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Victims of sexual violence often left with overwhelming medical bills after emergency care

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Sexual violence survivors may often face overwhelming medical bills when seeking emergency care, a factor that could discourage many people from seeking treatment, experts say.

Survivors of sexual violence are charged nearly $4,000 in medical bills, on average, after seeking emergency care following an assault, according to a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Only one in five victims of sexual violence seek medical care in the United States. The study’s authors conclude that medical bills may deter victims from seeking treatment.

People without health insurance pay an average of $3,673 out of pocket while those with insurance still pay around 14% of total costs billed, an average of $497.

Pregnant women that experience sexual assault and seek emergency medical care experience the highest charges at $4,553 on average, for their visit.

These bills may particularly burden low-income women and girls, disproportionately victims of sexual assault.

“We’re discouraging people from seeking medical care when we charge them a huge amount of money for that care,” study author Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, MD, a distinguished professor of public health at CUNY’s Hunter College, and a lecturer of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News.

“I saw a rape victim who told me that she hadn’t gone to the emergency room because she knew she wouldn’t be able to afford it,” said study author Dr. Samuel Dickman, healthcare policy researcher and primary care physician at Planned Parenthood of Montana.

Dickman tells ABC News, “the patients I’ve seen and who’ve described to me the feeling that they are completely unsupported by the healthcare system. They know they can’t access affordable care after being assaulted. For many survivors, that feels like adding an additional layer of trauma.”

Woolhandler says that people should ask for financial assistance when seeking treatment in the emergency department.

“Depending on your income, you may be eligible for financial assistance, and you often have to ask for it,” she said. Another tip from Woolhandler is “for people who are veterans to check and see if they’re eligible for care at the Veterans Administration hospitals because that care comes with very minimal copayments and deductibles.”

In this post-Roe era, women are even less protected by the healthcare system when they experience sexual assault. As of September 2022, 11 states have banned abortions, including abortions of pregnancies that resulted from rape.

“Under laws that say that rape survivors need to prove that they got medical care to qualify for an exemption to get an abortion. That means you’re asking the survivors to go to the emergency room, potentially incurring thousands of medical debt to access abortion. It’s totally inhumane,” said Dickman.

“We need to reform the Violence Against Women Act to cover medical care, comprehensively, not just for the forensic exam,” Dickman said.

The Violence Against Women Act is a federal law that pays for evidence gathering but leaves people responsible for additional bills associated with emergency care following an assault. Broadening provisions of the Violence Against Women Act to include payment for other services, not just evidence collection, could help survivors avoid financial hardship and further trauma.

“Tragically, our political system continues to fail survivors of rape and sexual assault,” said Dickman.

What’s behind rise of women in US manufacturing amid industry revival?

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A surge of women in the manufacturing industry in recent years has punctured the stereotypes of who is working in American factories, data shows.

During the 2010s, the share of women in the manufacturing industry grew among all age groups, according to a Census Bureau analysis released on Monday. The representation of women dipped during the early months of the pandemic but rose back up toward pre-pandemic levels last year, the analysis showed.

Despite their progress, women make up only about 30% of manufacturing workers, according to Census Data.

The surge of women in the field has coincided with a revival for the industry overall. As of August, the manufacturing sector had added 461,000 jobs in 2022, putting the industry hundreds of thousands of jobs above where it stood before the pandemic-induced recession.

The inroads for women in the industry can partly be attributed to the attractive pay and benefits in manufacturing as well as the industry’s shift toward automation, which has generated jobs that require more education and less heavy lifting, experts told ABC News. But the industry’s male-dominated culture remains a barrier to women, they said.

Here are two reasons why the share of women in the manufacturing industry has grown, according to experts:

Manufacturing jobs pay well

A key reason for the growth of women in manufacturing stems from strong compensation in the industry, especially when compared with sectors typically associated with women, such as care and service work, said Tameshia Bridges-Manfield, vice president of Workforce Innovation at Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit organization focused on equitable economic advancement.

“Wages are significantly higher,” Bridges-Manfield told ABC News. “Women are looking at their options and what’s available.”

The average annual wage in production occupations, which range from auto manufacturing to oil and gas extraction, stands at $43,070, according to Bureau of Labor statistics data. By comparison, the average yearly wage for waiters and waitresses is $29,010, the data showed.

Jessica Deming, an organizer with The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a labor union, spent seven years working at a Boeing plant in Portland, Oregon before leaving in June.

Prior to joining Boeing, Deming worked as both a bartender and a front desk manager at a hotel, earning a total of roughly $40,000 a year, she said. Within a year of working at Boeing, Deming made $30 per hour, which amounts to about $62,000 per year, she said. At the end of her tenure at Boeing, she made $47 per hour or nearly $100,000 per year, she said.

“As women in manufacturing, we were told a lie and a truth,” Deming told ABC News. “We were told being a machinist is really, really hard and women can’t do it. The truth is it’s really hard and the lie is women can’t do it.”

“As women are being more empowered, they realize they are being sold a bill of goods,” she added. “They realize the opportunities that lay before them.”

Shift to skilled manufacturing

Another reason behind the growth of women in manufacturing is the growth of automation in the industry, which has given rise to some jobs that require higher education and incur less physical strain, experts said.

“Too many Americans think of manufacturing as something of yesteryear,” Carolyn Lee, the president and executive director of the Manufacturing Institute, told ABC News. “It’s not dingy, dark and dangerous. It’s full of technology and opportunities for collaboration.”

Perception of the manufacturing industry is catching up to the changes, studies show. Sixty-four percent of consumers view manufacturing as innovative, an increase from 39% of respondents five years ago, according to a study released by Deloitte in March.

A further revival of the manufacturing sector could add $1.5 million jobs to the economy, with most of those jobs concentrated at the middle-skill level, a McKinsey study in August found

“Manufacturing jobs look different – it’s not the dirty, dark shop floor,” Bridges-Manfield said. “The exposure to manufacturing and what it is in 2022 may make it more appealing to women and girls in the long term.”

Students at more than 50 schools, universities stage reproductive justice protests

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Students at more than 60 high schools and universities across at least 29 states are holding student strikes and events on Thursday to fight for reproductive justice.

The self-dubbed “Day of Student Action” is organized by the Graduate Student Action Network, a group formed in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade ending federal protections for abortion rights, and the Young Democratic Socialists of America.

Students plan to demand that their school step in and defend their reproductive rights and freedom of gender expression in the absence of action from elected leaders, CalTech graduate student and founder of GSAN, Rachael Kuintzle told ABC News in an interview.

GSAN was born over the summer when Kuintzle started emailing student leaders including grad student government leaders, union reps and advocacy club officers.

“Right after the Supreme Court decision in June, I felt really helpless and I started reaching out to grad students across the country … emailing them, and asking if they wanted to meet together and figure out what we can do to get health into the hands of our students as soon as possible. And so what came out of that was this day of action,” Kuintzle said in an interview with ABC News.

Another student group, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, was also separately running a reproductive justice group looking into how they could make a difference and so the two groups teamed up, organizing protests and events jointly, Kuintzle said.

GSAN plans to send letters to Congress and President Joe Biden on Thursday listing their demands.

In the group’s letter to Congress, they are demanding safe, legal and accessible abortion; gender-affirming healthcare; free contraception of all varieties; and federally mandated sex education, including standardized curriculum on sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy prevention and consent.

GSAN is asking Biden to declare a public health emergency over abortion to ensure that abortion pills can be provided by mail for free in all states and implement a program to mail free at-home pregnancy tests on demand to U.S. households to enable early detection of pregnancies.

The letters will be sent from the group of student leaders, but students at some campuses are also gathering signatures for petitions listing demands specific to their school.

Some of the campuses organizing protests or events Thursday include the University of Arkansas, the University of South Dakota, multiple CUNY system campuses, University of Texas at Austin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School.

Nikole Schneider and Danielle Galvin, students at at the University of South Dakota, told ABC News they will also be fighting for health insurance, which they do not currently have. They plan to set up several booths on Thursday for voter registration, the student health center, the school’s mental health services, Planned Parenthood and a fundraising booth for a student-run group that offers free healthcare services for those without insurance.

Schneider and Galvin said being in contact with students from around the country has allowed them to feel like they are making a difference, despite initially feeling lonely and helpless after Roe was overturned.

“It’s definitely changed how I think that I can affect what’s happening in the country, especially now, just like being a part of something bigger,” Schneider said.

Galvin said it has been eye-opening to hear the support other students around the country are getting from their schools, with those students giving them advice on how to advocate for themselves with their university’s administration.

A trigger ban in South Dakota prohibits abortions entirely, “unless there is appropriate and reasonable medical judgment that performance of an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant female,” according to the law.

The law, which went into effect when Roe was overturned, makes it a class 6 felony to provide abortion care in the state.

Students at the University of Arkansas have already had a few protests since Roe was overturned, but they are hoping this day of action would give them momentum going into the midterms, specifically because of the tight restrictions on abortion in the state and attacks on transgender individuals, organizer and graduate student Katy Dupree told ABC News.

A state law in Arkansas bans all abortions except to save the life of the mother, making it a felony for anyone to perform a non-approved abortion, punishable with up to 10 years in prison.

Dupree said they are organizing a comprehensive resource fair with a voter registration booth and speakers along with their student walkout and protest.

“This organization kind of fell into my lap. And it has been a very serendipitous and beneficial kind of happenstance for me, I struggled a lot through the pandemic with figuring out if graduate school is something that I really wanted to continue to pursue. And if I was happy with what I was studying, and really found that advocating for others helped me pull myself kind of up and out,” Dupree said.

The student leaders all agreed that the Oct. 6 protest is just a starting point. What started out as Kuintzle emailing students around the country has since grown into a more organized graduate student group.

“We have a structure, we voted on a name together, we meet regularly, we have rules of operation, we’re over 50 grad leaders in over 30 states,” Kuintzle said.

Only 59 campuses opted to publicly list their name on the GSAN website, saying they will participate in the protests, but Kuintzle said there will be events at seven other schools.

The group plans to continue organizing events and advocating for students in the future.

“We’re committed to fighting for our students rights, not just in reproductive justice, but beyond. We’re looking for future actions and climate justice and indigenous sovereignty, we’re going to be taking some action to fight for higher stipends and better health care coverage for graduate students in the near future as well,” Kuintzle said.

Texas trooper under investigation for Uvalde massacre response now a cop for school district

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(UVALDE, Texas) — ABC News has confirmed that a former Texas state trooper now under investigation for her conduct in responding to the May 24 Uvalde school shooting rampage is among the new officers hired for the Uvalde school district police department — the same force that has come under fire for the bungled response to the massacre.

The news was first reported by CNN.

CNN reported Wednesday night that the former trooper is Crimson Elizondo, the first member of the Texas Department of Public Safety to enter the hallway at Robb Elementary School after the shooter gained entry. A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation confirmed CNN’s report.

The trooper did not bring her rifle or vest into the school, according to the results of an internal review by DPS that was detailed to ABC News. As a result of potential failure to follow standard procedures, the trooper was among five DPS personnel whose conduct is now being investigated by the agency’s inspector general. The five have been suspended; the trooper in question resigned from DPS and went to work for the Uvalde schools.

Elizondo is the second officer listed on the district’s police webpage.

The official said DPS was not contacted by Uvalde’s school personnel prior to hiring the former trooper.

DPS declined to comment. The Uvalde school district has not responded to a request for comment. The trooper declined to comment to CNN.

Nineteen students and two teachers were killed during the massacre in May. Some families of the dead have joined to form a group called Lives Robbed.

In a statement Wednesday night, the group said: “We are disgusted and angry at Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s (UCISD) decision to hire Officer Crimson Elizondo. Her hiring puts into question the credibility and thoroughness of UCISD’s HR and vetting practices. And it confirms what we have been saying all along: UCISD has not and is not in the business of ensuring the safety of our children at school.”

The statement continues: “We cannot trust the decisions that have been made in regard to the safety of our schools. Therefore, we are calling for all UCISD officers to be suspended, pending the conclusion of the investigation by JPPI Investigations LLC. The results of this investigation must be released to the families of the victims of the Robb Elementary shooting, as well as to the public. Our families have been calling for accountability, and we deserve transparency and justice at the state, local and federal levels. Our children have been taken from us. We will not stop fighting until we have answers and we ensure the safety of the children in our community is the top priority.”

Questions were also raised about the district’s pre-hiring vetting of Pete Arredondo, the former district police chief who has been blamed for much of the bungled shooting response and has been fired because of it. He had been demoted in a previous job, and critics contend that work history was not taken into account when the district hired him to run its police force.

The practice of police officers switching jobs and jurisdictions despite concerns raised in prior posts has become a concern nationally. Some have called for the creation of national standards and databases that would enable prospective employers to learn quickly whether a cop has anything potentially disqualifying in their employment history.

Alex Jones ‘boycotts’ defamation trial as Connecticut jury to soon hear closing arguments in damages phase

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones declined to take the stand in his own defense Wednesday in the Infowars host’s second defamation trial over his Sandy Hook comments, as jurors are slated to begin deliberating the damages this week.

Standing outside the Connecticut courthouse on Tuesday, Jones called the trial a “fraud” and told reporters he was likely not going to testify again because he could be held in contempt if he says he is “innocent.”

“I’m being ordered to perjure myself when they ask me questions, or I’ll be arrested if I tell the truth,” he said.

His attorney, Norm Pattis, told the court Wednesday that Jones is “boycotting” the trial because he would commit perjury if he testifies under the court’s orders.

Pattis did not call any witnesses for the defense, which is aiming to limit the amount of damages Jones must pay for calling the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School a hoax.

The six-member jury is expected to begin deliberating on Thursday after hearing closing arguments.

The judge last year found Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, liable in the defamation lawsuit, whose plaintiffs include an FBI agent who responded to the scene and eight families of victims that Jones called actors.

Parents of some of the 20 children killed in the massacre have testified during the weeks-long trial, detailing how they have faced years of death threats, rape threats and confrontations outside their homes from people who believed Jones’ lies.

Jones did testify last month after called to the stand by the plaintiff’s attorney. During the tempestuous testimony, Jones suggested the families who sued him have a political agenda because they are advocates for gun safety.

After the plaintiffs’ attorney, Chris Mattei, at one point told Jones to “show a little respect” to the families of victims in the courtroom, Jones responded, “I’ve already said I’m sorry hundreds of times and I’m done saying I’m sorry.”

During the trial, Mattei accused Jones of putting a target on the backs of families through his repeated lies about the massacre being a government-staged hoax and the families of victims being crisis actors.

Prior to testifying, Jones has spoken out amid the trial outside the Waterbury courthouse, calling the judge a “tyrant” and the trial a “political hit job.”

The Connecticut trial is the latest legal battle for Jones involving his comments on the Sandy Hook shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were killed.

In August, a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million in damages to the parents of one of the victims — including $4.1 million in compensatory damages for the suffering he put them through and $45.2 million in punitive damages.

The judge in the case has yet to rule on whether to apply state caps for punitive damages to the amount awarded to the plaintiffs — Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse was killed.

In both the Texas and Connecticut cases, the judges issued default judgments against Jones because he failed to turn over court-ordered documents.

A similar decision was issued in a second Texas defamation case last year involving Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son Noah was killed in the shooting. A trial to determine those damages has not yet started.

Amid the lawsuits, Infowar’s parent company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy protection.

LAPD officer who died following a training simulation had reported sexual assault: Family’s lawyer

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(LOS ANGELES) — An attorney representing the family of a Los Angeles police officer who died after a training exercise in May alleged Wednesday that the officer was targeted and killed after filing a report accusing fellow officers of sexually assaulting a woman.

“I think it’s an intentional act because of the magnitude of injuries,” Brad Gage, the attorney for Houston Tipping’s family, told ABC News. “We know that Houston was a whistleblower who reported this alleged criminal act.”

Bicycle officer Tipping, 32, suffered a catastrophic spinal cord injury after he and another officer fell to the ground during a simulation, according to a report released Tuesday by Los Angeles Police Department’s Office of Constitutional Policing and Policy, which called his death a “tragic accident.”

“The impact on the ground with the arm of the officer in that position around the backside of Officer Tipping’s neck…in that instance is where the fracture occurred,” LAPD Chief Michel Moore previously said.

Gage says they intend to file a lawsuit against the LAPD over the officer’s death.

A spokesperson for the LAPD told ABC News on Wednesday that the department does not comment on open and pending cases and that “the report that was released yesterday stands on its own.”

The Los Angeles Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office ruled Tipping’s death an accident.

The LAPD’s investigators said they found no evidence of wrongdoing.

According to the LAPD report, officers taking part in the training exercise are expected to be punched and kicked, which according to Gage, Tipping was subjected to during the exercise, leading to his injuries.

Gage disputed the department’s findings, claiming that Tipping was beaten in a retaliatory act for filing a report by a woman who claimed that four LAPD officers sexually assaulted her in July 2021, while wearing their uniforms.

One of the officers involved in the alleged sexual assault was at the training, according to Gage.

The autopsy report said that a cut to Tipping’s head and fractured ribs were sustained while officers tried to save his life.

Biden to impose ‘costs’ on Iranian officials for crackdown on protests

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — While Iran’s brutal attempts to put down nationwide protests — sparked by the death of a young woman in the custody of its so-called morality police — have done little to stop domestic dissent, the crackdown has dire implications for the regime on the international stage, cementing Iran’s pariah status.

Following Iranian security forces siege of an elite university in Tehran where students were demonstrating, President Joe Biden this week promised his administration would soon impose “further costs on perpetrators of violence against peaceful protestors.” Administration sources say those additional penalties could come as soon as Thursday and are expected to include sanctions targeting human rights violators in the country.

Meanwhile, the top levels of leadership within Iran have sought to blame outside influences for fueling the nearly three straight weeks of unrest. In his first public response to what he characterized as “riots,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, baselessly claimed the protests had been orchestrated by the U.S. and Israel.

Will Iran’s attempts to blame the West work?

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Khamenei’s attempt to point the finger at the West was “reliance on a decades-old authoritarian playbook,” predicting it would have little impact in the current political climate.

“There’s no doubt that Iranians don’t buy Khamenei’s attempts to deflect. That’s why they remain on the streets. Iranians understand who is responsible for their current predicament,” Taleblu said.

“I think the youth who are continuing to come to the streets and have organized protests at their schools and universities know better about who is posing a challenge to their lives,” said Gissou Nia, director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council and board chair of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. “In previous protests, we saw slogans to the effect of ‘our enemy is not America, our enemy is right here.'”

Iranian powers have also attempted to scapegoat entities closer to home. In recent days, the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has repeatedly struck at Kurdish groups across its border in Iraq, accusing them of inflaming protests.

Taleblu called the missile barrage “an attempt to feign strength abroad when weakness has been showcased at home,” and warned similar — and likely, more severe — attacks will follow if the regime doesn’t face broad consequences.

“The greater Iran’s missile capabilities and the greater Iran’s confidence in a survivable or non-response, the lower the threshold for the use of force of these dangerous weapons. As Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities increase, so will such types of operations,” he said.

Talks on nuclear deal continue

Despite longstanding U.S. disdain for Iran’s IRGC, its ballistics program, and its human rights abuses, the Biden administration has been engaged in a winding and indirect negotiation process with Tehran aimed at finding one area of common ground — a deal to limit its nuclear program.

Though talks have all but collapsed, U.S. officials initially expressed some hope that the unrest might encourage Iran to renew an Obama-era pact known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to secure the sanctions relief that would come with it. But both Behnam and Nia argue that Iran’s crackdown should only darken the already grim outlook on returning to an agreement.

“I think it would be a very wrong moment for the international community to somehow shore up the Islamic Republic [of Iran] in this moment, when the people of Iran are clearly saying they don’t want this government, or that they want substantial change,” said Nia.

Taleblu argues that the Biden administration should shut down negotiations altogether.

“Tehran continues to have Washington right where it wants it on the JCPOA: constantly seeking a deal,” he said. “As long as Biden keeps the door open for the JCPOA, he will be unable to fully stand with the Iranian people.”

This week, Iran made a separate, surprising move that the regime argues should lead to a windfall: allowing Baquer Namazi, an 85-year-old Iranian American held captive in Iran since 2016 on dubious charges, to leave the country for urgent medical treatment and granting a temporary prison furlough to his son, Siamak Namazi — another American citizen considered to be wrongfully detained.

Tehran claimed the developments should prompt Washington to unfreeze $7 billion in Iranian assets being held in South Korea due to U.S. sanctions.

Although the elder Namazi left Iran on Wednesday, the U.S. is still working permanently to secure the freedom of the younger, as well as a number of other American citizens detained in Iran.

U.S. officials have repeatedly denied agreeing to allow any funds to be transferred back to Iran. Taleblu warns reversing course would be detrimental for both Americans and Iranians.

“If Washington intends to pay ransom for hostages with frozen funds, two things will be guaranteed: the apparatus of repression currently on display in Iran will receive a boon, and second, Iran will continue to take hostages,” he said.

Dozens dead after mass shooting at child-care center in Thailand, police say

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — At least 30 people, including children, were dead after a mass shooting at a child-care center in northeast Thailand, the country’s Central Investigation Bureau said.

The suspect, who was identified as Panya Kamrab, 34, also died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.

Story developing…

4 out of 5 people with long COVID have trouble performing day-to-day activities: CDC

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Most people suffering from long COVID are experiencing some trouble performing day-to-day activities, new federal data shows.

As of Sept. 26, 81% of adults with ongoing symptoms of COVID lasting three months or longer — or four out of five adults — are experiencing limitations in their daily activities compared to before they had the virus.

Additionally, 25% said they were experiencing significant limitations.

The data was published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

The NCHS has been issuing the experimental Household Pulse Survey to ask about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic since April 2020 but included a question last month, in the survey sent to more than 50,000 people, on how long COVID has reduced people’s ability to carry out day-to-day activities.

Young adults between ages 18 and 29 had the highest share of people currently with long COVID who have trouble performing daily tasks, at 86.3%. Meanwhile, those between ages 40 and 49 had the lowest share, at 76.1%.

When current long COVID patients were broken down by race/ethnicity, Black Americans were the most likely to report problems performing day-to-day activities, at 84.1%. This was also the racial group most likely to report significant limitations, along with white Americans.

The data showed that Asian Americans have the smallest share of long COVID patients with trouble performing daily tasks, at 76.7%.

The survey did not report data for most states. However, of the 14 states with data, Texas had the highest percentage of long COVID patients with activity limitations at 87.6% and Kentucky had the lowest percentage at 69%.

Long COVID occurs when patients who have cleared the infection still have symptoms lasting more than four weeks after recovering. In some cases, these symptoms can persist for months or even years.

Patients can experience a variety of lingering symptoms including fatigue, difficulty breathing, headaches, brain fog, joint and muscle pain, and continued loss of taste and smell, according to the CDC.

It’s unclear what causes people to develop long COVID but research is ongoing.

The data showed that 14.2% of survey participants said they had experienced long COVID at some point during the pandemic.

Adults under age 60 were more likely to say they had the condition than older adults, and females were more likely to report long COVID than males.

A review from Johnson & Johnson’s Office of the Chief Medical Officer for Women’s Health published in June 2022 analyzed data from studies involving 1.3 million patients and found women are 22% more likely to develop long COVID than men.

Abrams won’t ‘question the outcome’ of Kemp rematch but does ‘question’ Ga. voting rules

October 6, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(ATLANTA) — Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams said she has continuing doubts about voting equity in her upcoming rematch with incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, telling ABC News in a new interview that she would “not question the outcome of the election” but would continue to “question the process.”

Abrams, a former state lawmaker-turned-prominent voting rights advocate, repeatedly attacked Kemp in 2018 given that he was her rival and the sitting secretary of state who was overseeing their race. Abrams also challenged what she said were Georgia’s excessively strict regulations around voter registration and more, calling them tantamount to suppression. Kemp said he wanted to ensure election integrity.

Abrams waited more than a week to acknowledge Kemp’s victory after the 2018 election. Pressed twice by ABC News congressional correspondent Rachel Scott in an interview on Sunday about whether she would concede the 2022 gubernatorial election if she lost, Abrams repeatedly drew a distinction between conceding the outcome — which she said she would do — and criticizing the process, including regulations restricting voter access to polling places and absentee voting.

“I have always acknowledged the outcome of elections,” she said in a clip from the interview, set to air Oct. 9 on Hulu’s “Power Trip.” “What is deeply concerning to me is the conflation of access to the right to vote and the outcome of elections.”

“Voter access is not the same as election outcomes,” Abrams continued, “and when those become conflated and we buy into the conflation, when we buy into the false equivalency, we erode access to democracy.”

Conservatives have tried to draw comparisons between Abrams’ handling of the 2018 race and former President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, who won the popular vote by a margin of more than 7 million. (Abrams lost to Kemp in 2018 by some 54,000 votes.)

When Abrams finally acknowledged on Nov. 16, 2018, that Kemp had won, she pointedly stated that it was “not a concession speech.” But as she later stressed, she doesn’t deny Kemp’s victory — unlike Trump.

She echoed that position to ABC News.

“What I said in that speech is that I would not concede [to] a system that would not permit voters to be heard,” she said. “I will always acknowledge the victor, but I will never say that there is a system in place that denies access that should be validated.”

She added, “For those who do not appreciate nuance, my response is always going to be: Yes, I will acknowledge the victor. I did so in ’18. I will do so in 2022. But in 2022, I intend to be the victor myself.”

On Friday, shortly before her interview with ABC News, a federal judge knocked down a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s election practices, ruling in favor of the state. Fair Fight Action, a group founded by Abrams, filed the suit shortly after the 2018 election and as part of the suit called for an overhaul of Georgia’s voting system.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, an Obama-era appointee, wrote in his order that “although Georgia’s election system is not perfect, the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the [Voting Rights Act of 1965].”

Kemp and other Republicans seized on the ruling and accused Abrams of using her group’s challenge to advance her own political interests — a claim Abrams dismissed to ABC News.

“This was not a lawsuit about my election,” she said. “This is a lawsuit about voting issues that were exposed by my election but were endemic to the state of Georgia.”

If elected governor, Abrams said she would continue to fight to expand voting access and propose changes to the state’s voting laws.

Hulu’s “Power Trip,” with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, releases new episodes on Sundays.

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