The shock waves are still reverberating a year after the Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, overturned 50 years of precedent – 50 years of protecting a woman’s right to choose whether or not to proceed with a pregnancy. In some states, women no longer have any choice and may even face imprisonment if they terminate their pregnancies. In other states, they must meet stringent standards, such as terminating before they may even know they are pregnant or a heartbeat can be detected. Doctors, too, face punishment for aiding women who seek abortions, sometimes even when the pregnant woman’s life is in danger. Too many women find themselves scraping together the money to travel out of their home states to places such as Massachusetts to seek surgical or medication abortions where they are still protected and legal.

In lieu of our normal newsletter, we have chosen to mark Independence Day, the Fourth of July, by reprinting abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s famous anti-slavery speech, delivered on July 5, 1852, to the citizens of his hometown of Rochester, NY. Many of us have read excerpts of this great speech, but not the entirety. We think it is worth considering without editing, as we face so much discrimination, hate, and bigotry in our country today. 

Is anyone else gobsmacked to learn that our Supreme Court Justices are not required to abide by any written ethics rules, not even those imposed on all other federal judges? 

We write about human rights every week and suggest actions we can all take, so we didn’t expect to be surprised by what might be said at last week’s Community Conversation at The Cabot about “Making Our Community Safe for Transgender Youth.”

Owning one’s own home has always been part of the American Dream. Finding a place in your price range can often require some compromise. Then making an offer and having your credit rating checked. Next is hunting for the best deal on a mortgage and coming up with the down payment. For those of us who are lucky, that down payment often includes loans or gifts from parents and grandparents.

Visiting a friend in a rehabilitation hospital last week, shortly after reading Matthew Desmond’s Poverty by America, it was impossible to ignore the varying levels of health care available to people in our country. 

I’m following two four-year-old little girls down the street in Brooklyn one afternoon as they walk home from preschool. One of them is my granddaughter. The walk is about three-quarters of a mile but can take up to a half-hour because the girls dawdle, stopping at every tree on the way to contemplate its climbability, the leaves beginning to sprout, the flowers at the base, or to challenge each other to a swing on a limb. 

As I was sitting in my doctor’s office at Lahey in Danvers two days ago, finishing up a discussion about the state of my thyroid gland, she and I paused to listen to an announcement on the PA system. “There is an external situation. Everyone is advised to shelter in place. No one should leave the building until clearance is given.”

Recent conversations with friends have made it clear that many of us don’t fully understand the difference between Plan B and Plan C in pregnancy management. With the overturning of Roe v Wade and the more recent ban on medication abortion pills…

Here’s a frightening statistic to try to swallow with your evening vitamins. Boston’s Back Bay residents have a life expectancy of 92 years while residents of Roxbury, just four miles away, can expect to live only 59 years. What we know is that factors such as access to health care, affordable housing, and clean air have a lot to do with the difference in these two outcomes.

Recently, we’ve been grappling with some of the finer points of being an ally to the marginalized among us. The new book, “Say the Right Thing,” by Kenzie Yoshino and David Glasgow, NYU law professors and founders of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, offers us reminders about the importance of standing up when we hear and see things; of what not to say because it may sound hollow, patronizing, or have the exact opposite of the intended effect; how to engage in respectful disagreement; and more.

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill, was a bi-partisan effort to help returning servicemen adjust to civilian life by providing funds for education, government backed loans, unemployment, and job-finding assistance.

We are all well aware of the mental health issues plaguing teens, especially youth in the LGBTQ+ community. Transgender youth particularly struggle as they are bullied and ostracized by peers, often rejected by their families, and desperate for a sense of belonging.

When our kids were in grade school, some of their schoolmates wrote to a crayon manufacturer to protest the name of their “Flesh” crayon. They insisted it surely wasn’t the color of the skin of the Black children in their classroom, nor of any but the blondest and fairest of them all. The company responded and changed the name. Truth be told, the children’s letters were probably joined by hundreds, if not thousands, of others from around the country.

Imagine you have a chronic disease that can be easily managed by a medication you cannot afford. If you don’t take the medicine every day, you risk going blind, having your legs amputated, or dying. But you just don’t have the money, so you ration your doses, hoping that some medication is better than none. You are playing a game of roulette you didn’t choose.

What is nostalgia? Is it memory filtered through at least a couple of pairs of rose-colored glasses? Is it what we wish our past had been or just the best of what it was?

We all know far too well that the contributions and roles of Black, brown, and AAPI people, women, and those in the LGBTQ community are underrepresented in history classes throughout the country - not just in the South, though the problem may be most egregious in some states there.

Many of us came of age in our kitchens with The Silver Palate and Moosewood Cookbook as our guides and gas stoves as our workstations of choice. Now along comes news that our gas stoves are bad for our health.

In a conversation over the holidays, one of my sons reflected on a job he had scooping ice cream at a chichi organic ice cream store in Berlin. He remarked that he didn’t think it was fair that he was expected to get there a few minutes early in order to don his work apron and wash his hands, but he wasn’t allowed to clock in – and, thus, get paid – until after those tasks were completed. That didn’t sound right to him. His passive/aggressive response was to get there as close to clock-in time as possible – or even a little late – and then grab the apron as he clocked in.

We admit it. It takes a lot to shock us these days. Five days to elect a Speaker of the House? Crazy, but just another day in the new reality. Shirtsleeve weather in December? Getting to be routine. Veterinary tranquilizer mixed with fentanyl the new street drug? Alarming, but far from shocking.