Greetings, 19th friends!
We are super excited to announce another new hire: Abby Blachman, The 19th’s full-stack engineer. Blachman is a data reporter turned product engineer who comes to us from Injustice Watch in Chicago. She is fascinated by the relationship between audience engagement and building news products. Abby is a Texas native and spends her free time creating digital doodles and illustrations.
Starting Monday, she’ll be contributing to the build out of our website ahead of our launch. Join us in welcoming Abby, and follow her on Twitter!
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(AP Photo)
CALL THE MIDWIFE
In some of the areas hit hardest by coronavirus, there has been a sharp increase in demand for midwives who can perform in-home births.
For some women, it’s a safety issue: Particularly in New York, there is a fear of giving birth in a “COVID” hospital. But many others are looking for comfort.
- Hospitals across the nation have limited the number of people who can be present for births, forcing women to make tough choices.
- After two hospital systems in New York put no-partner policies in place — meaning only doctors and nurses would be present — a swift public outcry prompted Gov. Andrew Cuomo to issue an executive order requiring hospitals to let non-sick partners be present.
Women are wary, recognizing that at any moment the coronavirus could impact their plans. So they’re turning toward home births.
- About 1 percent of U.S. births are at home, and about 75 percent of those are planned.
- The risk of infant death is twice as likely during home births (1 or 2 per 1,000).
- The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists generally advises against home births, but many medical professionals say they are safe for low-risk pregnancies.
Still, the general medical advice is to stick to the plan that you had before the pandemic.
- Hospitals, doctors maintain, are still the safest option for giving birth. They warn that in case something goes wrong during a home birth, emergency response could be slowed because of COVID-19.
- Even midwives are cautioning that women shouldn’t consider home births because of fears of the virus. “Fear and panic do not lend themselves to an empowering homebirth,” Robina Khalid, a midwife with the NYC Homebirth Collective, wrote in a statement. “This is true generally and it is true now during what is unequivocally a scary time for so many of us.”
— Abby Johnston
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Black women are leading the charge against Southern states reopening too quickly
By Errin Haines
As Southern governors are reopening the region this week, black activists are joining with local and federal lawmakers to sound the alarm about what they see as a looming threat to the Black Belt.
They say the mostly white, male Republicans — who were reluctant to close their states but are now eager to reopen — are effectively issuing a “death sentence” for millions of black Americans who have been disproportionately impacted both economically and medically by coronavirus.
“He’s willing to risk us at any cost,” said Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who announced a reopening of the state beginning last Friday, with plans to officially let the state’s stay-at-home order expire on Thursday.
“It’s clear that he does not give a d--- about the citizens of this state and that he feels like some folks are disposable. The first thing that came to my mind was: These people are trying to kill us,” said Brown, an Alabama native who lives in Georgia.
Public health officials have said reopening states to commerce and freer movement comes with risks, particularly without robust testing and contact tracing.
A coalition of mostly black female activists led by Black Voters Matter, the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative, the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Highlander Research and Education Center launched a petition to the governors of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Florida, pleading with them to extend their stay-at-home orders.
Reopening now “especially for cash-poor communities and communities of color, is irresponsible and a death sentence for many of us,” they wrote.
The groups are also calling on the states to create safety plans for essential workers — who are disproportionately minorities and female — before reopening, to report coronavirus data by race and county, to increase unemployment support and to expand Medicaid.
“Our neighbors, relatives, members of our faith communities and co-workers are being put in an impossible position that prioritizes profit over people,” the petition reads.
Despite being only 13 percent of the U.S. population, African Americans make up 30 percent of the deaths from the pandemic.
The crisis is not only one of public health but also of economics, as black unemployment is historically at least double that of whites and minorities work the majority of low-wage, front-line jobs and are the least likely to be able to work from home.
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GRIM PROJECTIONS
For every three months of lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the United Nations projects that there will be an additional 15 million domestic violence incidents.
The UN also estimates that because of pandemic-related disruptions, 2 million cases of female genital mutilation that could have been prevented by its intervention programs will occur over the next decade.
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 What we're reading
Hillary Clinton becomes latest Democrat to endorse Biden. Clinton made her announcement during a Biden campaign town hall about the impact of the coronavirus on women. “Just think of what a difference it would make right now if we had a president who not only listened to the science ... but brought us together,” she said. (Associated Press, April 28)
A former neighbor of Joe Biden's accuser Tara Reade has come forward to corroborate her sexual-assault account, saying Reade discussed the allegations in detail in the mid-1990s. Two more people have come forward corroborating the accusations, saying that Reade — a former staffer in Biden’s Senate office — told them about it decades ago. Biden’s campaign has said the accusations are false. (Business Insider, April 27)
Trump looks to Hope Hicks as coronavirus crisis spills over. The former White House communications director returned to D.C. as an advisor to Trump on March 9, just as the severity of the coronavirus pandemic became clear. (Politico, April 27)
In North Korea, the fourth man could be a woman. Kim Jong Un has been conspicuously absent from the world stage, leading to reports that the North Korean leader has fallen gravely ill. His children may be too young to succeed him, and eyes turning toward another potential heir: his younger sister, Kim Yo Jong. (The New Yorker, April 25)
Astronaut Jessica Meir returns home to a “completely different planet.” “Seven months go by, and now I still can’t come and hug people.” (Vanity Fair, April 27)
Can estrogen and other sex hormones help men survive Covid-19? Roughly 75 percent of men at one hospital in Los Angeles are in ICU or on ventilators. This is leading one doctor there to investigate the effects of treating them with progesterone, a hormone predominantly found in women that has anti-inflammatory properties. (The New York Times, April 27)
🎧 Listen: The hosts of the Political Gabfest discuss the success of female world leaders in handling the coronavirus pandemic.
📺 Watch: Of the jobs lost during the pandemic, nearly 60 percent of them were held by women. CNN’s Kyung Lah speaks to some of the people affected by the economic downturn.
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