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The Reproductive Health Act

New York’s Reproductive Health Act (RHA) was signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo on January 22, the 46th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion.

Advocates long sought to pass the bill but struggled due to a Republican controlled state senate. The bill, passed now that Democrats control both chambers of the legislature, has gained a lot of media attention and is an issue that is highly polarized on both sides of the political spectrum.

There’s a lot of misinformation as to what this law entails and the question that appears to come up over and over again seems to be “Does the law allow full term abortions?”

In an effort to unpack various articles circulating which claim babies are being murdered at full term, I figured I would do what we should all aim to do in a time where it’s increasingly easy to disseminate false information…I read the law.

The RHA states that a Health care practitioner licensed, certified, or authorized under title eight of the education law, acting within his or her lawful scope of practice, may perform an abortion when, according to the practitioner’s reasonable and good faith professional judgment based on the facts of the patient’s case: the patient is within 24 weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an absence of fetal viability, or the abortion is necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.

So what exactly is fetal viability and what defines a patient’s health?

According to Roe v. Wade, fetal viability was defined as being the point when a fetus was “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid.”

When it comes to a patient’s health, Doe v. Bolton determined that “medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age – relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment”

Pro-life proponents and activists seem to think that all medical professionals are  left-wing radicals who will easily decide that it is within their medical opinion to abort fetuses past the 24 weeks of pregnancy if the woman seeking an abortion simply changes her mind. This is not the case.  

The RHA also amended and repealed portions of the public health code and penal code in order to do the following: remove abortions from the penal code in an effort to decriminalize abortions and eliminate certain sections within the public health law that were redundant or unnecessary.

A majority of the articles I’ve encountered online use fear mongering tactics that wrongfully state the law allows for infanticide and that it removes protections for babies who accidentally survive an abortion procedure. There are a multitude of op-eds that claim living, breathing babies can legally be killed by one mean or another after being born and that the law prevents pregnant women whose babies are killed in an attack on the mother from seeking justice.

Again, none of this is true. 

In an article by Angelo Fichera on Fact Check.org, a spokesman for New York State Senator Liz Krueger, who sponsored the new law, stated:

“Modern abortion techniques do not result in live birth; however, in the great unlikelihood that a baby was born alive, the medical provider and team of medical support staff would provide all necessary medical care, as they would in the case of any live birth,” he wrote in an email. “The RHA does not change standard medical practices. To reiterate, any baby born alive in New York State would be treated like any other live birth, and given appropriate medical care. This was the case before the RHA, and it remains the case now.”

Additionally, those who attack pregnant women are still able to be penalized and charges including assault, aggravated assault and attempted murder can still be sought.

Simply put, the RHA is intended to protect women’s reproductive rights should Roe v. Wade be overturned. 

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Birds & Baseball Cards; From the Archives

Originally published with modifications on October 27, 2015

at: http://thedailycougar.com/2015/10/27/the-blind-sight-politics-of-the-drone-wars/

A leak of classified documents by an Intelligence whistleblower reminiscent of Snowden and his martyr ways has recently shed light on the manner in which the drone wars were conducted in Yemen and Somalia in the years 2011 through 2013.

The once classified documents reveal that drones were responsible for the assassination of hundreds of innocent civilians haphazardly labeled ‘Enemies Killed in Action’ (EKIA) despite the White House’s previous boasts that the drone program is precise and civilian deaths are minimal.

The Whistleblower whose identity remains anonymous so as to avoid prosecution said, “The public has the right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government.”

Put together as a study by the highly funded Intelligence, Surveillance, & Reconnaissance Task Force (ISR), these documents give a detailed look into how the United States Intelligence personnel gather information on potential targets.

It explicitly states how these targets’ profiles are placed in condensed formats known as “Baseball Cards” and then sent through a chain of command for ultimate approval by the President. After his approval, a sixty day period ensued for execution in finding, fixing and finishing the approved targets.

While the White House released a set of standards and procedures for conducting strikes back in 2013 in which they said the U.S. will use lethal force “only against a target that poses a continuing imminent threat to U.S. persons,” data gathered by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported a minimum of 239 assassinations in Yemen alone, 53 of which were civilian.

In an attempt to stress the reliance these drones (referred to as birds by insiders) have on signal intelligence which is essentially data pulled from phones and computers including phone numbers and emails, the source states it best by saying, “the entire time you thought you were going after this really hot target, you wind up realizing it was his mother’s phone the whole time.”

These sources of information account for more than half of the intelligence used to track the intended targets. These attacks have an unreliable dependence on a technology that is faulty and at times provided by foreign partners who may or may not have ulterior motives.

Drones appear to be a quick and efficient way of providing U.S. military with counterterrorism efforts and covert affairs a solution to eradicate any desired targets deemed “objectives” with little to no consequences of lives of civilians whom were wrongly assassinated in the process.

The process of labeling, monitoring and filing targets bundled with countless data, which the documents admit to as poor and limited capabilities for acquiring intelligence, allow for the dehumanizing of people “before you’ve even encountered the moral question of ‘is this a legitimate kill or not?’” said the source.

Nonetheless, there’s been little to no coverage in the media regarding the deaths of these civilians. The only public outcry was earlier this year in April when an American and an Italian hostage were killed in Pakistan in a drone strike conducted by the CIA.

Instructional Political Science Assistant Professor Zachary Zwald gave some perspective as to why the public reactions may not be the one the whistleblower had hoped for.

“The assessment of the pros and cons of drones have to be made in the context of the alternatives, which are greater troop presence and direct engagement of the enemy versus complete military withdrawal,” Zwald said.  

“It remains a military option because the public does not have an appetite for prolonged occupied military missions,” said Zwald.

The question remains as to whether drones are the only alternative to such missions? Should we be relying on sturdier data that pinpoints and confirms imminent threats and negates excessive collateral damage so that we’re not so quick to jump the drone?

Regarding the Obama Administration’s stance on drone wars, Investigative Reporter Jeremy Scahill says its implicit message has been one of “trust, but do not verify”.

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The Expiration of Lethal Injections

Arkansas carried out the nation’s first double execution in 16 years despite last minute attempts from lawyers trying to sway judges of mitigating factors.  

The recent attention garnered due to Arkansas’ aspirations to execute eight convicted criminals in a span of 10 days has created much debate about the death penalty.

The various publicized botched lethal injection executions that have led to prolonged and painful deaths raise further questions as to whether the current methods used are ‘cruel and unusual.’

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are currently 31 states with the death penalty, 19 without, and four with a governor-imposed moratorium.

The 31 states range in execution method from firing squads, gas chambers, electrocutions, hanging and lethal drug injections that vary in number of injections and doses used.

With few federal regulations, and little to no transparency, corrections departments across the states are rapidly searching for new drugs to use before its corrections departments’ existing supply expire.

Cocktail Concoctions

Until 2009, virtually all death penalty states used a combination of 3 drugs for its legal injection executions. 

The three-step procedure consisted of an initial injection of the anesthetic agent Sodium Thiopental which has been recently replaced by Pentobarbital due to lack of availability in manufacturing. Both are barbiturates that render a person unconscious and depress respiratory activity.

For states that continue to use the three-step combination, the muscle relaxant Pancuronium Bromide is the second drug administered and is used to cause paralysis of the diaphragm which causes death by asphyxiation.

Potassium Chloride is the last of the three drug cocktail to be injected and increases blood and cardiac concentration of potassium. This ultimately causes death by cardiac arrest.  

Both Sodium Thiopental and Potassium Chloride are considered essential drugs by the World Health Organization and are frequently used for various medical purposes.

The recent shift in corrections departments seeking substitute drugs and methods is due in large part to a decrease in manufacturing and problems in production.

In 2011, American global pharmaceutical manufacturer Hospira announced it would stop producing Sodium Thiopental after its production moved from a plant in North Carolina to Liscate, Italy where the Italian government threatened to bar its export as its constitution bans the use of capital punishment.

Similarly, most pharmaceutical companies banned the use and resell of their products to correction facilities citing moral and business reasons. The last remaining open-market source of execution drugs manufacturer Pfizer banned its products in 2016 leading capital death states to scramble for alternatives due to the shortage.

Calling for Transparency of Compounding Pharmacies

The increasing difficulty in obtaining lethal drugs has caused states to turn to other providers who could produce the drugs.

In 2015, the FDA seized Sodium Thiopental imported from India that Arizona and Texas had purchased. The vials that the FDA stated were misbranded and unapproved were held for two years before the FDA announced last week that they were officially banning the import of sodium thiopental into the United States.

Others have now turned to compounding pharmacies that combine, mix or alter drugs. They are loosely regulated and are generally protected with certain statutes preventing the disclosure of names, addresses, and other identifying information of any person who participates in or administers executions as well as any person or entity that manufactures and compounds substances used in an execution.

In an effort to promote transparency and track the movement of Texas’ supply of execution drugs, the Texas Tribune is monitoring, updating and detailing the use of legal injection drugs, scheduled executions and inventory changes.

Botched Executions – What are the alternatives?

In 2013, Kentucky revised its execution protocol to include the drug Midazolam and on October 23, 2013, Florida became the first to use the drug in its three-drug protocol.

Its controversial use however, is in large part due to the Oklahoman 2014 botched execution of Clayton Lockett where the dosage was 5 times less than that used in previous Florida executions.

Although supply issues are what led Oklahoma to use the untested mixture, the failed execution began when the paramedic failed at her effort to insert the IV needle into Lockett’s arm, bicep, neck, collar bone’s subclavian vein, and foot which ultimately led the doctor in attendance to insert the needle in the femoral vein in Lockett’s groin.

The IV dislodged shortly after administration of Midazolam at 6:23 p.m. The following two drugs were injected despite the fact that the IV was not in the vein. He struggled violently, the execution was halted, and at 7:06 p.m. he was declared dead due to a heart attack.

Other executions - like that of Dennis McGuire, or Arizona’s execution of Joseph Wood that lasted nearly two hours - have led most to question which drugs, dosage, methods and procedures are most effective when it comes to these executions.

In Wood’s appeal two days before his scheduled execution, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote that the enterprise was flawed. “Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful.”

But just how dangerous are the drugs used in lethal injections and what percentage of these executions are botched?

Professor Austin Sarat of Amherst College closely examined all US executions from 1890 to 2010 and found that of the nearly 9,000 executions consisting of electrocutions, hangings, gas chambers, legal injections and firing squads, lethal injection had the highest botch rate percentage at 7.1% with the gas chamber trailing behind at 5.4%.

He defined botched as those “procedures that had departed from official legal protocol or standard operating procedure,” and had arisen from problems with dosing, difficulty obtaining quality drugs, and training of those administering.

Kozinski’s dissent also suggested we return to something more primitive and foolproof. “The guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos,” he wrote before advocating that a firing squad at close range would work best because people could be employed and trained by the state with weapons and ammunition supplies impossible to interdict.

The question remains as to which of the existing alternatives currently aligns with our national ethos and evolving standards of decency now that these lethal drugs shelf life is to expire.

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The Nuclear Option

Photo By: Matt H. Wade

In an unprecedented moment last Thursday, the Senate Majority Leader utilized the nuclear option that lowered the threshold for confirming presidential Supreme Court nominees after Senate Democrats filibustered the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch.

Filibusters, clotures and party majorities

At the onset of WWI, a 23-day filibuster was held to stall efforts to arm merchant ships. President Woodrow Wilson urged the senate to develop a rule to bring these lengthy arguments to an end and in 1917 the Senate obliged.

The senators agreed on a rule to provide a way to end a filibuster with a 2/3 vote of senators called a cloture. In 1975 that threshold was lowered to 60 senate votes. Once 60 cloture votes were reached, the nominee then moved to a final up or down vote that would both succeed and confirm a nomination or fail.

Fast forward to present day and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a point of order that only 51 and not 60 votes, a simple majority, would be needed for Justices to be confirmed.

Currently, the Senate comprises of 52 Republicans, 46 Democrats and 2 Independents that caucus with the Democrats. The vote to confirm Gorsuch was 52-48 strictly across party lines.

This nuclear option, dubbed because of its potential to blow up bipartisan relations in the senate, kills the filibuster, affects how many votes a nominee needs for final confirmation and will apply to all future Supreme Court candidates.

And while both parties point fingers and blame one another for how we arrived here, we refer back to the Democrat’s reasoning behind their use of the same nuclear option in 2013 triggered by then Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid which eliminated the use of filibusters on all presidential executive and judicial nominees with exception to Supreme Court nominations.

Democrats deploy nuclear option  

Reid employed the nuclear option after Republicans notably blocked more lower-court judicial nominees made by Obama than all previous presidents combined.

After Democrats claimed consistent obstruction on behalf of Republicans, Reid’s use of the nuclear option similarly changed the voting threshold for judicial and executive nominees. President Obama praised the Senate’s action at the time and accused the Republicans of blocking his nominees based on politics rather than merit alone.

Mitch McConnell, who was the senate minority leader at the time, said it was a time to be sad about what had been done to the U.S. senate and then noted that Republicans could fix the problem in upcoming elections if they regained the majority (which is now the case).

Facing the Inevitable and Bracing what’s to come

After Gorsuch was confirmed, Democrats say this Nuclear Option was unavoidable and reasoned had it not happened the first nomination, it would certainly have happened if there were to be another Supreme Court vacancy.

New York democratic Senator and current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says he regrets the decision made by Democrats in 2013. “I argued against it at the time. I said both for Supreme Court and in cabinet should be 60 because on some issues there should be some degree of partisanship,” he said.

What looms over now, is what this implies for the legislative filibusters. Mitch McConnell tried to reassure both Democrats and Republicans that he would oppose efforts to do away with the legislative filibuster.  

“This notion that this somehow bleeds over into the legislative filibuster is untrue. I’m opposed to it… I think that’s what fundamentally changes the senate,” McConnell said.

Yet despite this upset by McConnell, his tone about the nuclear option contrasts from when he was Minority Leader in 2013 and said,

“Breaking the rules to change the rules in un-American. I just hope the Majority Leader thinks about his legacy, the future of his party, and, most importantly, the future of our country before he acts.”

Now a week later since the use of the nuclear option and Gorsuch’s subsequent swear-in ceremony, the focus turns to the upcoming cases the new Associate Judge is to hear and the fate of the legislative filibuster.

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The Future of Online Privacy

Photo via:https://pixabay.com/en/privacy-policy-keyboard-security-510739/

President Trump signed legislation Monday repealing the Federal Communications Commission’s privacy regulations for Internet Service Providers that provide Internet for your phone or home.

The house bill was introduced by Republican representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee through the congressional review act that allows lawmakers to toss out regulations previously created by government agencies.

Under the FCC’s rules, ISPs were not to collect sensitive data that applied to customers’ browsing history, app usage, voice services, location, and information pertaining to children, health and finances.

The proposed FCC rules came shortly after computer scientist and Stanford lawyer Jonathan Mayer revealed in a blog that an ad software company was using Verizon super cookies.

What followed was a 15 month investigation into Verizon’s tracking activity that found the company was tracking users’ activities online even when customers tried to delete the history and cookies from their browsers. This provided Verizon with a dossier of customer behavior.

“In short, Verizon is packaging and selling subscriber information, acting as a data broker on real-time advertising exchanges,” Mayer said.

Because the FCC has no jurisdiction over web companies, their rules applied specifically to ISPs. This is where things got tricky.

Prior to the 2015 open Internet Order, it was the Federal Trade Commission rather than the FCC that overlooked ISP policies. The order reclassified the Internet as a utility and made ISPs “common carriers” which the FTC cannot regulate.

This left a gap in terms of regulation over ISPs.  

“What we’ve created is confusion and this is the way to rein in an agency that was overreaching,” said Blackburn. The main difference in FTC and FCC regulations however, are what was included in the category of sensitive customer data.

The FCC rules that were set to take place this December allowed customers the opportunity to “opt in” before having their data shared. Meanwhile, web and app companies referred to as edge providers, were continuing to follow FTC guidelines that conversely let them collect data showing sites and apps used giving online users the option to opt-out instead.

Essentially, ISPs wanted the opt-out settings the FTC created for edge providers as the default. They believed that customers were less likely to opt-out if they had to go out of their way to do so.

This discrepancy is what many republicans argued was unfair for ISPs’ ability to compete in the digital advertising market on a level playing field with edge providers. Democrats argued that users had a greater choice in website selection than in ISPs.

The FCC rules also argued that providers such as Verizon and Comcast had the opportunity to see every packet of information while edge providers including Google and Amazon only see a slice of that information.

Since ISPs provide a connection to the Internet, each device is assigned an identifying IP address. ISPs can see which IP addresses are being used, which websites are visited, and in turn retain and collect that information.

What results is a treasure trove of your information that ISPs sell to convert into personalized advertising that make you more likely to click on ads and in turn entice bigger premiums for ISP ad spaces.

ISPs trying to advance their advertising ambitions are not wrong to assume that users are lackadaisical and won’t take the time visit their privacy settings and opt-out of data sharing.

Those who are concerned about their data being shared are turning to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), TOR and polluting their data in hopes of creating noise to drown their browsing habits.  

Whether ISPs are unable to discern the noise from your data is tough to tell. As Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Technologist Jeremy Gillula wrote in an email thread with Ars Technica, this type of browser pollution system “might work for a bit” but “if it becomes widespread then ISPs will start throwing resources at solving it.”

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Mock Mass Shooting Fails to Deliver its Message

A Mock Mass Shooting complete with cardboard cutout guns, fake blood and mock victims, was scheduled to take place near The University of Austin’s campus Saturday, December 12, 2015.

The time and place of what Murdoch Pizgatti, president and founder of Come and Take it Texas, referred to as a theatrical performance, fluctuated frequently making the final time and location unbeknownst to those who wanted to protest the staged event.

The Facebook event page titled “Life and Liberty Walk to End Gun Free Zones,” listed 2:30 p.m. as the time to meet for what the Facebook description said would be an “epic event”. Yet by the time the media and student counter-protestors (equipped and strapped with dildos and fart guns) arrived, the event had already taken place leaving everyone seemingly irritated.

“They didn’t demonstrate [expletive] to anybody but themselves,” said an angry protestor. Though anticlimactic and disappointing, Murdoch seemed quite pleased with both himself and his stunt to throw potential protestors off his track.

When asked if he had planned to change the time from the beginning of production, he said that they were left with no choice when “the students made it clear that they were not giving [them] the time and space to voice their opinions,” and made the decision to take the “high road” by bringing the media to the student protestors instead.

Murdoch maintained that the reason the time changed was to bring a factor of unpredictability to the mock mass shooting similar to how it might manifest itself in real life.

Despite his antics, he said that he was merely “pushing freedom” and wants “people to [be able to] defend themselves”.

 Murdoch isn’t alone. Organizations like Students for Concealed Carry, a national non-partisan grassroots group, believe that “holders of state issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else”.  

The fact remains that while many advocate that the right to carry a concealed weapon on campus will allow students the opportunity to better protect themselves against mass shootings, there is no substantial evidence to prove this claim and it is unfair to assume that more guns ultimately leads to more safety.

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United States lags behind in progress for paid parental leave

San Francisco has become the first U.S. city to mandate a minimum of six weeks of fully paid parental leave for mothers and fathers regardless of whether they are biological, adoptive or same-sex parents.

The law, unanimously agreed upon by the San Francisco board of supervisors on Tuesday, piggybacks on the California state mandate, which funds parental leave at 55% of wages.

It differs from similar laws in Rhode Island and New Jersey by having employers pay the remaining 45% of wages not paid for by funded state disability programs.

Currently, there are only three U.S. states that mandate parental leave: New Jersey; Rhode Island; and New York.

Furthermore, the United States is the only industrialized country that does not guarantee paid leave.

Of San Francisco and its new law, University of Houston’s Director of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Dr. Elizabeth Gregory says, “they’re trying to be more progressive, move forward [and] are an example to follow.”

Having employers provide this opportunity can and will enable parents to stay home and care for their babies for the first six weeks. While having women stay home to do the childbearing (as opposed to men) was once and still is, “socially reinforced . . . what’s natural is open for discussion,” says Dr. Gregory.

San Francisco is rightfully paving the way for other U.S. cities and states by creating room for discussion as to how this might create what Gregory refers to as an “infrastructure for working families”.

It’s a significant difference from the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) that grants you “federal protection to keep your job as opposed to federally protected salary,” says Assistant Professor Dr. Leslie Frankel of the Human Development and Family Studies Program.

“The beginning of a baby’s life is a critical period. Alleviating some of that stress for parents is nothing but beneficial to the baby and the parent-child relationship,” says Frankel.

In the meantime (and in a majority of the nation), parents head back to the workforce, guilt ridden and worried that pulling away from their children can have detrimental effects.

Research conducted by Christopher J. Ruhm, PhD and the University of North Carolina concludes that, “parental presence during the early years constitutes a significant investment in child development,” so much so that it can affect both cognitive and behavioral outcomes.

“In the grand scheme of things it [may] seem small, but it’s a high return on investment,” said Frankel.

While some question whether this is fiscally feasible, the rest of the world has apparently managed to do what the U.S. is barely beginning to fathom.