Sydney Calkin

5 days ago | thebaffler.com | Jess McAllen |Athena Sofides |Sydney Calkin |Abe Beame

Cole Schmidtknecht was among the hundreds of workers employed by Kriete Truck Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The twenty-two-year-old, along with 54 percent of Americans, had health insurance through his job: Kriete Truck Center contracted with UnitedHealthcare and its pharmacy benefit manager, OptumRx. Like other PBMs, OptumRx works with insurers and large employers to manage their prescription drug benefits. This arrangement had worked well for Schmidtknecht up until January of last year.

Jun 3, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Sydney Calkin |Thalia Charles |Rafia Zakaria |Arvin Alaigh

The people in this story are all anonymous. They must remain so because they are doing illegal things with abortion pills—at least according to police, prosecutors, and government agencies. Their opinion is the one that matters now, two years after Roe v. Wade was struck down, triggering a cascade of state-level abortion bans and restrictions. As abortion pills cross state and federal borders, they also cross conceptual boundaries, shifting in status between legal and illegal.

Mar 21, 2024 | msmagazine.com | Sydney Calkin

Oct 5, 2023 | counterpunch.org | Sydney Calkin

What was your driving force behind writing Abortion Pills Go Global? I started this research about seven years ago, well before the Dobbs decision was on the horizon. I was interested in the way that technology was changing abortion. At the time, I thought this might involve a wider range of technologies – like the ships and drones being used by the Dutch activists Women on Waves, for instance.

Sep 20, 2023 | phys.org | Sydney Calkin

It may surprise you to learn that, over the past 30 years, no fewer than 60 countries have liberalized their abortion laws while only four have rolled back abortion rights. The United States is, of course, one of the latter group that has recently restricted women's access to abortion.