This Mother’s Day is my first as a new mom. Now, I join the choir of women who have long voiced the challenges of balancing motherhood and a career. This challenge grew considerably during the pandemic, when women took steps back from their careers because there were fewer child care options. It lingers in a post-pandemic world where the female labor force participation rate lags behind its male counterpart and is a full percentage point lower than its pre-pandemic level.

Since someone leaked a draft of the Supreme Court’s opinion in this year’s big abortion case, two questions have emerged about the scope of conservative policy goals. Will Republicans try to ban abortion by federal statute if Roe v. Wade is overruled, or leave the issue to the states? And will the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court overturn other precedents with a family resemblance to the 1973 abortion-rights ruling?

It’s no secret that Republican state legislatures are working overtime to alter election laws in ways to twist American democracy to their favor. Having imposed rules that make it harder to vote and to discourage those who can’t vote in person, the newest point of attack is to threaten election officials with fines and jail time.

Much of the world reacted in horror at Russian atrocities in the town of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, one month ago. After the Russian army retreated, Ukrainians found the bodies of hundreds of civilians, and the full extent of the terror became known.

The Supreme Court draft ruling overturning Roe v. Wade raises just as many arguments and counterarguments as the original ruling that Justice Samuel Alito excoriated in his opinion, leaked this week to Politico. Alito’s assertion that abortion rights don’t fall under the 14th Amendment, and that the Constitution makes no mention of abortion as a right, calls into question a wide range of other supposed rights for which no mention of any kind appears in the Constitution.