Table of contents for April 2017 in The Texas Observer

Tony Tinderdolt This bill makes no exceptions for rape or fetal abnormalities (“New Bill Aims to Make Abortion a Felony in Texas,” January 13, texasobserver.org). Government on both sides needs to get out of health care! I am a physician. My husband is a physician. We made the heartbreaking decision to induce our child that had a lethal genetic syndrome at 18 weeks along because we did not want the baby to suffer at birth; it had no chance at life outside the womb. To have someone who has never been in our situation tell me I can’t do a medical procedure is tyranny. Elizabeth (Last Name Withheld) JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA Child Warfare THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THE CRISIS AT Child Protective Services (CPS) and foster care (“What Texas…

JOURNALISTS ARE TRAINED, OFTEN SUBTLY, TO think in terms of issues and beats and discrete stories that typically contain just a dollop of context and history. The news is made in dribs and drabs, and the first draft of history is necessarily a rough one. But one of the great pleasures, and pains, of being in the media business for some time is discovering broad, persistent themes in public life, currents that cut across issue, beat and news cycle. In this issue, you’ll find three stories that on first reading are as different as could be. Former staff writer Patrick Michels, now a reporter with the Center for Investigative Reporting, takes another deep dive into the opaque adult guardianship system. Patrick investigates the disturbing case of Patricia Ellis, an East…

ONE AFTERNOON IN EARLY NOVEMBER, Mary Kadair Crump was headed home from Dallas when she decided to stop in Marshall to visit her niece, whom she hadn’t seen in a while. She stopped at a gas station and bought some white roses and two bags of candy. On a short, tree-lined street she found the light-blue house where her niece Patricia Ellis lived with her husband, Darrell, and their two young children. The curtains were drawn and the lawn was overgrown with weeds and vines. “It looked like an abandoned house,” Crump recalls. Crump knocked on the front door. No answer. She tried again at a side door, and then on the windows. Still nothing. She sat in the car and waited. Crump tried asking neighbors if they ever saw…

“The line between danger and humor — that tightrope, literally — is so much part of the essence of the circus experience.” AS I DROVE TOWARD THE SMALL BOR- der city of Donna on a cold and misty February evening, the circus tent’s eight floodlight-topped spires glowed Oz-like in the distance. I parked my car in the free lot, property of a neighboring farm-implements dealer, and joined the throng of circus-goers following a path lined by purple flags mounted atop a wooden fence. On the other side was a line of motor homes. My imagination conjured up images of clowns and acrobats inside, applying makeup and readjusting sequined outfits with all the fidgety trepidation of opening night. At the entrance, a tuxedoed little person greeted each customer with an individual…

If the goal is a truly national party, capable of achieving meaningful policy gains for a significant portion of the population, figures like Edwards have important roles to play. THE LAST FOUR YEARS HAVE BEEN AMONG THE GRIMMEST PERIODS IN the Democratic Party’s history. State parties in nearly every region have been decimated, Dems have almost no power in Congress, and the Midwestern states that once gave the party an edge in the Electoral College are now up for grabs. ¶ But there have been a few notable victories. The most consequential was an off-year election in a red state, little noticed then and little mentioned now: the 2015 election of John Bel Edwards as Louisiana governor. The Pelican State’s politics are unique — that’s a euphemism — but Edwards’…

JACOB CAME INTO THE DIRECTOR’S OFFICE WITH A CHART IN his hands, looking shaken. “Can I present to you?” he asked. “Sure,” I said. “Give me one sec.” I finished the note I was writing in a patient’s electronic medical record — labs suggest that rheumatoid arthritis is not adequately controlled on current regimen, consistent with symptoms, follow-up scheduled in one month — and turned to Jacob. “Go ahead.” “Okay. So. This is Ms. Blair. She’s a 39-year-old African American woman with an abdominal mass, who presents today with a CT scan suggesting cancer.” “Whoa,” I said. “Yeah,” Jacob said. “You have the CT?” “I have the printout they gave her,” Jacob explained. “It was at a hospital on the mainland. She’s had this mass in her belly for three…

“There’s a bird called the brown thrasher; it’s got a long tail and it’s very shy. In 1971, we saw 125. This year, we saw one.” ACROSS THE RIVER FROM THE AUSTIN AIRPORT, PAST FORESTS and muddy banks, four retention ponds stand open beneath the sky. The wind is heavy with the sickly sweet smell of sewage; sludge dredged from the pond bottoms dries for recycling on slabs of concrete. The ponds contain a soupy mixture of freshwater and the sort of organic waste most people prefer not to contemplate too long. For nature enthusiasts, this is the Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory; for everyone else, this is the Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant, and they keep well away. ¶ Victor Emanuel is the first type of person. He stands on…

“We are in an absolute crisis. Trans people have the highest rate of suicide attempts of any population, by far. No matter how we run the numbers, 40 percent of trans people have a history of suicide attempt.” —Colt Keo-Meier, psychologist and trans man, testifying against Senate Bill 6, the so-called bathroom bill, at the Texas Capitol on March 7. “God has a way of fixing things.” —State Senator Eddie Lucio Sr., D-Brownsville, who supports SB 6, to the mother of a transgender son during testimony. “Thanks to #SB6 & the crowd it’s attracted, every gender identity is peeing next to every other at the Capitol. No problems reported.” —Scott Braddock, Quorum Report editor, on Twitter during SB 6 testimony, March 7. “The only organ that should matter in this…

MARION COUNTY // Charlesetta Williams, 75, and her son Ricky took shelter under a quilt in a bathtub as a tornado headed straight for their home outside Smithland. The twister blew the roof off their house and sent the tub flying. When it touched down in the woods, the Williams family was still inside, rattled but unscathed. “I’m a tell you, I don’t wanna ride through another one,” Charlesetta told KSLA. LONGVIEW // Michael the miniature horse paid a Valentine’s Day visit to the residents of Whispering Pines Lodge nursing home, reports the Longview News-Journal. Wearing navy-blue sneakers, the 21-year-old pony distributed Valentine’s cards from his purple saddlebag as he trotted down the halls. Handler Kathleen Adams said her mission is to “share God’s love, four hoofbeats at a time.”…

Conservatives have an opportunity to pull their party up and away from its multi-decade decline into xenophobia, misogyny and racism. I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I WROTE A LETTER TO JOHN CORNYN, PROBABLY 10 years ago. The issue was abortion, and I asked the senator to consider the possibility that women know their own bodies better than the government does. I got a form response thanking me for my input and letting me know that I was wrong about that. ¶ A couple of years later, I traveled to the state Capitol from Dallas with a group from Planned Parenthood, back in those halcyon days before Texas had gone whole-hog on defunding the provider. That day, I talked to state Representative Dan Flynn about my scrape with high-risk HPV, the…