San Antonio doctor Alan Braid is facing lawsuits after revealing that he performed an abortion in defiance of a new Texas law. This comes after the Justice Department sued the state and asked a federal judge to temporarily block enforcement of the law while the lawsuit plays out. The law, also known as SB-8, bans abortions six weeks after pregnancy, before many people know that they’re pregnant. This fall, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a potential Mississippi law banning the procedure after 15 weeks. Legal experts say Braid's situation represents a test of whether the Texas law and those like it can stand. Many question what these laws could mean for the future of Roe v. Wade and reproductive rights. This week’s source can provide context on this news, and reproductive justice as it relates to race and class. 

Khiara M. Bridges is a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and anthropologist specializing in the intersectionality of race, class, reproductive justice and law. Bridges studies how reproductive rights law and biomedical ethics reinforce racial inequalities in the U.S.; her ethnographic studies in hospitals have informed her scholarship on the ways that race and class impact the wellbeing of pregnant people. She teaches courses in criminal law, reproductive rights and justice, environmental justice and family law. She is also the author of three books: Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization (2011), The Poverty of Privacy Rights (2017) and Critical Race Theory: A Primer (2019). 

You can listen to Khiara Bridges here.

Other sources of interest this week

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden told the U.N. General Assembly that the U.S. is starting "a new era of relentless diplomacy" following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last month. This comes after the Pentagon acknowledged it had killed an aid worker, seven children and two other civilians in a drone strike in Kabul during the withdrawal, leaving questions about what the future of U.S. and Middle East relations could look like.  

Maggy Zenger is a professor of practice and affiliated faculty member of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona. Zenger’s work focuses on Middle East journalism. She was the Iraq country director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in Iraq for nearly two years, starting centers in Baghdad and Sulaimani to train Iraqi journalists. Zanger has developed several new global journalism classes at UA, including Media Coverage of International Crises, International Opinion Writing and Reporting the Middle East.

Sources of the Week on the news

Georges Benjamin spoke to NPR about the consequences of having unvaccinated students on college campuses. Nalini Nadkarni spoke to Iowa Public Radio about her work studying the complexity of tree canopy ecosystems. Lanhee Chen went on News Nation Now to discuss the recent California recall vote. Ellen Wu spoke to The Los Angeles Times about the model minority myth. Shashi Shekhar spoke to StateTech about innovations to improve management of municipal cars and trucks. William Spriggs spoke to the Financial Times about a recent rise in Black unemployment rates.

Thanks to all who have been utilizing sources.npr.org!