Confidence in the Supreme Court sank to its lowest point in at least 50 years in 2022, after the Dobbs decision that overturned the right to abortion and which led to state bans and other abortion restrictions

A 29-year-old woman was in for a rude awakening when she asked the internet if her mother was in the wrong for refusing to babysit her newborn for free. “Am I the a**hole if my mom refused to help me take care of my baby while I go back to work?” u/erika_urrrika asked the popular Reddit forum. In her post, the new mother wrote that both she and her partner work full-time and cannot afford to have one parent stay home with their baby. The Redditor explained that their jobs don’t allow them to work from home, and they wanted to avoid spending money on childcare. In addition to being the breadwinner of the household, she is also saving money to pay off credit card debt and move to a bigger apartment. However, the grandmother refused to look after her grandchild for free, noting that she was “too old” and had “already raised her kids”. “Mind you, my mom is 64, has been a homemaker/stay-at-home-mom since 1992, and hasn’t been part of the workforce since then,” the daughter wrote. “She also added that if I really wanted this baby, then maybe I should have thought about staying home like she did to take care of it while my partner goes to work and provides for us like a ‘traditional’ family, and that if she any my dad were able to work it out, so can we.” When the Reddit user detailed her financial situation to her mother, she asked to be compensated $20 an hour for each hour she looks after her grandchild, including late fees for pickup. “So, am I the a**hole for wanting my mom, who again is at home all day long (trust me, she does not do anything besides watch TV and cook meals), to take care of my baby for free while me and my partner try to fix our finances?” she asked. In the comments, many Reddit users called the daughter “entitled” for expecting her mother to take care of her child for free. “Sorry to be blunt and rude but maybe don’t have a child if you can’t afford to take care of them,” replied one person. “And if your plan was always to go back to work you should have discussed that during the pregnancy with your mom.” “Your mother is under no obligation to babysit for you,” another user said. “Why are you having a child you don’t seem to know what to do with? And why have you not worked all this out before now?” A third person wrote: “Your mom is in no way obligated to care for YOUR BABY. It’s generous of her to be willing to do it for pay, and you have the gall to be mad she won’t do it for free? She is entitled to spend her life and free time however the hell she wants. It’s not her fault you’re in debt and decided to have a baby you can’t afford. The only thing she may have done wrong at some point along the line is raise you to be this horribly entitled.” “You chose to have a child, not your mother. Your mother isn’t a free babysitter,” another said. “She is right, she raised her children. Her babysitting on occasion would be kind and appreciated but you sound entitled thinking you are owed childcare.” One person simply commented, “You’re not the a**hole for wanting her too. But you’re the a**hole for expecting her to.” According to Sittercity, the average hourly rate of babysitters in the US in 2023 is $18.50 per hour, while the average hourly rate of nannies who “typically work on a full-time or set schedule basis” is $20 an hour. This isn’t the first time a babysitter has caused a stir on Reddit. Recently, a woman sparked a debate after revealing that she asked a family who cancelled on her babysitting services last minute to pay her half of the $840 she planned to charge them. The babysitter told Reddit’s AITA forum that she usually charges a “flat rate of $100 a night” while babysitting overnight. “Overall, the price for those three days was going to be $840,” she said. But when she received a text from the parents cancelling her babysitting services, she explained that she was “out three days pay”. In response to the last-minute cancellation, she asked the customer for $480, the “minimum [she’d] make at work in those three days”. She said the mother declined the request and said she was being “ridiculous”. While the babysitter noted that she and the family didn’t have a contract, “which in hindsight was stupid” and that “legally they don’t have to pay” her, she still felt that the right thing for the family to do was pay her. Read More Woman questions whether it was ‘selfish’ to refuse boyfriend’s request for $5,000 loan Babysitter asks family to pay half of $840 bill after they cancelled last minute People divided over whether you should switch tables in a restaurant if seated next to a crying baby Woman questions whether it was wrong to refuse boyfriend’s request for $5,000 loan Women urged to check blood pressure – here’s what you need to know Denise Welch remembers ‘losing sense of reality’ while facing post-natal depression

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 2023--

The evolving patchwork of access to abortion care is going through big changes this week, with the entire Southeast on the brink of imposing new limits.

The 3981-piece LEGO ‘Batman Returns’ Batcave set even comes with Alfred Pennyworth and a tiny Christopher Walken.

The Environmental Protection Agency is strengthening a rule aimed at controlling and cleaning up toxic waste from coal-fired power plants

Federal officials say a BP subsidiary will pay a $40 million penalty and install technology to control the release of benzene and other contaminants at its Whiting oil refinery in northern Indiana

Planned Parenthood of Montana asked a judge to temporarily block a law that bans the abortion method most commonly used after 15 weeks of gestation

A court in New Orleans is hearing a case that may pull a commonly used abortion pill from the market.

By Sarah N. Lynch and Laura Sanicola WASHINGTON A subsidiary of BP plc will pay a record-setting $40

Uma Thurman and her doppelganger son Levon Hawke made a striking entrance at the 76th Cannes Film Festival

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina voted to override the governor’s veto of a bill that outlaws abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy, restricting abortion access in a state that has been a haven for abortion care in the year after the US Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v Wade. In neighbouring South Carolina, lawmakers have continued debate before voting on a more-restrictive measure that would ban nearly all abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant, adding to a streak of abortion restrictions across the US South. More than a dozen states, mostly in the South, have outlawed most abortions or severely restricted access within the year after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which revoked a constitutional right to abortion care that was affirmed for nearly half a century. Abortion rights restrictions in North Carolina and a six-week ban in South Carolina would dramatically change the map for abortion access in the US, where abortions are banned in most cases from Texas to West Virginia and along the Gulf Coast. “In the more than a dozen states with bans, women have been turned away from emergency rooms, left with no choice but to travel hundreds of miles for the care they need, and faced complications that put their lives and health at risk. Like those laws, the North Carolina ban will harm patients and threaten doctors for providing essential care,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement on 17 May. She called the North Carolina measure a “dangerous bill that is out of touch with the majority of North Carolinians and will make it even more difficult for women to get the reproductive health care they need.” “We’ve already seen the devastating impacts that state abortion bans have had on the health and lives of Americans living under these draconian laws,” she added. Health workers joined protesters at the North Carolina Capitol in Raleigh on 17 May as lawmakers in the Republican-controlled state legislature convened to override a veto from Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who has spent the last several days campaigning for GOP lawmakers to break from the party and drop the challenge to his veto. In a video posted online, the governor named four Republican lawmakers who he said made campaign promises to protect access to abortion. “They say this is a reasonable 12-week ban. It’s not,” he said in the video. “The fine print requirements and restrictions will shut down clinics and make abortion completely unavailable to many women at any time, causing desperation and death.” Much of the coverage surrounding the North Carolina legislation has centred around a now-Republican lawmaker who previously campaigned against abortion restrictions when she was a Democrat, up until April. State Rep Tricia Cotham joined the Republican Party last month after campaigning for her seat as a Democratic candidate and earning the endorsement of EMILY’s List, an influential abortion rights organisation. Her party switch delivered Republicans a veto-proof majority in the House. Ms Cotham has spent years campaigning against abortion restrictions, with powerful testimony about abortion rights and her own medically necessary abortion experience, saying in one widely shared 2015 speech that “my womb and my uterus is not up for your political grab.” In a statement following the vote, the governor said that “North Carolinians now understand that Republicans are unified in their assault on women’s reproductive freedom, and we are energized to fight back on this and other critical issues facing our state.” Lawmakers in the House and Senate voted on party lines to reverse the governor’s veto. The bill includes exceptions for pregnancies from rape or incest or if there is a “life-limiting anomaly” in the fetus. It also will require in-person physician visits at least 72 hours before a procedural abortion, and doctors must also make real-time views of fetuses available and allow patients to listen to embryonic cardiac activity. North Carolina lawmakers approved the anti-abortion law while lawmakers in Nebraska debated a measure that coupled a 10-week abortion ban with a bill targeting gender-affirming care for trans youth, a proposal that inspired a nearly three-month-long filibuster in an effort to block it. Republican lawmakers ultimately broke through the filibuster on Tuesday night and voted in favour of the combined bill, which will head to a final round of votes before it heads to the desk of Republican Governor Jim Pillen, who intends to sign it into law. Meanwhile, in Louisiana, lawmakers recently refused to add rape and incest exceptions to its anti-abortion law, one of the most restrictive in the country. State lawmakers also overwhelmingly rejected attempts to clarify medical exceptions in the law, including a measure that would specifically allow providers to remove an ectopic or molar pregnancy, which cannot result in a successful birth. Read More Nebraska Republicans approve combined gender-affirming care ban and anti-abortion bill after epic filibuster Anti-abortion laws harm patients facing dangerous and life-threatening complications, report finds