Day: June 25, 2021

A solid majority of Americans believe most abortions should be legal in the first three months of a woman’s pregnancy, but most say the procedure should usually be illegal in the second and third trimesters, according to a new poll.The poll comes just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case involving a currently blocked Mississippi law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, two weeks into the second trimester. If the high court upholds the law, it would be the first time since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision confirming a woman’s right to abortion that a state would be allowed to ban abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb.
The new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 61% of Americans say abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances in the first trimester of a pregnancy. However, 65% said abortion should usually be illegal in the second trimester, and 80% said that about the third trimester.
Still, the poll finds many Americans believe that the procedure should be allowable under at least some circumstances even during the second or third trimesters. For abortions during the second trimester, 34% say they should usually or always be legal, and another 30% say they should be illegal in most but not all cases. In the third trimester, 19% think most or all abortions should be legal, and another 26% say they should be illegal only in most cases.
Michael New, an abortion opponent who teaches social research at Catholic University of America, predicted the findings regarding second- and third-trimester abortions will be useful to the anti-abortion movement.
“This helps counter the narrative that the abortion policy outcome established by the Roe v. Wade decision enjoys substantial public support,” he said.
David O’Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, said the findings suggest that abortion rights advocates are “way out of the public mainstream” to the extent that they support abortion access even late in pregnancy. 
But Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco, who supports abortion rights, cited research showing that Americans viewed second-trimester abortions more empathetically when told about some of the reasons why women seek them.
These include time-consuming difficulties making arrangements with an abortion clinic and learning during the second trimester that the fetus would die or have severe disabilities due to abnormalities, Grossman said.
“More work needs to be done to elevate the voices of people who have had abortions and who want to share their stories to help people understand the many reasons why this medical care is so necessary,” he said via email.
Majorities of Americans — Republicans and Democrats alike — think a pregnant woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion if her life is seriously endangered, if the pregnancy results from rape or incest or if the child would be born with a life-threatening illness.
Americans are closely divided over whether a pregnant woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion if she wants one for any reason, 49% yes to 50% no.
Jenny Ma, senior staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said women seeking second-trimester abortions included disproportionately high numbers of young people, Black women and women living in poverty. Some had not learned they were pregnant until much later than the norm; others had trouble raising the needed funds to afford an abortion, Ma said.
She noted that Republican-governed states have enacted numerous restrictions in recent years that often complicated the process for getting even a first-trimester abortion.
“Removing the many existing barriers to earlier abortion care would reduce need for second- and third-trimester abortions,” Ma said.
Abortions after the first trimester are not rare, but they are exceptions to the norm. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in its most recent report on abortion in the U.S., estimated that 92% of the abortions in 2018 were performed within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.
The poll also shows how opinions on abortion diverge sharply along party lines. Roughly three-quarters of Democrats think abortion should be legal in all or most cases; about two-thirds of Republicans think it should be illegal in all or most cases.  
But most Americans fall between extreme opinions on the issue. Just 23% say abortion in general should be legal in all cases, while 33% say it should be legal in most cases. Thirty percent say abortion should be illegal in most cases; just 13% say it should be illegal in all cases.
Respondents from three major religious groups — white mainline Protestants, nonwhite Protestants and Catholics — are closely divided as to whether abortion should usually be legal or illegal in most cases. It was different for white evangelicals — about three-quarters of them say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
Dave Steiner, a hotel manager from suburban Chicago, was among those responding to the AP-NORC poll who said abortion should be legal in the first trimester but generally illegal thereafter.
“I was raised a very strict Catholic — abortion was just no, no, no,” said Steiner, 67. “As I became more liberal and a Democrat, I felt the woman should have the right to choose — but that should be in the first trimester.”
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“Abortions are going to happen anyway,” he added. “If you’re making it illegal, you’re just chasing it underground.”
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World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that the delta variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is spreading rapidly among unvaccinated populations and in nations where COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.At a briefing from the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Tedros said the delta variant was the most transmissible of the COVID-19 variants identified so far and had been detected in at least 85 countries.He said that while the global number of COVID-19 cases had been declining for eight straight weeks, the rate of decline had slowed. In Africa, the number of cases and deaths increased by almost 40%.Residents leave a vaccination center in Capbreton, southwestern France, June 24, 2021. The delta variant, first identified in India, is estimated to represent 9 to 10% overall in France.As some countries ease public health and social measures, virus transmission has increased around the world, Tedros said.”More cases mean more hospitalizations, further stretching health workers and health systems, which increases the risk of death,” he said.Variants of any widespread virus are to be expected, Tedros said, because it is how viruses evolve. They can be prevented by stopping transmission, he said, which makes it even more urgent for people in areas with low vaccination rates to consistently follow public health measures and take advantage of effective vaccine programs.That is why he has been stressing for the past year the importance of “vaccine equity,” along with protecting health workers and the most vulnerable, he said. The lack of vaccine in the world’s poorest nations is creating what he calls “a two-track pandemic.””Those who have vaccines are getting better significantly, and they’re opening up their society,” Tedros said. “Those who don’t have vaccines are facing serious COVID situations with serious surges in cases and deaths due to COVID. That’s the reality now.”The Associated Press, Reuters news service and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.   
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Parts of the western United States are seeing record high temperatures in the midst of drought — signaling, experts say, long-term changes in the weather.  With dozens of fires now burning in Western states, President Joe Biden will convene a meeting of Western governors, emergency officials and others to talk about the problem in coming days.
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“Africa is facing a fast-surging third wave of COVID-19 pandemic, with cases spreading more rapidly and projected to soon overtake the peak of the second wave the continent witnessed at the start of 2021,” according to the World Health Organization’s regional office in Africa. WHO said in a statement the pandemic is resurging in 12 African countries. Meanwhile, the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, first identified in India, has been detected in 14 African countries.“The third wave is picking up speed, spreading faster, hitting harder. With rapidly rising case numbers and increasing reports of serious illness, the latest surge threatens to be Africa’s worst yet,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa said.The third wave comes as Africa is experiencing a vaccine shortage. WHO says just slightly more than 1% of Africans have been fully vaccinated. While approximately 2.7 billion COVID-19 vaccine shots have been administered globally, WHO says just under 1.5% of those shots have been administered on the African continent.  FILE – Kenyan tour guide, Daniel Ole Kissipan, receives the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine in Nairobi, Kenya, April 27, 2021.The Associated Press reports that its analysis of recent COVID-19 deaths reveals that nearly all the deaths occurred in people who were unvaccinated. The news agency said the results of its assessment are “a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been.” In addition, AP said the deaths per day “could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine.”Workers and residents in several neighborhoods in Sydney, Australia, have been told to stay home as officials attempt to bring a COVID-19 outbreak under control. Authorities say they believe they outbreak started with a limousine driver who transported an international flight crew to a quarantine hotel in Sydney.  The directors of the WHO, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the World Trade Organization say they met earlier this month to determine how they can collectively “tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and the pressing global challenges at the intersection of public health, intellectual property and trade.” The three organizations said in a statement that their initiatives will include: a series of “capacity-building workshops to enhance the flow of updated information on current developments in the pandemic and responses to achieve equitable access to COVID-19 health technologies.” the creation of a “joint platform for tripartite technical assistance to countries relating to their needs for COVID-19 medical technologies, providing a one-stop shop that will make available the full range of expertise on access, IP and trade matters provided by our organizations, and other partners, in a coordinated and systematic manner.” The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday that global count of COVID-19 infections has reached more than 180 million. The three countries with the most cases are the U.S. with 33.6 million cases, India with more than 30 million infections and Brazil with 18.2 million. The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report. 
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Workers and residents in Sydney were ordered to stay home for a week on Friday, as authorities locked down several central areas of Australia’s largest city to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19.Sixty-five COVID-19 cases have been reported so far in the flare-up linked to a limousine driver infected about two weeks ago when he transported an international flight crew from Sydney airport to a quarantine hotel.But authorities have since identified scores of potential infection sites visited by thousands of people across central Sydney, including the city’s main business district.Authorities have been alarmed by instances of people passing on the virus during fleeting encounters in shops and then quickly infecting close family contacts.Premier Gladys Berejiklian of New South Wales state, which includes Sydney, called it the “scariest period” since the pandemic broke out more than a year ago.On Friday, she ordered anyone who lived or worked in four central Sydney neighborhoods to stay home for at least a week, only venturing out to purchase essential goods, obtain medical care, exercise or if they are unable to work from home.The restrictions included central business district workers over fears that commuters were potentially spreading the virus into other parts of the city, Berejiklian said.”We’ve done better than expected in terms of contact tracing and getting on top of all those links,” she said.”But what this does is make sure that we haven’t missed any chains of community transmission.”An earlier ban on Sydneysiders leaving the city was also extended until next Friday, as traces of the virus were detected in sewage in the far-flung outback town of Bourke, about nine hours drive northwest of Sydney.It was a dramatic development for a city that had returned to relative normality after months of recording very few local cases.Australia Medical Association President Omar Khorshid chided New South Wales authorities for not taking tougher action, including locking down the entire Sydney metropolitan region, home to some 5 million people.”The Delta virus is different; it is being transmitted far more easily,” Khorshid told media in Canberra. “Sydney has not faced this before.”Korshid warned that although the economic impact of a lockdown was hard, a wider outbreak could be “catastrophic” for the whole country.It is the latest in a string of snap “circuit-breaker” lockdowns across major cities around Australia, with most cases linked to returning travelers held in hotel quarantine.Australia has been among the world’s most successful countries in containing COVID-19, with more than 30,000 cases and 910 deaths in a population of about 25 million.
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The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that the first recruitment drive for astronauts since 2008 netted 22,000 applications, including an increase in female applicants and the first applications from people with disabilities.The agency put out a call for applicants in February, encouraging more women and people with disabilities to apply to boost diversity among crews. The agency launched the “parastronaut” program to examine what is needed to get disabled astronauts onto the International Space Station.The ESA said the preliminary number of applications this year far exceeded the 8,413 applications received in 2008. More than 200 people applied for the newly established vacancy for astronauts with a physical disability, and about 5,400 women — about 24% of all applicants — applied. The share of women was 15.5% in 2008, the ESA said.The space agency said applications would next be screened through a six-stage process, with finalists expected to be announced in October 2022.The Associated Press contributed to this report.  
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Fossils from tiny baby dinosaurs discovered in northernmost Alaska offer strong evidence that the prehistoric creatures lived year-round in the Arctic and were likely warm-blooded, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology.The fossils are from at least seven types of dinosaurs just hatched or still in their eggs about 70 million years ago. Researchers have never found evidence of dinosaur nests so far north, said lead author Pat Druckenmiller, director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North.The find helps upend past assumptions of dinosaurs as giant cold-blooded reptiles.”If they reproduced, then they over-wintered there. If they overwintered there, they had to deal with conditions that we don’t usually associate with dinosaurs, like freezing conditions and snow,” Druckenmiller said.To survive dark Arctic winters, those dinosaurs could not have basked in the sun to warm their bodies, as lizards do, he said.”At least these groups had endothermy,” he said, using the term for the ability of animals to warm their bodies through internal functions. “They had a degree of warm-bloodedness.”The discovery site is a steep bluff on the Colville River on Alaska’s North Slope, at latitude 70 and about 400 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. In the Cretaceous period, when North America was positioned differently, it was even farther north, at latitude 80 or 85, Druckenmiller said.The region was much warmer then than Alaska’s North Slope is now but hardly tropical. From remnants of ancient plants, scientists calculate the average annual temperature at about 6 degrees Celsius – similar to Juneau, Alaska – meaning below-freezing winters with snow, Druckenmiller said.While Alaska’s North Slope endures two months of total winter darkness now, during the Cretaceous period it was in total darkness for up to four months a year, he said.Finding the tiny bones and teeth, some the size of a pinhead, was laborious, Druckenmiller said. They were identified through microscopic examination after being sifted out multiple times from sediments collected in expeditions stretching back decades, he said.”I liken it to gold panning. It’s a very slow process,” he said.The discovery site, called the Prince Creek Formation, has proved crucial to modern understanding of the ancient creatures.The first dinosaur discovery was made there in the 1960s by a petroleum geologist. Subsequent expeditions found previously unknown dinosaur species. Over time, evidence of year-round Arctic occupation has mounted.At the same formation, other scientists found a jawbone from a baby dromaeosaurid, detailed in a study published last year in the journal PLOS ONE. That meat-eating dinosaur would have been the size of a small puppy and incapable of long-distance migration, said co-author Tony Fiorillo, a Southern Methodist University paleontologist.The new study about nesting dinosaurs strengthens the growing realization that dinosaurs lived full-time in the Arctic and thus could not be cold-blooded, Fiorillo said.”This new study broadens the conversation about year-round dinosaurs in the Arctic. It didn’t invent the conversation,” he said. 
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