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Good morning! It's Friday, July 15th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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This is another big week for legal fights over abortion access. The attorney general of Texas is suing the Biden Administration over federal rules on providing abortion to save the life of the mother. The Health Department argues that federal law on emergency treatment supersedes state abortion restrictions.
A different legal battle is playing out in Indiana, where a doctor performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim. The girl traveled from Ohio because of the law there. Now, Indiana's attorney general is threatening criminal charges against the doctor. The doctor's lawyer says she broke no laws and may sue the AG over the accusations.
This next account struck us because it's another illustration of how these laws restricting abortion access can force people to make difficult personal decisions. Farrah Day was really excited when she found out that she was pregnant. She announced it on Facebook, she started shopping for baby things. But then…
She found herself in a really difficult situation when a pregnancy complication arrived at around 12 weeks. That's Peter Holley from "Texas Monthly" magazine.
Her baby had something called fetal hydrops, which is a condition that's fairly rare in which there's swelling inside the baby's tissue, and that swelling can lead to severe complications.
Farrah was told that if she continued with her pregnancy, it was likely that her child would die within hours or days of being born. She didn't want to have a baby that would suffer and die, so she decided to have an abortion. But since she lives in Texas, the new law there meant that she would have to leave the state.
Farrah had a team of doctors that she was really comfortable with, and she found herself in this situation where to leave the state meant kind of going into the unknown and finding a doctor who she wasn't gonna know, wasn't gonna have a relationship with, and then relying on that person and trusting that person to be able to carry out a procedure at a fairly advanced stage that, you know, really put her in sort of a gray zone.
She had to drive 12 hours to a clinic in Albuquerque. But there were other complications and expenses. Babysitting for Farrah's kids while she traveled, taking time off of work, booking a hotel. Everything added up to around $2200. But she could afford it, so she and her fiancé made the drive and got the procedure done. Afterward, the staff handed Farrah a box with her baby's ashes, a piece of paper with his footprints and a blue blanket. It was the first time she knew that she was carrying a boy. Then she had to get back in the car to make the 12-hour trip back home.
And it was a really somber, terrible experience being stuck in a car, going across the desert, being somewhat in danger, physically, after having this procedure done. Farrah told the reporter that she has no regrets, but she is still grieving. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Holley says Farrah's grief has turned into rage.
Farrah was really angry because she felt like she was being placed in a category of somebody who was having an abortion kind of casually. And the reality is, when you look at the statistics, that person doesn't really exist. Most people have abortions fairly early; they're not abortions that take place in the second trimester. Farrah is somebody who wanted a child. She's somebody who took the process really seriously. And to be sort of labeled as someone who casually decided to have an abortion really was misleading, in her mind, and really frustrating.
Farrah says she believes she made a choice that was ethical and humane for herself and her family, and also for her unborn son. She says if she didn't, her baby would have suffered, and that would've crushed her soul.
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A warning that this next story is about suicide.
988. The idea is to provide faster access to mental-health advice, and it's easier to remember than the 1-800 number, which still works. Callers will be connected with trained counselors, who can bring in local crisis teams in some areas. Organizers also hope that the new 988 mental-health number will ease some of the burden on 911 call centers. "NPR" spoke to psychologist Ben Miller.
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If you look at the data from the police, it's about 20% of their total staff time is spent responding and transporting individuals who are experiencing a mental health crisis.
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But even with the roll-out of this new number, there's concerns that call centers won't be staffed well enough to meet demand. Here's "NPR" health correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee.
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So, just in the past year, the federal government has invested historic amounts of money to beef up the 988 infrastructure. But only four states have passed legislation to fund 988 and associated services, and just about half have a plan for when the line goes live.
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The head of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline tells "NPR" that, if there are staffing issues, the system will route callers to counselors in other states. He says there may be some waiting, but callers will get to counselors who care and can help. Around 130 million people in the U.S. live in an area that doesn't have enough psychiatrists, so the need is real, and dialing 988 could save lives.
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Gas prices are down a bit, but they're still way higher than they were a year ago. Recently, President Biden said gas stations should lower prices when oil prices drop. But the people who run these gas stations say it's not that simple. Here's what one owner, Debbie Morris, told a Kentucky "NBC" station.
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I just got 3,000 gallons last week. It was $12,000. As a little guy, it's really hard for me to play that game.
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You hear how she calls herself a "little guy"? Well, that's more common than you might think. When you drive by a gas station and it's got those big signs for BP or Shell, you might think it's those companies that own the gas stations. It turns out, giant energy companies don't own or run most gas stations. More than half of them are independent. They're often mom-and-pop entrepreneurs.
And gas itself isn't that profitable. After operating costs, gas stations only average 10 cents a gallon in profit.
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It's often said that they make more money selling coffee than they do gasoline.
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Gas stations are counting on you walking inside and picking up some beef jerky and lottery tickets. That's where they make the real money. So, many actually try to keep gas prices low, otherwise you might just drive on by. It's why gas station owners say they hate high gas prices too. It can hurt their business. "The Wall Street Journal" spoke to a gas station owner in Ohio. And he said, after factoring in higher credit card fees, he's basically losing money on every gallon sold.
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There's a whole lot the art world knows about Vincent van Gogh. His work and his life have been picked over by generations of art historians. That's why a discovery of a hidden self-portrait this week is so exciting.
Imagine how blown away conservators at the National Galleries of Scotland were when they X-rayed one of van Gogh's paintings and found another painting behind it. It was a self-portrait, on the back, covered by cardboard. Van Gogh apparently re-used canvases a lot as a way to save money, using both sides. This has gotta be one of the most incredible "Wait, there's a back?" moments of all time.
Pulitzer Prize-winning "Washington Post" art critic Sebastian Smee says this discovery could lead to big new insights. Art historians have long been fascinated by van Gogh's self-portraits, and that's because they were a way that he experimented and developed his style. Hiring models cost money, but looking at your own face is free. And now, curators have one new self-portrait to analyze and admire.
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You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And check out our weekend interview show, "In Conversation." This week, I talk to Dorothy Roberts. She's spent more than two decades studying the way that the child welfare system affects low-income and Black families. And she says the system doesn't prioritize children's well-being. Instead, it punishes parents for things largely outside of their control.
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Its tool, and I would call it its weapon, is to take children away and hold them hostage, and then force parents to fix up their lives, fix the problem themselves.
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Check out that weekend listen. I'll be back with the news on Monday.
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