Pfizer-BioNTech announced Monday that three shots of their COVID-19 vaccine provided strong protection for children under the age of 5.

“We are pleased that our formulation for the youngest children, which we carefully selected to be one-tenth of the dose strength for adults, was well tolerated and produced a strong immune response,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.

Bourla added that the companies are looking forward to “completing our submissions to regulators globally with the hope of making this vaccine available to younger children as quickly as possible, subject to regulatory authorization.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is set to meet in June to decide whether to authorize the shots for children.

The FDA has already begun evaluating data from Moderna, which says its low dose, two-shot vaccine offers protection for young children.

Meanwhile, World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday at the 75th World Health Assembly that the COVID pandemic is “most certainly not over.”

His warning comes as some countries are rescinding their COVID mandates, just as cases are on the rise again. “Reported cases are increasing in almost 70 countries in all regions,” Tedros said. “This virus has surprised us at every turn — a storm that has torn through communities again and again, and we still can’t predict its path, or its intensity.”

The WHO chief said that while more than 6 million global coronavirus deaths have been reported, the U.N. agency estimates the worldwide tally is much higher at “almost 15 million deaths.”

Tedros called on countries to do all they can to eradicate COVID, including vaccinating 70% of their population, which would include 100% of people over 60 years old; 100% of health workers; and 100% of people with underlying conditions.

The WHO leader warned, “The pandemic will not magically disappear. But we can end it … Science has given us the upper hand.”

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported Monday more than 525 million global COVID infections and more than 6 million global coronavirus deaths.
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When Chandler Jones realized she was pregnant during her junior year of college, she turned to a trusted source for information and advice.

Her cellphone.

“I couldn’t imagine before the internet, trying to navigate this,” said Jones, 26, who graduated Tuesday from the University of Baltimore School of Law. “I didn’t know if hospitals did abortions. I knew Planned Parenthood did abortions, but there were none near me. So I kind of just Googled.”

But with each search, Jones was being surreptitiously followed — by the phone apps and browsers that track us as we click away, capturing even our most sensitive health data.

Online searches. Period apps. Fitness trackers. Advice helplines. GPS. The often obscure companies collecting our health history and geolocation data may know more about us than we know ourselves.

For now, the information is mostly used to sell us things, like baby products targeted to pregnant women. But in a post-Roe world — if the Supreme Court upends the 1973 decision that legalized abortion, as a draft opinion suggests it may in the coming weeks — the data would become more valuable, and women more vulnerable.

Privacy experts fear that pregnancies could be surveilled and the data shared with police or sold to vigilantes.

“The value of these tools for law enforcement is for how they really get to peek into the soul,” said Cynthia Conti-Cook, a lawyer and technology fellow at the Ford Foundation. “It gives [them] the mental chatter inside our heads.”

HIPAA, hotlines, health histories

The digital trail only becomes clearer when we leave home, as location apps, security cameras, license plate readers and facial recognition software track our movements. The development of these tech tools has raced far ahead of the laws and regulations that might govern them.

And it’s not just women who should be concerned. The same tactics used to surveil pregnancies can be used by life insurance companies to set premiums, banks to approve loans and employers to weigh hiring decisions, experts said.

Or it could — and sometimes does — send women who experience miscarriages cheery ads on their would-be child’s birthday.

It’s all possible because HIPAA, the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects medical files at your doctor’s office but not the information that third-party apps and tech companies collect about you. Nor does HIPAA cover the health histories collected by non-medical “crisis pregnancy centers, ” which are run by anti-abortion groups. That means the information can be shared with, or sold to, almost anyone.

Jones contacted one such facility early in her Google search, before figuring out they did not offer abortions.

“The dangers of unfettered access to Americans’ personal data have never been more clear. Researching birth control online, updating a period-tracking app or bringing a phone to the doctor’s office could be used to track and prosecute women across the U.S.,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said last week.

For myriad reasons, both political and philosophical, data privacy laws in the U.S. have lagged far behind those adopted in Europe in 2018.

Until this month, anyone could buy a weekly trove of data on clients at more than 600 Planned Parenthood sites around the country for as little as $160, according to a recent Vice investigation that led one data broker to remove family planning centers from the customer “pattern” data it sells. The files included approximate patient addresses (down to the census block, derived from where their cellphones “sleep” at night), income brackets, time spent at the clinic, and the top places people stopped before and after their visits.

While the data did not identify patients by name, experts say that can often be pieced together, or de-anonymized, with a little sleuthing.

In Arkansas, a new law will require women seeking an abortion to first call a state hotline and hear about abortion alternatives. The hotline, set to debut next year, will cost the state nearly $5 million a year to operate. Critics fear it will be another way to track pregnant women, either by name or through an identifier number. Other states are considering similar legislation.

The widespread surveillance capabilities alarm privacy experts who fear what’s to come if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its opinion by early July.

“A lot of people, where abortion is criminalized — because they have nowhere to go — are going to go online, and every step that they take (could) … be surveilled,” Conti-Cook said.

Punish women, doctors or friends?

Women of color like Jones, along with poor women and immigrants, could face the most dire consequences if Roe falls since they typically have less power and money to cover their tracks. They also tend to have more abortions, proportionally, perhaps because they have less access to health care, birth control and, in conservative states, schools with good sex education programs.

The leaked draft suggests the Supreme Court could be ready to let states ban or severely restrict abortion through civil or criminal penalties. More than half are poised to do so. Abortion foes have largely promised not to punish women themselves, but instead target their providers or people who help them access services.

“The penalties are for the doctor, not for the woman,” Republican state Rep. Jim Olsen of Oklahoma said last month of a new law that makes performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

But abortion advocates say that remains to be seen.

“When abortion is criminalized, pregnancy outcomes are investigated,” said Tara Murtha, the communications director at the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, who recently co-authored a report on digital surveillance in the abortion sphere.

She wonders where the scrutiny would end. Prosecutors have already taken aim at women who use drugs during pregnancy, an issue Justice Clarence Thomas raised during the Supreme Court arguments in the case in December.

“Any adverse pregnancy outcome can turn the person who was pregnant into a suspect,” Murtha said.

State limits, tech steps, personal tips

A few states are starting to push back, setting limits on tech tools as the fight over consumer privacy intensifies.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, through a legal settlement, stopped a Boston-based ad company from steering anti-abortion smartphone ads to women inside clinics there that offer abortion services, deeming it harassment. The firm had even proposed using the same “geofencing” tactics to send anti-abortion messages to high school students.

In Michigan, voters amended the state Constitution to prohibit police from searching someone’s data without a warrant. And in California, home to Silicon Valley, voters passed a sweeping digital privacy law that lets people see their data profiles and ask to have them deleted. The law took effect in 2020.

The concerns are mounting, and have forced Apple, Google and other tech giants to begin taking steps to rein in the sale of consumer data. That includes Apple’s launch last year of its App Tracking Transparency feature, which lets iPhone and iPad users block apps from tracking them.

Abortion rights activists, meanwhile, suggest women in conservative states leave their cellphones, smartwatches and other wearable devices at home when they seek reproductive health care, or at least turn off the location services. They should also closely examine the privacy policies of menstrual trackers and other health apps they use.

“There are things that people can do that can help mitigate their risk. Most people will not do them because they don’t know about it or it’s inconvenient,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “There are very, very few people who have the savvy to do everything.”

Digital privacy was the last thing on Jones’s mind when she found herself pregnant. She was in crisis. She and her partner had ambitious career goals. After several days of searching, she found an appointment for an abortion in nearby Delaware. Fortunately, he had a car.

“When I was going through this, it was just survival mode,” said Jones, who took part in a march Saturday in downtown Baltimore to support abortion rights.

Besides, she said, she’s grown up in the Internet age, a world in which “all of my information is being sold constantly.”

But news of the leaked Supreme Court draft sparked discussions at her law school this month about privacy, including digital privacy in the era of Big Data.

“Literally, because I have my cell phone in my pocket, if I go to a CVS, they know I went to a CVS,” the soon-to-be lawyer said. “I think the privacy right is such a deeper issue in America [and one] that is being violated all the time.”
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The wedding industry remains fraught with waste, but a growing contingent of brides and grooms is pushing for more sustainable changes, from the way they invite guests to the food they serve and the clothes they wear.

The wedding resource The Knot estimates that more than two-thirds of about 15,000 site users did or planned to incorporate eco-conscious touches, including secondhand decor, minimizing food waste and avoiding one-time use products. Nearly 1 in 3 said vendors should be more proactive in leading the way.

After two chaotic years for the wedding industry, searches on Pinterest for thrifted weddings have tripled, and they’ve doubled for reuse wedding dress ideas, according to the site’s 2022 wedding trends report. The online resale giant Poshmark said demand for secondhand wedding dresses is at an all-time high, especially for those costing $500 or more.

Lauren Kay, executive editor of The Knot, said more venues, caterers and other vendors are taking notice.

“A lot of vendors are really educating themselves on ways to be more sustainable in an effort to meet the demand,” she said. “We’re seeing across the board much more interest and recognition around sustainability.”

For example, Something Borrowed Blooms offers silk florals rather than fresh cut flowers, which often travel long distances and are arranged using non-recyclable foam. Nova by Enaura rents bridal veils. VerTerra sells bowls and compostable plates made of fallen palm leaves, while Pollyn, a plant shop in Brooklyn, uses biodegradable nursery pots as more couples turn to plants in place of cut flowers.

If paper goods are a must, Paper Culture makes invitations, save the dates and reception cards using 100% post-consumer recycled paper. The company offsets its manufacturing and transportation carbon footprint through credits that put resources back into the planet, and it plants a tree with every order.

For 28-year-old Anna Masiello, getting it right for her May 28 wedding is an extension of a more climate-friendly lifestyle she embraced several years ago after moving from her native Italy to Portugal to earn a master’s degree in environmental sustainability.

“I really started to learn about climate change and the real impacts of it. We hear so much about it but sometimes it’s so overwhelming that we decide not to learn more or to understand it,” she said. “I just said, OK, it’s time to act.”

She took her journey to social media, using the handle hero_to_0, in reference to zero waste, and has amassed more than 70,000 followers on TikTok and nearly 40,000 on Instagram for her regular updates on her life and wedding planning.

Masiello’s naturally dyed lavender wedding outfit of a long skirt and matching top is made of deadstock linen (material that factories or stores weren’t able to use or sell). The trousers and shirt her fiance will wear are secondhand. The rings they’ll exchange belonged to two of their grandparents.

Her fiance carved her engagement ring out of wood from a tree her parents planted when she was born. Her video about it has been viewed more than 12 million times.

The couple’s 50 guests at the outdoor ceremony in an uncle’s yard will throw confetti punched out of fallen leaves, and the decor will include wood, used glass jars, and plants from the garden. In place of paper goods, they went digital. And no favors will be handed out. To help take the carbon sting out of some guests’ plane travel, the couple plans to plant trees.

Not all of Masiello’s feedback on social media has been positive. Some have mocked her efforts. But she has embraced that conversation.

“When I started sharing and I saw that it was impacting so many people, and also so many people were having a very negative reaction, I was like, OK, this is really stirring people’s emotions. I have to talk more about it, and I’m very glad I’m doing it,” she said.

In Los Angeles, 31-year-old Lena Kazer has thought about it, too, for her May 21 wedding in her backyard with 38 guests.

“Both of us are a little disgusted by the extravagance of the wedding industry,” she said. “We agreed we would use the resources that we have and avoid buying anything that we won’t continue to use.”

They are using compostable or recyclable utensils, cups and plates. They’re batching cocktails to reduce waste, and are using their own furniture for seating. Kazer’s bouquet will be made of real flowers, but she has kept flower purchases to a minimum.

“We’re buying almost all decorations at thrift stores, and I’m wearing my sister’s wedding dress and my mom’s veil,” she said. “We told everyone they could wear whatever they wanted after hearing about people spending thousands of dollars on new outfits for weddings.”

Other ideas for green weddings include using seed paper, which can be planted by recipients, and serving organic, seasonal, farm-to-table food, with leftovers donated.

Kat Warner, whose T. Warner Artists provides entertainment for weddings along the East Coast, offers options ranging from solar-powered lighting to full solar receptions. She also uses carbon offsets, donating to funds that support such things as reforestation and bird conservation.

Warner said couples are asking more questions, including “what various parts of their weddings can be recycled, composted or reused.”

Greater Good Events, which bills itself as “event planners for those who give a damn,” takes a holistic approach in Portland, Oregon, and the Tri-State region of New York. Waste in weddings isn’t always tangible, said Maryam Mudrick, who bought the company with Justine Broughal in September.

“If you’re working with vendors with bad labor practices that are not reinvesting in communities, you’re creating some ancillary waste in that regard as well,” Mudrick said.

One of their catering partners, Pinch Food Design, has a zero waste pledge, which includes designing menus to limit food waste, donating used cooking oil for biodiesel, and supporting sustainable and regenerative farming.

Florist Ingrid Carozzi of Tin Can Studios in Brooklyn cited other issues with floral arrangements beyond the use of non-biodegradable foam, such as bleaching and chemically dyeing flowers to achieve unnatural colors.

“It’s terrible for the environment, and working with these materials isn’t good for you,” she said. “Some florists are working towards sustainable methods, doing everything they can. There’s a real mix now.”

Kate Winick and her fiance had a rule for their May 22 backyard wedding at a home in Northport, New York: If it’s destined to get thrown out or be used only once, skip it or buy secondhand.

“I don’t think living sustainably means you need a crunchy aesthetic,” she said. “It just means using what is already in the world. The most sustainable purchase is something that already exists.”
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Earlier this month, a draft majority opinion by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to the public indicating the court was poised to overturn its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, a move that would allow individual states to outlaw abortion. Several states have so-called “trigger laws” in place to ban abortions the moment the high court issues such a ruling, and several other states are expected to follow suit if a federal guarantee of abortion rights is rescinded. 

 

While cheered by social conservatives, the draft opinion has caused panic in other sectors, and not only because it would scuttle a nearly 50-year nationwide right to abortion. Many worry the reasoning used by Alito could be applied to overturn other rights the Supreme Court has affirmed as constitutionally protected. 

 

Many of those rights arise from a fundamental principle the court set forth in Roe v. Wade and multiple subsequent decisions: that Americans have a right to privacy that is implied but not stated in the U.S. Constitution. Alito’s draft ruling attacks that reasoning. 

 

“If Alito is saying that Americans don’t have an inherent right to privacy, then it opens the door to every bedroom in the country,” Rebecca Robb, a Boulder, Colorado, beauty shop worker, told VOA.  

 

“I’m concerned that our right to contraception will be threatened,” she said, “and that marriage equality will be next. I’m scared LGTBQ+ rights will be stripped, that marriage and segregation laws for people of color will be revisited, and that immigrants will be treated unfairly by the courts.” 

 

While many Americans share Robb’s fears, there are others who believe those fears are exaggerated or misguided. They point to Alito’s own words in the leaked draft, where he wrote, “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” 

 

“It’s just another example of liberals using fear to create doubt and try to get what they want,” said Cathy Pridgen, a grandmother in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. “They’re trying to use scare tactics to protect abortion, but it won’t work.” 

 

Precedent and a domino effect 

The right to privacy as a general concept has served as the underpinning for a multitude of specific rights many Americans have come to take for granted in modern-day life. 

 

“I’m afraid that any right tied to a right to privacy could be taken away if Roe is overturned,” Morgan Jameson, an English-Spanish language interpreter in Portland, Oregon, told VOA. “Gay marriage, interracial marriage — the Supreme Court works on precedent, so every decision is built from a previous one.” 

 

In 1973, for example, when deciding Roe v. Wade, the court explained the right to privacy was acknowledged in previous cases, such as Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). Griswold used that right to determine the Constitution protects the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives without government interference.

Jameson and others worry that, if Roe is overturned, their right to contraceptives could also be in danger, as could a number of other rights. 

 

Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based LGBTQ advocacy group, said that is a concern Americans need to take seriously.

“The 14th Amendment has been interpreted over the years to protect fundamental rights — known as substantive due process rights,” she said. “The idea is that these rights are so entrenched in American society, it would be unreasonable for laws to be written that would take them away.”

Privacy, Warbelow said, is one of those rights.  

 

“In the past the judicial system would have protected these rights, but that’s not the case in this draft,” she explained. “If one is overturned, the whole idea of due process rights becomes less certain.” 

 

Warbelow said it is important to acknowledge Alito’s draft explicitly distinguishes between the right to an abortion and other rights, which she said could be reason for hope. Still, she believes civil rights activists and concerned citizens must remain on guard.  

 

“I do think we have to take the threat seriously that other rights — rights to contraception or to intimate relationships among same-sex couples — could also be challenged. If you knock down one domino, many could fall.” 

 

‘What will be the next case?’ 

Tulane University constitutional law professor Stephen Griffin said a domino effect is common in jurisprudence, but not in the direction progressives currently fear.  

 

“It’s something constitutional law professors like to debate: What will be the next case?” he said. “But the dominos typically fall in the direction of the courts giving more rights. They don’t usually like to strip rights away.” 

 

Many experts say the right to contraception will be the next to be challenged should Roe v. Wade be overturned. 

 

“If abortion is banned, some forms of contraception could probably be made illegal by states without even going through the judicial system,” Griffin explained. “Things like the ‘morning-after pill’ can just be reclassified as an abortifacient instead of as a contraceptive. If the life of the fetus is protected from [the point of] fertilization, then those kinds of pills could be considered abortion and would be banned.” 

 

Same-sex marriage, which the Supreme Court legalized nationwide in 2015, could also be challenged, according to Louisiana State University law professor John Baker. 

 

“Without Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which created a right to ‘same-sex marriage,’ would never have occurred,” he said.

Similarly, legal scholars say the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision that states may not criminalize intimate relationships between people of the same sex could also be revisited based on Alito’s draft opinion. 

 

Emboldened response

“I think it will embolden state lawmakers to see how far to the right they can go on issues of abortion, contraception, intimacy and more,” said HRC’s Warbelow.  

 

Thomas Jipping believes the worries are overblown. He is a senior legal fellow for the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, which is part of the Institute for Constitutional Government at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation. 

 

“In my opinion, no lawyer can read Alito’s draft and reasonably claim he wants to overturn other rights,” Jipping told VOA. “He doesn’t just explicitly write that his decision should have no effect whatsoever on any other rights — he wrote it twice. He couldn’t have been clearer.” 

 

Robb, the Colorado beauty shop operator, said she would not take the court at its word. 

 

“It’s just lip service and I don’t trust it,” Robb said. “Justices [Neil] Gorsuch and [Brett] Kavanaugh both said in their Supreme Court confirmation hearings that they respected Roe as precedent and the law of the land, but now it appears they’re voting to overturn it. Why should I trust the court’s word?” 

 

Jipping believes liberals are attempting to connect a reversal of Roe with a possible overturning of additional rights in order to damage confidence in the Supreme Court and to mobilize Democrats in advance of this year’s midterm elections. 

 

Democrats deny that assertion. Either way, voters may still be energized. 

 

Lizzy Shephard is a Democratic voter in New Orleans, Louisiana, who sees the Supreme Court’s ideological leanings as dangerous and damaging for the most vulnerable in society. But she also sees a backlash brewing.  

 

“I believe so passionately that bodily autonomy is a right,” said Shephard, who runs a local nonprofit organization. “Even if the Supreme Court takes that away for a while, I think it will strengthen our community to react so powerfully, one day this won’t even be a debate we have anymore.”
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