Here’s the thing about Daylight Savings: As soon as I feel like there’s more sunshine in the day, I start singing a lot more — in bar bathrooms, on the bus, at my desk. I can be found carrying a whole variety of tunes, like a deranged karaoker, all year long, but when the sun comes out my frenzied serenading ratchets up at least 50 percent.
I really recommend that you try singing to yourself more, because it makes every horrible day just a little bit better. On that note (har har), our chasers for this week are going to be the very best options to auto-croon — a sort of starter kit, if you will. Trust me on this — it’s my No. 1 hobby.
SHOT: A new report from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project looked at how HB2, the Texas law that’s pushed over half of the state’s abortion clinics to close due to its extreme regulations, has impacted abortion access since it was enacted in 2014. Thirty-eight percent of the women surveyed had to travel an average of 85 miles to an abortion provider after their closest clinic was forced to close by HB2 regulations. The remaining clinics are completely overloaded, many with wait times of over a month for an appointment.
CHASER: This first one is hopefully the most ridiculous song on this list, but also the most perfect. In related news, Grist’s Senior Managing Editor Darby Minow Smith will likely murder me if she hears one more note from it come out of my mouth:
SHOT: Who is Merrick Garland? He is not, in fact, the antagonist of a Steinbeck novel — but rather Obama’s nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court bench. No one can say how Garland will impact abortion rights, however, as he’s never ruled on a case that deals with abortion and has been extremely tight-lipped about the issue his whole career.
CHASER: If you are the type of person who loves nothing more than to sing in the car — if you’re not, I’m afraid I don’t really understand you — you ain’t lived until you have hollered every word of this to the 405:
SHOT: Another day, another promise of male birth control right around the corner: Researchers at the University Minnesota announced at the 251st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society this week that they may have made a breakthrough in developing a non-hormonal birth control pill.
CHASER: Where I’m from, this song is considered very romantic, and I will stand by its truth and beauty until the day I die:
SHOT: The use of highly effective, long-acting forms of birth control are on the rise among teens — which is great for reducing teen pregnancy rates! But they’re not as great for protecting against STIs — and of the 1.8 percent of teens who rely on an IUD or hormonal implant as their primary form of birth control, 60 percent do not use condoms.
CHASER: Another perfect — YES! IT IS — love song and excellent driving song to boot:
SHOT: A Catholic hospital in Frisco, Colo., refused to perform a post-partum tubal ligation for a patient that was recommended by her doctor — because, of course, Catholic institutions are not permitted to perform sterilization procedures. The Center for Reproductive Rights has taken on this case, which could potentially indicate the start of a long-needed pushback against Catholic hospital policies that disregard the medical needs of many, many women.
CHASER: People are always like, “Eve, Taylor Swift did the best song titled ‘Shake It Off’ of all time.” And I’m like, “You had better get the fuck outta this car.”
SHOT: Bernie Sanders did a tweet about reproductive rights.
CHASER: That said — Taylor Swift did do one of the best breakup songs of all time. So, you know, if that’s where you happen to be right now:
Why do we do this news roundup every week? Even if each subsequent development in access to sexual education, contraception, and abortion is hair-tearing-ly frustrating, it’s really important that women know that they’re happening.
But why should all environmentalists (and humans, honestly) care about reproductive rights? Watch our video to find out more:
