News

Anyone crossing the U.S.-Mexico border faces a journey fraught with violence and danger. But for women and children, that journey is even more treacherous. Not only are many fleeing violence at home — including gender-based violence — they also experience higher rates of violence en route. Torture, mutilation, sexual violence, femicide,disappearances, and additional health complications are common occurrences for female migrants making their way north.

In the late spring of 1995, Rebekah Mitchell went into the hospital at 27 weeks pregnant with her second child. Mitchell had a kidney disease that was affecting her own health and the health of the baby. She made it to seven months, and then the baby, whom she and her husband had already named Jonathan, became entangled in the kinked umbilical cord, and died suddenly. Stunned and recovering from the cesarean section required to deliver Jonathan, she kept his body with her in the hospital room for three days.

When President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection and Harris became the presumptive nominee, leaders in faith and immigration said that Harris brings a new outlook to the future of their work.

It’s an overcast Saturday morning on Gladys Avenue in Skid Row — a 54-block area in downtown Los Angeles, home to one of the country’s most stable populations of people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. Andrew Jiang of Alhambra, a city in western Los Angeles County, is there with a group of around 15 other volunteers with the Friars and Sisters Poor of Jesus Christ to serve chicken, rice, and vegetables to some 150 people living on Skid Row. On other days, a team of friars, nuns, and volunteers will walk block to block, distributing up to 400 sandwiches to more than 200 people.

After former President Donald Trump was shot in the ear during a campaign rally on Saturday, faith leaders expressed their disavowal of political violence, reflections on how to reduce polarization, and a desire for other forms of violence to be taken seriously.

Dioulde and Jallo are two of 20 Mauritanians living in a space that used to be rented out for quinceañeras in the largely working-class area of southeast Los Angeles, where the population is 89.1 percent Latino. Now, in a space that families used to celebrate their daughters’ 15th birthdays under the sprinkling lights of a chandelier, there are rows of futon-style beds lined up against the walls, with folded Muslim prayer rugs, gallon-sized water bottles, and plastic sandals neatly stacked alongside.

Faith leaders have supported abortion rights since before 1973, but after Roe, even some theologically conservative denominations supported the ruling.

It was a simple wave that changed things for Frankie Leigh. Last summer’s Douglas County Pride festivities were wrapping up. It had been eight hours in near 90-degree heat, eight hours of picketers yelling at Leigh that they were going to hell. And just as the crowds were scattering, a protester called to Leigh. “See you next year!” Leigh couldn’t help but laugh. “It was that realization of like, I am going to see you every year,” Leigh said. “And I’ll probably see you in the grocery store and at the school board meeting and at these other places, too.”

The Supreme Court has unanimously dismissed a case that would have limited access to mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in a medication abortion. The decision leaves access to the abortion drug unchanged for now.