Category: Culture

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Langwell at the hospital with her daughter. Photo courtesy of Tiffany Langwell

Reproductive Rights and the Criminal Justice System

This Mom Checked Her Newborn Out of the Hospital Early. The Next Day Her Baby Was Taken Away.

Tiffany Langwell was thrilled to find out she was pregnant again at the age of 38. She had two children from her first marriage —

Nurse

Americans Are Working So Hard, It’s Actually Killing People

Jessica Wheeler works the night shift as an oncology nurse at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital in northeastern Pennsylvania—but her patients are usually wide awake. “When they have a new cancer diagnosis or they’re going to have a biopsy in the morning, they don’t sleep,”

Prison doors

Treating Humans Inhumanely in America’s Justice System

“While waiting for an officer to handcuff and escort me back to the cell that awaited me after showering, I sat on the floor holding a razor used for shaving,” W writes to me. “Today was the day I decided to end my life.” I

A view of Cape Town. Image by J. Lester Feder/Buzzfeed

South Africa’s Same-Sex Marriages Don’t Always Have A Happy Ending

When the reigning Mr. Gay Namibia married his Botswanan partner in South Africa in April 2013, Zimbabwe’s ZimEye.org declared, “History [made] as Africa witnesses second gay wedding.” The first, said the website, happened a week earlier when two men married in a Zulu ceremony in

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Shoving the Poor Through the Courthouse: How the Legal Sausage is Stuffed

Fifty years ago, an eloquent drifter from Florida changed the American justice system. Clarence Earl Gideon, accused of breaking into a pool hall, was tried without a lawyer in Bay County, Florida, in 1961. Convicted after representing himself, he petitioned the Supreme Court for a