A temporary win for abortion rights in Texas

Texas clinics are allowed to resume abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy — for now; ISIS-K claims responsibility for the latest Afghanistan mosque bombing.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

Texas clinics cautiously resume abortions at later than 6 weeks

Joshua Roberts/Getty Images

• Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion provider in Texas, has resumed providing abortion procedures after evidence of fetal cardiac activity, a day after a federal district court judge in Austin blocked the implementation of SB 8, the state law banning abortions after that time frame. [CNN / Tierney Sneed]
• The provider, which operates four clinics in Texas as well as facilities in Maryland, Virginia, Indiana, and Minnesota, announced on Twitter Thursday that it had performed the procedure for patients and was contacting others it had been forced to turn away last month. “In this climate, every single abortion we can provide is a win,” the Whole Woman’s Health account tweeted. [Twitter]
• “Phone call volume has increased. There’s actually hope from patients and staff,” Whole Woman’s Health founder Amy Hagstrom Miller said Thursday. “There’s a little desperation in that hope. Folks know this opportunity could be short-lived.” [BBC]
• Although Federal District Court Judge Robert Pitman issued a sharp, 113-page order temporarily blocking SB 8 on Wednesday, the Texas attorney general’s office quickly announced its plan to appeal. Pitman’s ruling was the result of a suit filed by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice to block the law. [AP / Paul J. Weber]
• Some providers have not yet resumed abortion care, fearing that until the law is firmly defeated, they could still be sued for performing the procedure while the law was blocked, but not yet overturned. [Texas Tribune / Karen Brooks Harper]
• Since the law went into effect September 1, many people have felt its effects: 300 Texans seeking abortion care had to travel to neighboring Oklahoma to obtain the procedure, squeezing that state’s resources. [PBS NewsHour / Meredith Lee, Alex D’Elia, and Stephanie Sy]

Latest ISIS-K bombing targeted ethnic, religious minority

• ISIS Khorasan, or ISIS-K, has claimed responsibility for bombing a Hazara Shia mosque in Kunduz, a city in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 46 and wounding dozens more. “This is the bloodiest attack I have seen in my life,” a physician with the aid group Doctors Without Borders said. [WSJ / Yaroslav Trofimov, Saeed Shah, and Ehsanullah Amiri]
• The attacker targeted the Sayed Abad mosque during Friday noon prayers, the holiest — and busiest — time of the Muslim religious week. It’s the second attack ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for against a Kabul mosque. ISIS-K is a Sunni group and targets those it considers nonbelievers, including Shia Muslims. [CNN / Ehsan Popalzai and Mohammed Tawfeeq]
• The Hazara are an ethnic minority in Afghanistan, in addition to following the Shia branch of Islam in a majority-Sunni country. They have long been targeted by the Taliban, although in statements after Friday’s attacks, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted the group’s support for the Hazara community and promised to investigate the attack. [Washington Post / Sudarsan Raghavan and Ellen Francis]
• ISIS-K said the attacker was a member of the Uyghur ethnic minority group, which is targeted by the Chinese state. Thousands of jihadis reportedly entered Afghanistan from the Xinjiang region, where China’s Uyghur population lives under oppressive conditions, as well as Pakistan and the North Caucasus region. [NYT / Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Wali Arian]
• This latest attack exemplifies the increasing violence in the country after the chaotic exit of US troops, as well as the challenges the Taliban will face in securing the country and transitioning from insurgent group to governing body. [AP / Samya Kullab and Tameem Agkhar]

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Google announced Thursday that the company will demonetize YouTube content creators, advertisers, and publishers that deny the existence of human-driven climate change. [The Verge / Jay Peters]

• The Biden administration announced Friday that it will restore environmental protections to three national monuments — Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, and the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts off the coast of New England — reversing the Trump administration’s removal of those protections. [NYT / Coral Davenport]
• 136 countries have agreed to establish a 15 percent global minimum tax rate for large corporations, with the goal of preventing those companies from evading taxes by recording their profits in countries with low tax rates regardless of where their customer base is. [Reuters / Leigh Thomas]
• US special forces and Marines have been secretly training Taiwanese troops to counter China; the US troops have spent the last year-plus in the island nation, which China claims as its own despite Taiwan’s insistence on independence. [WSJ / Gordon Lubold]

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