Health Care
Ken Paxton Wants to Eliminate the ACA’s Pre-Existing Condition Protections. How Would That Affect Texans?
Judge Blocks Texas’ ‘Near Catastrophic’ Fetal Burial Law
A state law requiring women to bury or cremate fetal remains from miscarriages and abortions has been blocked by a federal judge.
A federal judge blocked Texas’ fetal burial law on Wednesday, writing that the legislation would “likely cause a near catastrophic failure of the healthcare...Read More
Reformers Hopeful the 2019 Legislature will Expand Texas’ Medical Marijuana Law
Activists are mapping a path to end arrests for possession and broaden the state's medical marijuana program ahead of the next legislative session.
Shortly after returning to Washington state in 2007 from a 16-month deployment in Afghanistan, retired U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant April Martinez began suffer...Read More
How Anti-Abortion Activists are Training Their ‘Next Generation of Pro-Life Leaders’
College students descended on Houston to learn how to "convert" their peers to oppose abortion and how to "dismantle" Roe v. Wade.
This summer, nearly 30 college students gathered in Houston for a weeklong summit on how they could be the generation to end abortion in America. One day, after...Read More
Professor Trill
Rapper Bun B on Port Arthur, resilience and the meaning of trill.
The Bayou City loves Bernard “Bun B” Freeman so much that he’s been given the title “Houston’s unofficial mayor.” But the Grammy-nominated renaissan...Read More
Tinkering with the Human Heart in ‘Ticker’
Set in Houston, Mimi Swartz’s new book delivers an engrossing human drama populated with off-kilter geniuses.
Early in Mimi Swartz’s fascinating Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart, a surgeon with no good options left cuts out a sheep’s heart and...Read More
Amid Record Youth Suicide Attempts, Texas Lags in Prevention Training for Teachers
Despite a 2015 law requiring suicide prevention training for teachers, state officials say they do not monitor or enforce the requirement.
Pretty much everyone at Fairfield High School liked Jonathan Childers, a 15-year-old with kind brown eyes and a wide smile. The freshman played football, lifted...Read More
Documentary Follows a Family’s Fight to Change Texas Law that Turned Brain-Dead Pregnant Woman into an ‘Incubator’
62 Days is meant to bring attention to laws that “punish women and put them in extraordinary circumstances where their choices and autonomy are dismissed,” the filmmaker said.
For 62 days, Marlise Muñoz’s family was forced to watch as her body deteriorated. The 33-year-old paramedic had suffered a pulmonary embolism two days before...Read More
‘Shamed and Stigmatized’: Austin Woman Forced by Hospital to Bury Fetal Remains Testifies Against State Law
Blake Norton, who shared her experience publicly for the first time with the Observer earlier this year, testified in federal court that the forced fetal burial left her “shocked, upset, confused.”
On the first day of the trial over Texas’ fetal burial law, abortion providers had a rejoinder to the claim that they don’t know how patients feel about the...Read More
As a Pediatrician, I Know There’s No Way to Jail Migrant Families Without Hurting Kids
If we really care about migrant kids, we can’t stop at ending the obvious atrocity of family separation at the border.
In my daily life as a pediatrician, I sometimes care for kids who have been removed from their homes — just the day before, or even that same day — by Child...Read More