Last Wednesday, Alabama’s Republican-controlled state senate passed a near-total ban on abortion, making it a crime to perform the procedure at any stage of pregnancy, except in a case of serious risk to a woman’s health. The bill was signed into law by Alabama governor Kay Ivey the next day. As we reported last week, US states are passing increasingly hardline abortion controls. The Republicans behind the moves hope that any challenge to their new laws will end up in the supreme court, which, since the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh last year, is now ideologically more likely to overturn the historic Roe v Wade ruling. The reaction among American women has been one of horror, but as we report from page 10, the Trump administration – backed by evangelical anti-abortion groups – is using its global heft to deny women choice, not just in the US, but globally.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s rhetoric on Iran shows no sign of cooling. Simon Tisdall weighs up the possibility of the US declaring war. Could the person most likely to calm matters actually be Trump himself? It’s certainly not likely to be John Bolton. On page 47, Ben Ambruster asks if Trump’s national security adviser is the most dangerous man on Earth.
Last Saturday, Australia’s ruling Liberal-National Coalition pulled off a surprising win. Prime minister Scott Morrison held off Labor’s Bill Shorten to scrape over the line with a thin majority in Canberra’s lower house. In an election dominated by climate change, the victory of a man who once brought a chunk of coal into the Australian parliament to prove its “harmlessness” was a hammer blow to environmentalists in the country. Kate Lyons reports from Sydney.
This week’s issue also features a fascinating report by Imogen West-Knights on the long aftermath of the 1986 murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. The unsolved case still grips Sweden. Are we close to getting an answer? We also travel to north of Wales, to the village of Fairbourne which is likely to be decommissioned in the face of rising sea levels. What will become of Britain’s first climate refugees?
Finally, in culture, we feature Adrian Searle’s review of the 2019 Venice Biennale and an extract from Dorian Lynskey’s new biography of Orwell’s 1984 in which he explains how its influence and realities form a part of the fabric of life in 2019, whether we like it or not.
