getting More Pessimistic About Biden’s Chances This Fall

Last fall I argued that Joe Biden was the Democratic Party’s strongest 2024 presidential nominee . I believed that for two reasons: He has been an effective president, and he is the Democrat most likely to appeal to working-class voters.

I still believe Biden is the party’s strongest candidate, but I’m getting more pessimistic about his chances of winning.

The first reason is not political rocket science: Voters prefer the Republicans on key issues like inflation and immigration. Most Donald Trump supporters I know aren’t swept up in his cult of personality; they vote for him because they are conservative types who like G.O.P. policies and think Trump is a more effective executive than Biden.

The second reason I’ve become more pessimistic is because of what’s happening to the youth vote. NBC News released an interesting poll last weekend finding that interest in this election is lower than in any other presidential election in nearly 20 years. Only 64 percent of Americans said they have a high degree of interest in the election, compared to, say, 77 percent who had high interest in 2020.

But what really leaps out is the numbers for voters ages 18 to 34. Only 36 percent of those voters said they are highly interested.

I imagine that’s partly because it’s difficult to get enthusiastic about candidates who are a half-century older than you. But part of it is also about Biden’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war. Young people are much more critical of Israel than other groups, and there are no candidates representing that point of view.

I think what we’re seeing at Columbia and on other elite campuses is a precursor to what we’re going to see at the Democratic convention in Chicago. In 1968 the clashes between the New Left activists and Mayor Richard Daley’s cops were an early marker of the differences between the more-educated and less-educated classes. They were part of the trend that sent working-class voters to the G.O.P.

If there are similar clashes in Chicago this August, the chaos will reinforce Trump’s core law-and-order message. It will make Biden look weak and hapless. Phrases like “from the river to the sea” will be 2024’s version of “defund the police” — a slogan that appeals to activists but alienates lots of other voters.

The folks in the administration project confidence that their man will prevail. I wish I could share that confidence.

A contributing editor in Opinion.

Trump Gets the Everyman Experience

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I walked into court in Lower Manhattan early Monday to hear opening statements in the criminal trial of Donald Trump, but somehow it was something a bit more grandiose. This is the most important trial in American political history. Shouldn’t it have looked more impressive than a decrepit D.M.V.?

But as Trump’s lawyers argued in opening statements, Trump is not merely the former president and presumptive Republican nominee. “He is also a man, he is a husband and a father,” one of them said. “He’s a person, just like you and just like me.” It was an attempt to humanize him — and yet all I could think, in that dreary courtroom, with a sour smell and a broken overhead clock, was that this is going to drive Trump mad.

For the next six weeks, four days a week, seven hours a day, including meals and coffee and bathroom breaks, Trump will be treated like an ordinary New Yorker, forced to sit in a drab 17-story municipal building.

Inside the court, the chairs were uncomfortable. It was so cold that reporters were bundled in heavy coats and scarves. (Trump wasn’t wrong when he complained, “It’s freezing.”) The speckled linoleum floors were drab, the fluorescent lighting was harsh, the rumpled shades were drawn. It was hard to see and hear. The monotony made my eyes droop.

Trump has called the courthouse “an armed camp,” but in reality it has remained open to the public, including spectators who want to attend the trial, like the young man in a beer sweatshirt who, on his way to work, decided to join the press line and peppered a young woman with questions. “Maybe they’ll let me in. I have a blog,” he said confidently. Hours later, I passed him in the hallway.

Court let out early Monday, after the judge explained that an alternate juror had a dental emergency. You could just imagine Trump seething at the thought of his time dictated by a root canal. But I was grateful to leave early — and satisfied that he would be there every day.

David Pecker and ‘The Trump Tower Conspiracy’

Donald Trump famously calls journalists “enemies of the people.” It turns out the friendly “journalists” of the scuzzy National Enquirer may have done as much as anyone to get him elected in 2016.

Now the worm has turned, and David Pecker, the longtime publisher of the Enquirer, is delivering devastating testimony against his old pal, detailing crimes against Trump’s 2016 rivals, the standards of journalism and the truth.

Pecker is testifying under subpoena, but his plea agreement doesn’t require him to be an enthusiastic prosecution witness with the memory of an elephant. Trump, glaring at him from across the courtroom, seemed unappreciative of all that Pecker once did for him.

I covered the weird and historic 2016 campaign. While the celebrity candidate led in many early polls, he was far from a shoo-in for the nomination. Ben Carson was the front-runner for a spell in late 2015, Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, and Marco Rubio was briefly seen as the logical young choice for the G.O.P.

Pecker testified that as part of what prosecutors call “the Trump Tower conspiracy,” hatched just before Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, Trump — through Michael Cohen — helped The Enquirer generate phony stories about malpractice by Carson and adultery by Cruz and Rubio (not to mention an article sliming Cruz’s father as connected to John F. Kennedy’s assassination).

No one in the courtroom was laughing at the lurid tabloid headlines when they were introduced into evidence. It seems clear that these bogus stories, too, were part of the corrupt and journalistically disgraceful Trump Tower deal.

Under the terms of the “catch and kill” deal, Pecker was Trump’s “eyes and ears” for stories about dalliances that could harm the candidate. When a Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin, shopped a tip that Trump had fathered a child with a Latina maid in Trump’s apartment, Pecker testified that he reported it to Cohen, who was adamant that the story was untrue. Trump would take a DNA test, Cohen told Pecker: “He is German-Irish, and this woman is Hispanic, and that would be impossible.”

Sure enough, Dino the doorman’s story turned out to be false. To protect Trump before the election, Sajudin nonetheless received an unheard-of $30,000 from The Enquirer for his bogus tip. But the contract introduced into evidence required Sajudin to pay $1 million if he talked about it. After the election, he was released from the nondisclosure agreement — more evidence that suggests that “catch and kill” was a prelude to the criminal cover-up of the Stormy Daniels hush-money payment that is the heart of the case.

On Thursday, we’ll hear more about Trump the double cheater: his efforts to silence his mistress Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. And we’ll see more of the mundane but critical documents that connect the man Pecker described as a “detail-oriented micromanager” to criminal wrongdoing.

Joe Biden, Abortion Warrior?

I have covered politics for longer than I care to recall, so watching President Biden come out as a champion of abortion access feels a little weird.

I mean, I get why the president felt moved to wave the reproductive rights banner in Florida on Tuesday. With the state’s six-week abortion ban kicking in next week, this seems like a prime moment to remind voters everywhere that Donald Trump likes to brag about being the guy who killed Roe v. Wade.

Still, this issue has never really been in Biden’s comfort zone. The guy is a devout, old-school Catholic who has said he believes life begins at conception. “I’m not big on abortion,” he said last year , even as he insisted that “Roe v. Wade got it right.” And up to this point, he had largely left the reproductive rights crusading to Kamala Harris.

But there he was on Tuesday at a community college in Tampa, backed by big blue banners calling for “Reproductive rights” and “Restoring Roe,” fiercely bashing Trump for putting women’s health and lives at risk. “There is one person responsible for this nightmare!” he roared. It was enough to make my heart go pitter-patter.

In his brief remarks, Biden didn’t utter the word “abortion” very often, but he didn’t really need to. Rather, he emphasized the idea that Trump and his party are messing with women’s fundamental rights — and doing so at their peril. And on this point, he appeared to be enjoying himself. The president observed that in overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court “practically dared women to be heard” when Justice Samuel Alito wrote, “Women are not without political or electoral power.” Leaning in close to the mic, he dropped his voice and said, with a chuckle and a gleam in his eye, “No kidding.”

Raising the stakes, Biden warned that conservatives will be coming for people’s contraception and in vitro fertilization treatments next — maybe even same-sex marriage. And then he wrapped things up by urging voters to “teach Donald Trump a valuable lesson: Don’t mess with the women of America! I mean it!”

For a guy with deep moral qualms about abortion, it was an impressive call to arms.

The Legal Limits of Trump’s Contempt Defense

Donald Trump is on trial in New York for falsifying business records, but if you really want to appreciate just how far removed the rule of law is from the essence of Trumpism, you could have listened to the brief contempt hearing held Tuesday morning, out of the jury’s earshot, before the trial resumed.

At the request of prosecutors, Justice Juan Merchan earlier this month imposed a gag order on Trump, who has a bad habit of attacking anyone and everyone involved in his criminal cases, from prosecutors to witnesses to jurors to the judge and even the judge’s family members. To go by Trump’s recent activity on Truth Social, the order hasn’t worked. Prosecutors pointed to 11 different posts that they said violated the order, including references to two prosecution witnesses as “sleaze bags” and an attack on the jury pool that his lawyers claimed was a repost of comments by a Fox News host.

First things first: In criminal trials, process is everything. Trump is innocent until proven guilty, like any criminal defendant, and there is a process for making that determination. It involves the cooperation of many key players, including regular Americans who are there by duty, not choice. By attacking those people, Trump is making a mockery of the justice system and endangering real people’s lives.

Constant threats and insults against his perceived enemies are Trump’s stock in trade, of course; in the political world, he relies on them like other politicians rely on baby-kissing. It’s coarse and juvenile, but it’s not illegal.

In court, it’s a different matter. There are consequences for behavior like this. “I have never seen a criminal defendant go out and attack the process and the actors in the process while the trial was going on, while a jury was in the box,” Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor now with Protect Democracy, told me.

On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers sought to explain away his posts as protected speech, but surely they know better. So does Justice Merchan, who was clearly out of patience and told them their arguments were “losing all credibility with the court.”

Trump may well come out of this contempt hearing with nothing more than a few thousand dollars in fines and an even sterner warning against similar behavior in the future. But the courts — and the American people — are watching and learning. Trump’s refusal to stop, even pursuant to an explicit court order, tells you all you need to know about the incompatibility of the man and the government he seeks to lead.

Will Justice Merchan Find Trump in Contempt of Court?

What are the chances that Justice Juan Merchan will find Donald Trump in contempt of court? “99.999 percent,” the retired judge George Grasso, a spectator at the trial, told me during a break.

It’s not clear when Merchan will rule on contempt or how many counts Trump will be cited for, but Count 10 is as close as you can get to a sure thing.

That’s the one related to Jesse Watters, the Fox News host who on April 17 made the despicable claim that Juror No. 2, a nurse, was lying during jury selection when she claimed she could be fair and unbiased because no one who said, as she did, that “no one is above the law” could possibly be fair. (Juror No. 2 soon stepped down from the jury, telling the judge she couldn’t handle the negative publicity.)

That day, Watters posted on Truth Social, “Catching undercover liberal activists lying to the judge.” When Trump reposted it, he added: “in order to get on the Trump jury.”

This put the lie to the claim of Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche that Trump was merely responding to political attacks or reposting content, not willfully defying the gag order.

“This goes to the defendant’s willfulness,” the prosecutor Chris Conroy argued to the judge. “He added to it and posted it.” The judge appeared to agree.

Blanche made a lame attempt to explain. “This gag order — we’re trying to comply with it,” he said. “President Trump is being very careful to abide by your rules.”

That’s when the judge said, “Mr. Blanche, you’re losing all credibility with this court.”

Farah Stockman

Rural Voters Are More Progressive Than the Democratic Party Thinks

If you caught the scathing takedown of the book “White Rural Rage” in The Atlantic , then you’re aware of how intellectually dishonest it is to single out rural voters for special contempt. It’s also politically foolish, as a new poll by Rural Democracy Initiative , which will be released to the public in May, illustrates.

The group, which supports a network of progressive organizers in rural areas, commissioned the poll to help its members shape their messages in the most effective way. The survey, which was answered by 1,713 likely voters from rural areas and small towns in 10 battleground states, suggests that rural voters tend to be economic populists who would overwhelmingly support parts of the Democratic Party’s agenda — as long as the right messenger knocked on their doors.

Some 74 percent of rural voters who answered the poll agreed that decisions around abortion should be made by women and their doctors, not politicians or the government. That high figure helps explain why efforts to preserve abortion rights in Kansas, Ohio and other places have been so successful.

But it’s not just abortion. The survey found overwhelming support for leaders who fight to raise the minimum wage, to protect the right to form a union and to make quality child care more affordable — policy descriptions that seem ripped from President Biden’s campaign speeches.

The trouble is that a significant number of the respondents didn’t associate these policies with Democrats. In fact, once that partisan affiliation was added, support dropped significantly. Nonetheless, 47 percent of respondents said they would prefer to vote for a Democrat who grew up in a rural area and shared their values over a Republican business executive from the East Coast.

But perhaps the biggest problem the survey uncovered was that large numbers of respondents — especially young voters and people of color — reported that no one from the Democratic Party had reached out to them to offer information or ask for their support.

“It’s really clear that Democrats have a significant work to do to rebuild their brand in rural America, but that investment could pay dividends for Democrats, not just in the future but this year,” Patrick Toomey, a partner at Breakthrough Campaigns, which conducted the survey, told me.

In an election in which a few thousand votes could decide who wins the presidency or controls the Senate, it’s foolish to write off rural America.

Jurors Begin to Understand the ‘Trump Tower Conspiracy’

Donald Trump always wears a red necktie, right? Not anymore. For the last four days in court he’s gone with a blue one. Whether this is a lame bid for the sartorial sentiments of blue-state jurors or just a reflection of his mood, he heard more bad news in court on Monday.

We learned that if Trump testifies in his own defense, he will be chewed up on cross-examination. Justice Juan Merchan ruled that Trump can be questioned about lies he told in four of six prior judicial proceedings, including the E. Jean Carroll case and the ruling that the Trump Foundation was a fraud. Only a foolish megalomaniac would take the stand under such circumstances — so perhaps he will.

Merchan also made it very clear he doesn’t approve of “jury nullification,” instructing jurors, who seemed very attentive, that they must convict him if they are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty.

In the prosecution’s opening statement, Matthew Colangelo outlined what his team calls the August 2015 “Trump Tower conspiracy” hatched by Trump, Michael Cohen and David Pecker, boss of The National Enquirer, who began his testimony later in the day. Colangelo previewed a large amount of evidence that will corroborate Cohen’s testimony about the falsified business records (including handwritten notes) that will most likely be damaging to Trump.

The worst day for Trump could come when the prosecution plays a September 2016 taped call in which Trump can be heard asking Cohen, “So what do we have to pay for it? 150?” (Meaning $150,000.) The answer was $10,000 more. Colangelo concluded: “It was election fraud. Pure and simple.”

By saying of Trump, “he’s a man, he’s a husband, he’s a father, he’s a person like you and me,” Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead attorney, seemed to be setting up a defense partly based on Trump not wanting the Stormy Daniels story made public in order to protect his family. But Cohen and others are expected to testify that Trump tried to avoid paying the hush money on the theory that it wouldn’t matter if the story came out after the election. So much for shielding Melania.

The Trump lawyers are denying everything — the alleged affairs and the cover-up — which is unlikely to be persuasive. But they may have better luck arguing that for all the prosecution’s talk of conspiracy, that wasn’t a count in the indictment. Blanche’s best line was: “Spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence this election. It’s called democracy.”

What the jurors don’t know yet and won’t learn until the judge instructs them just before they deliberate is that there is nothing in New York state law requiring prosecutors to prove that Trump broke tax laws, campaign finance laws or conspiracy laws to win a felony conviction. All they need to do is prove that Trump intended to do wrong in these areas.

And by insisting that Trump is completely innocent, his lawyers have made it harder for the jury to convict him of just misdemeanors, not felonies. But it will be a few weeks before the jury understands all of that.

Parker Richards

Opinion Staff Editor

The Impossible Matzo Ball

What do you call a person who keeps trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? My mom, apparently: Each Passover, she tries once more to make vegan matzo ball soup. I’m sure she’s tried every published recipe, tried variations, tried anything she can think of. The thing about a matzo ball, of course, is that its structural integrity is everything: You need the egg, and most vegan egg substitutes just don’t seem to cut it.

The quixotic pursuit is an essential part of our Seders each year. It’s as much a tradition now as adding the Yankees to the list of Ten Plagues or slight eyebrow raising that accompanies the repeated crossing out and reinsertion of the founding years in Israel on the list of Jewish struggles in our much-modified family Haggadah — or even, for me, of the story of the first matzo, the unleavened bread made by the Israelites as they fled Egypt.

Standard matzo balls — which also have matzo meal and spices and herbs — are held together with egg. There are many vegan egg substitutes that add a bit of stickiness. Bananas work well in muffins; you might try cornstarch for a pie. The two most common versions are silken tofu and flaxseed mixed with water.

When I asked The Times’s recipe columnist Melissa Clark for a tip, she pointed me to Joan Nathan’s vegan matzo ball soup recipe. It calls for the use of aquafaba — chickpea water — as an egg substitute. (Clark noted that Ashkenazic dietary rules prohibit consuming legumes like chickpeas and soybeans, known as kitniyot, on Passover but Sephardic rules allow it. My mom’s veganism is more observant than her Judaism, however, so it’ll probably be all right.) The inside scoop is that this year my mom is going to use both silken tofu and flaxseed. Next year maybe aquafaba will join the list.

The plethora of options seems fitting for a holiday that celebrates liberation and, thus, relaxation; the need to labor in someone else’s name is gone, and so the labor of love that is the matzo ball can continue unhindered.

The quest for the structurally sound vegan matzo ball always made sense to me as latter-day Passover tradition. Judaism — especially of my family’s assimilated, not-really-observant-at-all kind — never seemed to me to require a logic that made sense independent of its own tradition. Jewish history and practice are rife with coincidences and traditions and loopholes. Why not add failed vegan matzo balls to the list? And who knows? Maybe this year the matzo balls will hold together.

Zeynep Tufekci

The N.I.H.’s Words Matter, Especially to Long Covid Patients

Bernie Sanders, who chairs the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee , has proposed allocating $1 billion annually for 10 years to the National Institutes of Health for long Covid research. One potential stumbling block to this good idea is bipartisan criticism of the N.I.H.’s sluggishness in producing useful results from the initial $1.15 billion allocated to long Covid.

It’s in that context the current N.I.H. director, Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, responded to a question about long Covid last week, saying, “We see evidence of persistent live virus in humans in various tissue reservoirs.” She said that the virus can “live a long time in tissues” and that this is “likely one of the ways that it produces some of its terrible symptoms.”

The statement rattled researchers and shocked communities of long Covid patients. Proving persistent live virus that can replicate long after the acute phase and showing that it relates to long Covid symptoms would be a Nobel-territory breakthrough and point to effective treatments.

However, while viral persistence is one hypothesized mechanism for long Covid, as far as I knew, only viral remnants — leftover virus pieces that cannot replicate — have been shown, not persistent live whole virus. Further, such remnants haven’t correlated with long Covid symptoms. (Some healthy and sick people have them.)

Patients were abuzz . Was this more unacceptable sluggishness? Was the N.I.H. sitting on crucial unpublished information? Was the N.I.H. director completely out of touch with the research? Had they all misunderstood the science?

I reached out to the N.I.H. The answer turns out to be mundane. Dr. Bertagnolli said she “misspoke” and had “meant to say ‘viral components’ rather than ‘live virus.’” The N.I.H. also confirmed to me such remnants have not yet been shown to correlate with long Covid symptoms.

Viral remnants may still play a role — maybe only some people are sensitive to them — or maybe leftover viral components are common and harmless. The N.I.H. also told me this is “an area of active investigation,” as it should be.

It’s good that Dr. Bertagnolli is so engaged with long Covid, and misspeaking during an interview is human. Hopefully, the institution keeps in mind that suffering patients are hanging on their every word.

An earlier version of this article misstated the initial amount of money allocated to the National Institutes of Health to study long Covid. It is $1.15 billion, not $1.5 billion.

Patrick Healy

Deputy Opinion Editor

What Toll Will the Trial Take on Trump?

Every Monday morning on The Point, we kick off the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:

The spring of a presidential election year is usually a slog, but this week brings more proof that 2024 is unlike any other campaign, with Donald Trump’s criminal trial getting fully underway, President Biden finally showing how he’ll frame abortion in the race and the Supreme Court taking up campaign-related cases.

But it’s Trump’s legal issues that matter most right now. Opening arguments are set for Monday in his 2016 election interference case, and the ultimate outcome of the trial will affect the presidential race. A conviction would be a blow to Trump in what will be a tight Electoral College race in November, while a hung jury would be a win for his effort to portray himself as a victim of partisan prosecutors. (An acquittal is a long shot, but you never know.)

I’m curious about the toll the trial takes on Trump. It’s already visible in his face, his body language. He’s frustrated and annoyed, tired, sometimes angry or sleepy. A lot of Americans like Trump’s brash, high-energy, sarcastic, upbeat performances. So will Dour Donald sour voters? Also, when pressure takes a toll on politicians, they can do dumb things (i.e., the Clinton-Lewinsky affair). As I wrote last week , Trump has never been more vulnerable (the NBC News poll out yesterday underscored that), and the trial will wear on him.

Biden will deliver a speech Tuesday in Florida on abortion rights, denouncing the state’s six-week abortion ban. Biden doesn’t like to say the word “abortion” and has a long and uneasy history on the issue — he has never been a vocal champion. Does he start changing that with this speech? Whatever he says will tell us a lot about how Biden plans to frame this race around abortion, which could be a winning issue for Democrats in Arizona, Nevada and some other swing states this November.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the historic Trump presidential immunity case on Thursday, as well as in interesting cases on abortion and homeless camps this week. Check out this good preview article .

As for the House speaker, Mike Johnson, it looks increasingly likely that he will hold on to his job through November, thanks to Democrats, after a grumpy Marjorie Taylor Greene held back on her motion to vacate after the foreign aid votes this past weekend. The House is in recess this week, and Greene might try to oust Johnson when the chamber is back next week, but it has the look of a fool’s errand right now.

The Federal Register

The daily journal of the united states government, request access.

Due to aggressive automated scraping of FederalRegister.gov and eCFR.gov, programmatic access to these sites is limited to access to our extensive developer APIs.

If you are human user receiving this message, we can add your IP address to a set of IPs that can access FederalRegister.gov & eCFR.gov; complete the CAPTCHA (bot test) below and click "Request Access". This process will be necessary for each IP address you wish to access the site from, requests are valid for approximately one quarter (three months) after which the process may need to be repeated.

An official website of the United States government.

If you want to request a wider IP range, first request access for your current IP, and then use the "Site Feedback" button found in the lower left-hand side to make the request.

IMAGES

⇉Abortion Persuasive Speech Essay Example
Abortion advocacy sweeping through Catholic nations
Opinion
Opinion
Trump pushes anti-abortion agenda to build culture that 'cherishes innocent life'
Exploring how religion has shaped the abortion debate

VIDEO

Invitational speech: abortion
Persuasive speech on abortion by Jacqueline O'Neal
Persuasive Essay-Abortion
Persuasive Speech: Abortion Should Stay Legal
sympathetic perspectives speech: abortion
sympathetic perspectives speech: abortion

COMMENTS

We Asked Pinoys "Should Abortion be Legal in the Philippines?" and the
6. "Yes, but educate the public on safe sex more than abortion as an option especially for a country where poverty and population are issues." 7. "Yes, it should be legal. I wouldn't do it personally, but it should be an option to every women." 8. "No. Philippines' religion influence is higher than any other factors.
Persuasive Essay About Abortion: Examples, Topics, and Facts
Here are some facts about abortion that will help you formulate better arguments. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 1 in 4 pregnancies end in abortion. The majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester. Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with less than a 0.5% risk of major complications.
Philippines: Abortion's illegal in the Catholic majority ...
Abortion is illegal in the Philippines - a majority Catholic country and former American colony - and has been for over a century. Under the law, women found to have aborted their fetuses face ...
A response to calls for decriminalization of abortion in the Philippines
At any rate, such instance is one of the many reasons why some groups are advocating the decriminalization of abortion in the Philippines, thus making it a norm much less. Abortion is the easy way ...
PDF Reasons Why We Need to Decriminalize Abortion
Each year, complications from unsafe abortion is one of the five leading causes of maternal death— between 4.7% - 13.2%—and a leading cause of hospitalization in the Philippines.9 The high number of women dying yearly from complications from unsafe abortion surpass even the number of people who die from dengue. This is unacceptable.
The reality of abortion in the Philippines
The reality of abortion in the Philippines. Abortion is a reality for Filipino women. The illegality of abortion has not deterred Filipino women from inducing unsafe abortion. It has only made it ...
[OPINION] It's time for the Philippines to decriminalize abortion
Countries such as Belgium, France, and Italy allow abortion upon a woman's request. Poland allows abortion to protect a woman's life and physical health and in cases of rape, incest, and fetal ...
The spectre of unsafe abortions in the Philippines
On 24 June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that protected the constitutional right to abortion, threatening the physical and mental health of millions of pregnant people in the U.S. However, this crisis has long been the reality for pregnant people in the Philippines, a lower-middle income country in Southeast Asia where abortion remains restricted ...
Should abortion for rape victims be legalized in PH?
May 14, 2015 2:21 PM PHT. Clara Rita Padilla. 'The Philippines should repeal its laws that punish women and girls who have undergone abortions as a matter of public policy to save women's lives ...
Abortion in the Philippines
Abortion incidence. A 1997 study estimated that, despite legal restrictions, in 1994 there were 400,000 abortions performed illegally in the Philippines and 80,000 hospitalizations of women for abortion-related complications; [3] It was reported in 2005 that official estimates then ranged from 400,000 to 500,000 and rising, and that the World ...
Is Catholic Philippines ready to decriminalise abortion? Its next
It is estimated that every year, between 400,000 and 800,000 illegal and unsafe abortions are performed in the country, and that of these, around 100,000 will result in hospitalisations.
Abortion in the Philippines: A true story
The law on abortion Such is the fate of many Filipinas today. According to a Guttmacher Institute study in 2006, one out of three women aged 15 to 44 chooses to terminate their pregnancy through abortion. Abortion is a reality for many women in the Philippines, but many consider it taboo. The Church regards it as a mortal sin.
Philippines told: Decriminalize abortion, legalize divorce, pass anti
Abortion is illegal in the Catholic-majority Philippines and possibly even unconstitutional as the 1987 Constitution provides that the State shall protect the life of the mother and the unborn ...
Laws do not provide exceptions: Abortion is illegal
Abortion is illegal under any and all circumstances under the Philippine Constitution and statutes. Abortion is not allowed even when the life of the mother is in danger, and for that matter, even when the life of the unborn is threatened. Under the law, the life of the unborn and the life of the mother shall be equally protected because they are equally valuable.
Why decriminalizing abortion is not possible in the Philippines
The act is not banned. In the context of the Philippines, the decriminalization of abortion is not possible because of our basic law, the Constitution. In Article II Section 12 it says, " [The state] shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.". How else can the state protect the life of the ...
Miriam's RH speech on Reproductive Rights as Part of Human Rights
This right to health is now viewed as including the right to reproductive health. Reproductive rights constitute the totality of a person's constitutionally protected rights relating to the control of his or her procreative activities. Specifically, reproductive rights refer to the cluster of civil liberties relating to pregnancy, abortion, and ...
Persuasive Speech About Abortion
Persuasive Speech about Abortion - Free download as Word Doc (.doc / .docx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. The speech argues strongly against abortion, presenting it as morally akin to murder and harmful to both mothers and children. It notes abortion is illegal in the Philippines but still common, with 600,000 procedures annually resulting in over 1,000 deaths.
Position Paper on the Illegalization of Abortion in the Philippines
In 2008 alone, the Philippines' criminal abortion ban was estimated to result in the deaths of at least 1,000 women and complications for 90,000 more My argument Many of Filipinos hold strong ...
Breaking the Bond of Stigma: Cultivating Women's Right to Safe Abortion
Abortion in the Philippines has been criminalized for a century already under the scope of the archaic Spanish-colonial Penal Code of 1870. This antiquated law is rigorously restrictive and has no ...
Philippines Should Adopt Same-Sex Marriage
Duterte's backtracking is easily remedied. He and his government should demonstrate the political will to push through legislation to protect the rights of the country's LGBT population ...
Why Biden gave a speech about abortion rights : NPR
Twice in his speech, once near the beginning and again at the end, he invoked what he called, quote, "the anger, the worry, the disbelief" that Democrats felt when the Supreme Court ended the ...
CHR against abortion except in 'extreme circumstances'
The Commission on Human Rights clarifies its stand on abortion after senators deferred the CHR's 2024 budget hearing. MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) is against ...
Persuasive Essay about Same-Sex Marriage in the Philippines
As indicated by Rappler, a survey overview was once directed in May about concurring or differing about same-sex marriage in the Philippines. Up to 70% of the respondents said that they 'strongly disagree' with same-sex marriage being permitted in the dominatingly Christian country. A little 4% referred to that they 'solid agree' in same-sex ...
Supreme Court to Decide Fate of Emergency Abortion Care
A district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the state from enforcing the ban in medical emergencies while the challenge played out. In a separate case in Texas, lower courts decided that EMTALA does exclude abortions. Amid these conflicting rulings, the Supreme Court announced it was taking up the Idaho challenge.
Conversations and insights about the moment.
Anti-abortion signs in front of the Arizona statehouse in Phoenix. Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times. On Wednesday, anti-abortion activists packed the gallery of the Arizona House to protest ...
Implementation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act
Many comments in favor of the inclusion of abortion expressed that including abortion furthers Congress' policy goal of protecting pregnant workers from harm; that it accurately reflects the range of needs and conditions that workers may experience that require reasonable workplace accommodations in relation to pregnancy; that abortion care is ...
Biden closes gap in presidential poll as rival Trump is stuck in court
Mr Biden has shifted his campaign strategy in recent months, focusing on "culture war" issues such as the battle for access to abortion and accusing Mr Trump of undermining the integrity of ...
Joe Biden accused of mocking Catholicism for making sign of cross
Mr. Biden centered his campaign stop in Tampa on abortion rights, blaming former President Donald Trump for the Supreme Court's June 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade after nearly 50 ...