Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion throughout the country, marks its 42nd birthday on Thursday. But for women across the United States, it’s a somewhat complicated anniversary.
To avoid disappointing the hordes of anti-choice marchers descending on Washington, D.C., for the March for Life, Republicans will pinch-hit with another bill from their deep bench of anti-choice legislation—a bill to restrict federal funding for abortion coverage.
House Republican leaders abruptly dropped plans late Wednesday to vote on an anti-abortion bill amid a revolt by female GOP lawmakers concerned that the legislation’s restrictive language would once again spoil the party’s chances of broadening its appeal to women and younger voters.
Somewhere between his assassination and today began an MLK-neutering campaign meant to turn the famed agitator’s holiday into a national Day of Service, a generic mishmash of good feelings that contorts King’s social-justice legacy into a blissful Hallmark card of post-racial nothingness.
Today’s Oscar nominations contained a host of snubs that have critics and commentators up in arms (as they do every year). But the optics of this year’s slate are particularly egregious when you combine the surprising coolness towards Martin Luther King Jr. biopic Selma—nominated for Best Picture but missing in the Director, Actor, and Screenplay categories—with the fact that all 20 acting nominees this year are white, the first time such a thing has happened since the Oscars honoring the films of 1995.
