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 It was a little after 6 p.m. on Sunday, August 15, 2021, and things were about to get real. The mild discomfort I had been feeling for days was suddenly noticeable enough to stop me in my tracks: I was in labor. (Abby Phillip, 12/16)

Kate Cox is a mother of two young children, and in that respect, she’s like the majority of women—60 percent—who seek an abortion. She wants to have a third child, but if the state of Texas had its way, it’s possible none of her children would have a mother at all. (Adam Serwer, 12/18)

Many people were shocked when the Texas Supreme Court intervened recently to stop Kate Cox from getting an abortion in the state — an abortion needed to protect her health and future fertility after her fetus was diagnosed with a severe fetal anomaly in her second trimester. She ultimately traveled out of state to get the abortion she needed. As someone who has been studying state abortion definitions and exceptions in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, I was not shocked. (Greer Donley, 12/17)

Ireland was shaken to its core in 2012 by the death of Savita Halappanavar, a beautiful, sparkling 31-year-old Indian immigrant, a dentist married to an Indian engineer. Savita was expecting her first child. She wore a new dress for the baby shower and prayed for the future. But that night she got sick. She went to a Galway hospital, where she was crushed to learn that her fetal membranes were bulging and her 17-week-old fetus would not survive. (Maureen Dowd, 12/16)