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What to know as abortion battles move to states · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, May 6th. 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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  In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers are moving a bill forward that would classify abortion as homicide and allow abortion patients to be criminally charged. The bill would grant rights from, quote, "the moment of fertilization." Experts say that language could restrict IVF and emergency contraception. With the Supreme Court ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, states where anti-abortion politicians are in control could pass much tougher laws.
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  Dahlia Lithwick: And I think that the really grim reality that we're looking at is that it may not take all that long to say we're gonna make the jump from saying that you can't get an abortion in our state to really criminalizing certain acts.
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  That's Dahlia Lithwick. She's a senior editor at "Slate" who's covered the Supreme Court for two decades. She laid out how legal battles will change as state laws become more important. She expects to see more efforts to restrict the ability to seek an abortion in another state. Dahlia pointed to the recently passed law in Texas, which allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps a person get an abortion after around six weeks of pregnancy. She said that law is already being used as a model in other states.
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  Dahlia Lithwick: For instance, Missouri is a state that is talking about stopping their own residents from having abortions in states that allow abortions. And they're saying that any private citizen could sue. Right? This is reminiscent of that Texas bounty bill, you know, that private citizens would have a cause of action to sue an out-of-state physician who performs a procedure out of state and also [LAUGHS] to sue anyone who tries to transport someone across state lines to a clinic outside of Missouri.
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  We're also seeing some states move in the opposite direction, to protect reproductive rights.
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  Dahlia Lithwick: Connecticut has just passed a model bill that would actually immunize its own physicians from suit. And it's a really, I think, bold effort to say, you actually don't [LAUGHS] have jurisdiction to go after a Connecticut doctor for providing services.
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  If you want to hear my full conversation with Dahlia Lithwick, check out this weekend's episode of "Apple News in Conversation." We covered a lot of ground, from the reasoning in Justice Alito's draft opinion to public perception of the court today to what this means for its future. You can find the episode by searching for "Apple News in Conversation" in the Apple News app or in the Podcasts app.
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  We see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy all over the news, all the time. And his story of going from TV president to actual president is now very well known. But I recommend a piece in "TIME" magazine that gets into Zelenskyy's head and tells you about his state of mind as a wartime leader. Correspondent Simon Shuster spent two weeks with Zelenskyy inside his presidential compound.
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  Simon Shuster: At one point in our interview, I asked President Zelenskyy, what time of day is the hardest for him? And he said, the nights are definitely the hardest because he lays awake, and he feels that he hasn't earned the right to sleep. He thinks about what he might have missed that day, someone he might have forgotten to respond to or to help.
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  Shuster says there were times that felt almost normal. Zelenskyy and his staff would be cracking jokes over coffee. But those moments were fleeting.
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  Shuster: The first time I saw him in the presidential compound when I just arrived in early April, it was the day when Russian missiles struck a crowded train station in the east Ukrainian city of a Kramatorsk. 50 people were killed, more than a hundred were injured. These were mostly women and children. And I saw Zelenskyy that day and he looked awful. He looked green in the face. He could barely, you know, he's usually very charismatic and well spoken, but this time his oratory skills totally failed him.
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  Shuster had to go through extreme security measures to get access to the compound, which Ukraine is keeping secret to protect against Russian strikes.
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  Shuster: There are sandbags everywhere. There are soldiers everywhere. They keep the lights off because they don't want an enemy sniper to be able to get a clean shot from outside through the window. So, most of the time you're moving around through dark corridors.
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  It's been more than two months since Russia first invaded Ukraine. It's estimated that thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed and more than 12 million people have fled their homes. Every day, there are reports of civilian atrocities. It's a long way from Zelenskyy's career as a comedian when Shuster first met him.
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  Shuster: And I asked him, do you regret it, you know, do you regret making that choice in 2019 to carry on into politics? And he said he doesn't regret it. I mean, [LAUGHS] he said that, you know, even though it's cost him a lot, even though it's pained him, it's changed him as a human being. He feels that it's his destiny to take up this role and he intends to play it to the end.
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  The WNBA season tips off tonight. And for a league that's racking up more viewers and more money, the outlook is pretty mixed.
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  Howard Megdal: The mood is excited, but apprehensive heading into the WNBA season, which starts this weekend.
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  That's Howard Megdal, who recently wrote about the start of the season for "Sports Illustrated."
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  Megdal: There are obviously a lot of reasons for excitement about the league, which is on an upward trajectory on things including audience and, also, just general buzz within the culture. But there is also obviously league-wide concern about the fate of Brittney Griner, the star for the Phoenix Mercury, who is currently being held in a Russian prison.
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  Griner has been there for weeks. Now the State Department is declaring her "wrongfully detained." That may sound like bureaucratic semantics, but this move is raising hopes that the U.S. may be getting closer to making a deal for Griner's release.
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  Roughly half of WNBA players also play overseas, many in Russia. It's how they supplement their league salaries, which can range from about $60,000 a year for a rookie to just over $200,000 a year for top players.
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  Megdal: The maximum salary in the WNBA is about a third as high as the minimum salary in the NBA. There is a great deal of investment needed in order for those scales to balance.
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  As one agent puts it, it's not as though players wake up one morning and say: Hey, I'd love to play in Russia. They do it because the money is great, way better than opportunities at home. But after Griner's detention and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Megdal says more players are now thinking twice.
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  Megdal: Well, the reality of Britney Griner being held in a Russian prison is that for virtually every player who's gone overseas in the past, or even in the recent past, was a sense that there but for the grace of God go I. And so, these players were thinking again and again about how they plan to make a living going forward. And so, apart from questions of salary, there are also questions of safety.
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  Still, players say for them to turn down playing abroad, and the paychecks that come with it, they need real change to happen in America. The WNBA commissioner says she's working on improving opportunities, like marketing deals that could double some players' earnings. The league's goal is to make it so that players will prioritize playing for American teams.
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  Our last story is a science story, but to appreciate it, you might need a little context about how to brush your hair. If you don't have long hair, you may not be familiar with the struggle. It gets tangly out here. You need a strategy. "The Wall Street Journal" has the story of a Harvard professor who was very good at physics, but very bad at brushing his 5-year-old daughter's hair. So, he decided to put a team together to tackle the question: what is the most painless way to brush tangled hair?
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  And it's more complicated than you might think. It involves breaking the problem into its tiniest parts, basically two strands of hair and a comb. Another scientist built a hair-brushing robot. And the best method she landed on will sound familiar to many parents: start at the bottom and carefully work your way up. This is about more than your morning routine. Tangles come up in DNA. They come up in astrophysics. This physicist says there's much more to discover.
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  You can find this story and all the stories we talked about in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. Enjoy the weekend. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms. We're back with the news on Monday.
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