Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads. Here are this week’s recommendations:
Her Ex-Husband Is Suing a Clinic Over the Abortion She Had Four Years Ago (Nicole Santa Cruz / ProPublica)
Carliss Chatman, an associate law professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, said certain civil remedies can also be a mechanism for men to continue to abuse their former partners through the court system.
“What happens if the father who is suing on behalf of the fetus is your rapist or your abuser? It’s another way to torture a woman,” Chatman said.
Chatman added that these legal actions can be a deterrent for physicians in states where abortion is banned after a certain gestational period, because the threat of civil suits makes it harder for doctors to get insurance.
The Curious Afterlife of a Brain Trauma Survivor (Mike Mariani / Wired)
All her life, Sophie had been a “fairly introverted, cautious girl,” Jane remembered. As her time at the hospital progressed, though, that young woman faded more and more from view. When a nurse went through the neurology wing and marked each room with colored tape, Sophie snuck around and mischievously peeled all the tape off. One night, after most of the patients had gone to sleep, she wheeled around the floor and changed the dates on all their whiteboards to December 24. When a technician explained that he would be doing something called a “propeller rotation” while she was in the MRI machine, she told him, “It’s not a helicopter, so fuck you.” She found one of the neurosurgeons who made rounds on her wing handsome, and she asked him out on the spot. With intense sincerity, she queried one of the physicians on her care team about where the source of consciousness lay in the brain. “She was really, really social, and that wasn’t the Sophie that we knew from before,” Jane recalled
A hero who died defending Syria’s cultural heritage (Sarah Abdallah)
Today marks 7 years since Khaled al-Asaad, Syrian archaeologist, was tortured and beheaded by ISIS for refusing to lead them to the locations of Palmyra's hidden antiquities.
He was 83 years old.
A hero who died defending Syria’s cultural heritage. pic.twitter.com/UEzWqhNX7T
— sarah (@sahouraxo) August 18, 2022
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Image: Merve Sehirli Nasir