Here are the stories on Texas Standard for Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023:
New questions over Texas abortion restrictions after court denies request
A Texas woman who went to the courts to ask for permission to get an abortion left the state for the procedure, according to her legal team – but the questions raised by her case are far from resolved.
Law professors Mary Ziegler (University of California, Davis) and Elizabeth Sepper (UT Austin) joins us to discuss the legal landscape regarding abortion.
Locals and environmental groups fight Port Isabel gas project
A Houston company is clearing hundreds of acres of land outside of Port Isabel for a new liquefied natural gas plant – but it hasn’t yet received the go-ahead from the country’s energy regulator. Now the Sierra Club, the City of Port Isabel and other groups are asking the federal government to halt the progress.
Texas Public Radio’s Gaige Davila reports:
More charged moments in Austin’s electric bus rollout
A few years ago, Austin’s regional transit authority, CapMetro, made the decision to add around 200 electric buses to its routes. Now one of its providers has filed for bankruptcy protection.
KUT transportation reporter Nathan Bernier joins the Standard to discuss what’s next.
The first treatment involving gene-editing treatment CRISPR has been approved
It took most of a decade for researchers to develop an application for CRISPR, the Nobel Prize-winning medical technique to target and edit specific genes. But last week, the U.S. approved a CRISPR-based treatment for sickle cell disease.
UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Dr. Rhonda Bassel-Duby joins the Standard with more.
New memoir tackles the thorny subject of grief
Grief is said to comes in waves, but when tragic events strike close together it can feel like a tsunami, set to swallow someone whole. For Texas author Theo Boyd, a tragic accident five years ago started her on a journey few, if anyone, truly could be ready for.
Boyd writes about it in her book “My Grief Is Not Like Yours: Learning to Live after Unimaginable Loss, A Daughter’s Story.” She joins the Standard today.
Despite policy changes, critics say the Army doesn’t do enough to find soldiers who go missing
The Army is ramping up efforts to find soldiers who fail to report for duty. A string of high-profile deaths and disappearances prompted the service to overhaul its policies on troops who go missing
But critics say the Army is still too likely to write off soldiers as AWOL and stop looking for them. Carson Frame reports for the American Homefront Project.
All this, plus the Texas Newsroom’s state roundup and Wells Dunbar with the Talk of Texas.
