Kate Sheppard

Reporter

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. She can be reached by email at ksheppard (at) motherjones (dot) com.

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Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, The Center for Public Integrity, the Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

Florida Hunt Nabs 50 Invasive Pythons

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Feb. 11, 2013 10:31 AM PST

Officials in Florida wrapped up a month-long hunt for Burmese pythons on Sunday, and are pleased by the haul of their inaugural snake sweep. The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission rounded up 50 pythons wandering the Everglades, the Miami Herald reports.

"You can argue it's not a huge number," Fish & Wildlife spokesman Jorge Pino told the paper, "but its 50 pythons not in the ecosystem causing havoc."

As we've reported here before, giant, invasive snakes are creating significant problems in Florida—and not just because they might crash your pool party or explode after eating too much alligator. The snakes—which can grow to 18 feet long and weigh as much as 164 pounds—have been eating native rodents and birds, reproducing with abandon, and generally causing problems in an ecosystem where they do not belong. That's why the state organized the hunt, complete with rules for how to kill pythons and a cash prize:

Hunters had to register with the wildlife commission, take a quick online course, and follow specific humane rules the commission determined were best fit to kill the Southeast Asian native monsters that can grow to close to 20 feet long. The pythons can be legally killed only by a gunshot to the head or by beheading with a machete.

Hunters have until 5 p.m. Monday to turn in what they have captured. They can keep the skins to do with as they wish. Prizes of up to $1,500 for the most pythons caught, and $1,000 for largest python captured, will be awarded at Zoo Miami on Saturday.

Scientists believe that the snakes initially entered the wild as abandoned exotic pets. This is what prompted the Obama administration to issue new rules last year barring the import of pythons and several other breeds of giant snakes. While pythons have been spotted in the wild elsewhere, Florida's warm, tropical climate is a more viable habitat for them. But with the rest of the US getting ever-warmer, we might want to pay more attention to Florida's python problem.

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"We're Not Going to Be Pushed Around by the Antis"

Julie Burkhart is working to bring abortion care back to Wichita.

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Feb. 11, 2013 4:02 AM PST

Wichita, Kansas, has been without a local abortion provider since an anti-abortion extremist murdered Dr. George Tiller in his church in May 2009. Now, one of Tiller's former employees has bought his clinic and intends to reopen it this spring.

The Trust Women Foundation, led by former Tiller spokeswoman Julie Burkhart, purchased Tiller's old office last September. The group has raised most of the $1 million it will take to reopen the clinic, and Burkhart, 46, and her staff have been busy renovating the office and recruiting doctors. Burkhart is originally from northern Oklahoma. She worked with Tiller at the clinic for seven years, and had moved away from Wichita shortly before his murder. She has since moved back to reopen the clinic, which she and her colleagues plan to call South Wind Women's Center.

When it opens, the clinic will provide abortions only up to the 14th week, and will provide referrals for pregnancies that are farther along. It will also offer full gynecological services, like pap smears, breast exams, birth control prescriptions, and prenatal care. "We want to make it a place that's open for all women," Burkhart told Mother Jones. Without a clinic in town, women have been traveling more than three hours away to seek abortions at clinics in Kansas City and Oklahoma.

Of course, it's not the pap smears that draw the anti-abortion protesters. And Wichita has had more than its share of protests. Tiller, one of the nation's only late-term abortion providers, was a main focus of their actions. Operation Rescue moved its headquarters to Wichita to focus on the clinic. And protesters have blocked other would-be providers from opening clinics in the town in their quest to keep Wichita "abortion free." Since Burkhart signaled her intention to reopen the clinic, anti-abortion groups have lodged complaints that the clinic didn't have proper building permits (it did) and have started a petition drive to get the city council to rezone that part of town as residential so that the clinic can't reopen.

I talked to Burkhart last week about her plans for South Wind Women's Center.

Mother Jones: How did you come to the decision to reopen Dr. Tiller's Clinic?

"No matter where you live in the United States of America, women will have access to reproductive health care."

Julie Burkhart: This was something that a lot of us thought about almost immediately after Dr. Tiller's murder in '09. It was on our minds, but a lot of us just didn't feel that we were emotionally able to go down that path and pass through those hoops in order to make this happen. I kept coming back to it, and other people I worked with kept coming back to it, that this was just the right thing to do. A year and a half after we lost Dr. Tiller, we were really able to say, "Okay, this is going to be hard, this is going to be challenging—probably the biggest challenge of our lives—but we're going to get this done."

MJ: How did you overcome that apprehension and decide you needed to do it, even if it was going to be hard?

JB: I kept thinking that somebody else was going to do this. There were some other very well intentioned people who wanted to do this, and it just didn’t seem to work out for one reason or another. Here we live in a pretty good-sized city, Wichita, with a metropolitan area of around 650,000 people. It's like really, come on. We're a town that used to have three abortion clinics. Shouldn't we be able to have at least one ob-gyn practice that offers abortion care? We realized we just needed to pick up the torch and do it.

MJ: Wichita has been the subject of so much attention from both anti- and pro-choice activists. What is the significance of reopening the clinic?

JB: First and foremost, we want to make sure that women who need to see us, want to come see us, are able to access care. We're looking at a few thousand women who now have to travel outside the area each year. Secondly, what it says is that no matter where you live in the United States of America, women will have access to reproductive health care. This community has just been so embroiled in the abortion…I hate to say the abortion "debate," but just the turmoil. Some people would say, "Just leave it alone and let it go." However, we can't really have true freedom in this country until everyone can access that right.

Why, just because we live in Kansas, in the middle of the country, should women be faced with more hardship? Why should it just be women on the coast where the laws are typically more liberal that have access to abortion care? I hope that's what people get out of this—that no matter where you are as a woman, you're entitled to that right.

MJ: Given the atmosphere in Wichita, were there any concerns about coming back there?

JB: Our concerns are about security, and making sure it's peaceful at our clinic and things are peaceful at our homes. I feel that there's a bit of a different attitude here now. The community in general really gets and understands that a medical facility like ours is needed in this community. Frankly, the only people we get the pushback from by and large are the antis. They're good bullies. But people in this community are speaking out maybe a little bit more. There's a little bit more understanding. We want people to understand that this is a new day; this is a new clinic. We're working on a different model of health care for women. And we're not going to be pushed around by the antis.

MJ: We just marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade a few weeks ago. Where do you think we are as a country on abortion access, and where are we heading?

JB: Well, I'm hoping that we're coming to a turning point in our society where we can address this issue and this need instead of trying to hide from it, and can have a more honest dialogue. Frankly, I'm guilty of the same thing, because I went through a period of time where it was commonplace to not say the A-word, to try to dance around the issue. Looking back, I'm not sure that was the best strategy for us.

I'm hoping that we're coming to a point where we can just be more honest, where we can lay things on the table and have those discussions. Because this is what I feel about abortion care: I think abortion is about motherhood. Abortion is about motherhood because by and large women coming in to have abortions are concerned about the kind of life and the future for their children. Women are thinking in a very responsible manner when choosing that. The anti-choice groups often portray women as irresponsible and making these whimsical decisions. But in truth these are very well thought out decisions women are making. They're taking responsibility for their lives and the lives of their future families.

North Carolina Moves to Toss Out Regulators

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Feb. 8, 2013 1:29 PM PST

The North Carolina state senate has approved a bill to fire all the members of the states' regulatory bodies, including all the members of the Utilities Commission, the Coastal Resources Commission, the Environmental Management Commission, and the Wildlife Resources Commission.

The bill, which would affect 131 regulators, will now be considered in the state house. Dumping all the current members of the commissions would allow the newly instated Republican governor, Pat McCrory, to replace them. The Charlotte Observer has more on the plan. As you might imagine, Democrats are livid:

"I think it is a breathtaking and unprecedented power grab — there's no other way to describe it," said Senate Minority Whip Josh Stein, D-Wake, adding that removing everyone at once means the panels lose expertise in things such as regulating power companies and coastal issues.

"Look, they won. I understand that Gov. McCrory gets to make appointments," Stein said, "but their throwing the entire thing out so they can put their folks on is just wrong."

While trying to deny that it's a political play, Republican lawmakers basically said that yes, that's what it is:

The new "administration may see fit to have the people on boards and commissions that, let's say, are more like minded and who are willing to carry out the desires, if you will, or the philosophy of the new administration," [Sen. Bill] Rabon told committee members.

The Observer editorialized against the bill on Friday, calling it a "dangerous power grab." The paper also points out how the bill would affect some of the state's most important environmental regulatory bodies:

In some instances, it strips requirements that have been seen as protecting the public’s interest. At the Coastal Resources Commission, for instance, the governor would no longer have to appoint at least one person associated with a conservation organization. He would, however, have to appoint two experienced in land development. At the Environmental Management Commission, the governor would no longer have to appoint a doctor with experience in the health effects of environmental pollution; he would still be required to appoint a person who is employed by or recently retired from an industrial manufacturing facility.

Ousting all the regulators could dramatically affect coastal planning. North Carolina is among the states that are already seeing effects from sea level rise. But last year, the legislature decided to pretend climate change doesn't exist rather than let it interfere in their coastal development plans, voting to bar state scientists from factoring sea level rise into coastal projections.

Underweight Babies Linked to Air Pollution

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Feb. 8, 2013 7:52 AM PST

Women who are exposed to air pollution generated by cars, power plants, and heating and cooling systems are more likely to have a baby that is born underweight, according to new research published this week in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Low birth weight—defined as anything below 5.5 pounds—is linked to negative outcomes for babies, including increased mortality, chronic health problems, and stunted mental and physical development. The study, which is billed as the largest survey to date, looked at birth weight data on 3 million births recorded at 14 sites in nine different countries (across North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia). Researchers analyzed ambient air quality data for the area during the woman's pregnancy. They found that in the places places they studied, "the higher the pollution rate, the greater the rate of low birth weight."

And, as one of the lead researchers noted in a statement, they saw effects even if there weren't crazy high levels of air pollution. "What's significant is that these are air pollution levels to which practically everyone in the world is commonly exposed," said Tracey Woodruff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California in San Francisco. "These microscopic particles, which are smaller than the width of a human hair, are in the air that we all breathe."

Gore Backs Harvard Divestment Campaign

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Feb. 7, 2013 11:27 AM PST

In December, we reported on students on campuses across the country who have been working to get their universities to drop their investments in fossil fuels. Harvard's divestment campaign got a big boost on Wednesday as Al Gore—the former vice-president, climate crusader, and Harvard alum—backed their efforts.

"Students here at Harvard have raised the question of divestment," Gore said in a speech on campus. "I cannot fail to address the issue, even at the risk of sounding impolite and undiplomatic. First of all, if I were a student, I would support what you’re doing. But if I were a board member I would do what I did when we took up the apartheid issue. This is an opportunity for learning and the raising of awareness, for the discussion of sustainable capitalism."

"The students here at Harvard who are seized by the moral imperative to grab hold of this climate crisis and find ways to raise awareness inspire me," Gore said.

A Harvard spokesman previously told Mother Jones that the university "has a strong presumption against divestment" in fossil fuels. But Gore's remarks offered 350.org and the students behind Divest Harvard some high-profile encouragement.

"It was incredible to hear someone like Gore applaud the work that young people like us across the country are doing to solve our generation's most pressing problem," said Hannah Borowsky, a member of Divest Harvard. "Five months ago, no one knew what divestment was. Now students are organizing for it on over 250 campuses, and we've gained the nation's attention. It's really starting to feel like this movement is going to change the world."