Blood blisters inside cheeks

Nearly every day at 6:30 a.m. a small group of mostly men, and a smaller amount of women, stood on the sidewalk in front of my local abortion clinic grasping rosaries, chanting the Lord’s prayer, and jumping in front of cars with pamphlets about why all pregnancies should result in births. Sometimes they brought their children and infants, even in the blistering 105 degree Texas summer heat. As self-identified “sidewalk counselors,” the group aims to persuade people not to terminate their pregnancies. Many came with small, tissue-papered baby shower gift bags as a way of demonstrating that help was on the sidewalk and not indoors. Nothing was further from the truth. I spent time in several North Texas abortion clinics from 2005 until the Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abruptly halted clinic services statewide, both as a surgical counselor and a volunteer. In my experience, the reality was that far more help — along with the medically … [Read more...] about Closing Abortion Clinics Costs Us More Than Access to Abortion

SAN FRANCISCO—Sonny Barger seemed to be wiping tears from his eyes. He looked over at his attorney, blinking, and started to grin. The two men shook hands. Penny Cooper, another lawyer, was moving to each of the four men in turn, giving each a congratulatory peck on the cheek. After seven weeks, it was over in a rush; Sonny Barger and three of his key lieutenants in the Hell’s Angels were found by a jury to be innocent of murdering Severo Agero, a fumbling Brownsville, Texas, dope dealer whose body was found in the bathtub of a burning Hayward, California, house last May. Barger and the others would remain in jail under heavy bail, awaiting trial on other charges related to drug dealing, but whatever hopes State Attorney General Evelle Younger had of this case decapitating what he claims is a key criminal syndicate in California appeared to be being dismissed along with the jury. Prosecutor Donald Whyte sat grimly at the opposite side of the courtroom. His case had collapsed when the … [Read more...] about Angels in Court: The Strange Tale of Baby Huey

Whispering Bill Pifer is dying. The cancer growing in his throat has now all but choked off his raspy voice. A lip reader stood beside him and interpreted his words to the courtroom. They came slow and measured, the damning silent words of a dying Hell’s Angel. “ I understand I would have complete immunity,” Pifer’s lips said. “I won’t testify without it. The time I have left, I want to spend on the street.” Sonny Barger, 33-year-old president of the Hell’s Angels, supposedly talked too much to Whispering Bill while they were both in the Alameda County Jail in Oakland, California. The cold-eyed Barger has a reputation as a braggart, and this time, according to police, something he and Whispering Bill talked about led them to the hilly grasslands near Ukiah in far northern California, where police found three bodies stuffed into abandoned wells on a 153-acre ranch owned by the Angels. Big Tom Shull, 24, and Charles Baker, 30, had both been strangled. Their bodies had been in the … [Read more...] about Hell’s Angels on Trial: Tales of Drugs & Death