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.

Scientists Use DNA From Poop to Track Rare Tigers

A new project uses poop to gather genetic information on rare tigers.

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri May. 3, 2013 8:59 AM PDT

Update: Kathmandu-based reporter Kashish Das Shrestha was also along on this reporting venture, and has published his story on the Tiger Genome Project on his website, Sustainable Nepal.

Bengal tigers can be elusive. They're classified as an endangered species, they're mostly nocturnal, and if they had their way, they wouldn't see many humans, either. Native to Southeast Asia, there are only an estimated 1,850 left in the wild. That makes counting them somewhat difficult—but researchers in Nepal have developed a system that they think will make it easier to figure out how many tigers live there. They're pulling genetic data out of their poop.

Founded in 2011, the Nepal Tiger Genome Project has collected more than a thousand scat samples from the southern part of the country known as the Terai Arc landscape, one of the last remaining tiger habitats on the earth. Not to get too graphic, but when tigers do their doo, it sloughs off some of their cells on the way out, from which scientists can extract DNA. The DNA allows the researchers to study and catalog the genetic material and to create a database of all the country's tigers.

Dibesh Karmacharya is the executive director of the project, which he runs through his biotechnology company, Intrepid Nepal, and the Center for Molecular Dynamics-Nepal, a research organization that he also directs. Karmacharya returned to Nepal after 14 years in the US working in biotech, and started the lab to focus mainly on molecular diagnostics for human diseases. The lab's work on the Tiger Genome Project brings together two things Karmacharya loves—animals and genetics. "I wanted to be a wildlife photographer," he told me in his office in Kathmandu last week. "I could never get a job doing wildlife in the US. I ended up getting a job in genetics, because that was my skill."

Dibesh Karmacharya, executive director of the Nepal Tiger Genome Project. Kate Sheppard

The wildlife genetics work started when the World Wildlife Fund asked the lab to help track snow leopards, a threatened species native to central Asia. After seeing the success of the snow leopard work, Karmacharya and several researchers from the US—Marcella Kelly, an associate professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation at Virginia Tech, and Lisette Waits, a professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife at the University of Idaho—proposed the Tiger Genome Project and secured a $270,000 grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to fund the initial work. (Full disclosure: I was in Nepal to help with a USAID-sponsored environmental reporting workshop.)

To gather the samples, the Tiger Genome Project sent surveyors—armed with specimen vials and field surveys for logging the GPS location, type of forest cover, and condition of the scat— into four national parks and the wildlife corridors that tigers are thought to use to pass between parks. Project leaders hoped to collect 700 samples, but the crew turned up 1,200 over the course of more than two months. "We collected a lot more shit than we thought we would," Karmacharya joked.

[Read the full article]

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Obama Administration Continues Blocking Access to Emergency Contraception

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu May. 2, 2013 10:14 AM PDT

On Wednesday night, President Barack Obama's administration indicated that is challenging an April court decision that would make emergency contraception available to everyone without a prescription. The announcement means that, after a decade of fighting between reproductive rights advocates and the Food and Drug Administration over this issue, there's still no resolution.

In 2011, the FDA approved Plan B One-Step, one of the most common forms of emergency contraception, for purchase over-the-counter for all women. But the Department of Health and Human Services overruled the FDA, instead making it available without a prescription only to women ages 17 and older. Reproductive rights groups sued, and on April 5, Federal District Court Judge Edward R. Korman issued a scathing decision that said that the administration's policy was "was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent." His ruling directed HHS and the FDA to make emergency contraception available to all by May 5.

On Wednesday evening, however, the Department of Justice announced that it is appealing Korman's ruling. "The Court's Order interferes with and thereby undermines the regulatory procedures governing FDA's drug approval process," said the DOJ in a statement.

The DOJ statement is misleading. The FDA actually approved Plan B for women of all ages in 2011. Then HHS interfered.

The appeal comes a day after the FDA announced that it has approved the sale of Plan B One-Step to women ages 15-and-over without a prescription. In its announcement, the FDA claimed that decision "is independent of" the lawsuit and "is not intended to address the judge's ruling." However, as Washington Post's Sarah Kliff reports, the DOJ's appeal uses the FDA's decision to make its case:

The Justice Department, in fact, relied on that new decision to argue that none of the federal case’s plaintiffs — who are 15 or older — would be harmed by a court decision to delay Korman’s ruling from taking effect.

"The approval has the effect of ensuring that all of the plaintiffs in this case (including the youngest of them) now have access without a prescription and without significant point-of-sale restrictions to at least one form of emergency contraceptive containing levonorgestrel," the Justice Department argued, referring to the active ingredient in Plan B.

The judge's ruling clearly stated that Plan B should be available to everyone without a prescription and without government-issued ID. The Obama administration is not complying with that order. This doesn't sound like the same Obama who, just last week, said in a speech to Planned Parenthood that he is a president "who is going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way" on reproductive rights.

The administration's latest position seems to be that lowering the age to 15 is a compromise. Yes, it is two years younger than the previous limit, and the FDA's new guidelines would also mean Plan B is now available on the shelf and not only during pharmacy hours. But it still means that women will need to have some manner of government-issued ID to obtain it. Not every woman has that sort of ID—especially 15- and 16-year-olds that can't yet drive and don't have a passport, or simply don't want to have a cashier know their names.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit challenging the restrictions, said on Thursday that they will continue to press for universal access. "We are deeply disappointed," CRR president Nancy Northup said in a call with reporters, pledging to "continue the battle in court to remove these arbitrary restrictions."

Is the Obama Administration About to Block Plan B Access? (UPDATED)

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Apr. 30, 2013 4:57 PM PDT

Update, (05/01/2013, 5:30 p.m. PDT): Late Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced that it will in fact appeal Federal District Court Judge Edward R. Korman's April 5 order to make Plan B One-Step available to all women of reproductive age without a prescription. The DOJ has also asked Judge Korman to stay his order, pending the results of their appeal.

Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the emergency contraception drug Plan B One-Step must be made available over the counter to everyone, after the Department of Health and Human Services had decided to make it only available to women older than 16. But a decision that the Food and Drug Administration issued Tuesday afternoon has left some wondering if the Obama administration plans to challenge Federal District Court Judge Edward R. Korman's April 5 decision.

Teva Women's Health Inc., which makes the drug, had initially applied to make Plan B One-Step available over the counter for all females of reproductive age, but the FDA denied that request back in December 2011. The company then submitted an amended application asking the FDA to approve Plan B One-Step for sale without a prescription for women 15 years of age and older, which is what today's decision approved.

From the FDA's release (emphasis theirs):

The product will now be labeled "not for sale to those under 15 years of age *proof of age required* not for sale where age cannot be verified." Plan B One-Step will be packaged with a product code prompting a cashier to request and verify the customer’s age. A customer who cannot provide age verification will not be able to purchase the product. In addition, Teva has arranged to have a security tag placed on all product cartons to prevent theft.

"These are daunting and sometimes insurmountable hoops women are forced to jump through in time-sensitive circumstances."

While Tuesday's decision only applies to one brand of emergency contraception and does lower the age barrier for that brand, it does not remove the age requirement entirely. It also maintains an ID requirement to purchase the product. These restrictions, reproductive rights groups have argued, create a barrier to all women who want to buy the drug, not just women under 15, since it means that in practice the drug is only available to those with a government-issued ID. The FDA stipulated in the release that this decision is "is independent of" the lawsuit, that Teva had submitted the application before the judge's decision, and the announcement "is not intended to address the judge's ruling."

But its release has reproductive rights advocates wondering if this is a precedent for how the Obama administration intends deal with emergency contraception. The judge's decision required the FDA to make emergency contraception available over-the-counter for everyone by May 6. If the Obama administration plans to abide by the court's ruling, some advocates wondered, why make this announcement at all?

"The FDA is under a federal court order that makes it crystal clear that emergency contraception must be made available over the counter, without restriction to women of all ages by next Monday," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit prompting the judge's decision. "These are daunting and sometimes insurmountable hoops women are forced to jump through in time-sensitive circumstances, and we will continue our battle in court to remove these arbitrary restrictions on emergency contraception for all women."

A spokesman at the FDA referred Mother Jones to the Department of Justice, which is handling the lawsuit, for comment on the administration's plans on the court decision. "The Department of Justice is considering next steps in the litigation," said the FDA's in its release. "In the meantime, the FDA took independent action to approve the pending application on Plan B One-Step for use without a prescription by women 15 years of age or older."

Jason Collins Is Not the First Out Gay Pro Athlete

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Apr. 29, 2013 1:22 PM PDT

WNBA's Brittney Griner at the 2012 ESPY Awards.

Although his coming out in Sports Illustrated is big news, NBA star Jason Collins is not the "first openly gay athlete in professional North American team sports," as some have claimed. Claiming as much implies that either women's sports don't matter as much (or don't exist at all), or that coming out is somehow less of a big deal for professional athletes who happen to be women. Here are just a few of them:

Retired WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes, who came out in 2005 when she played for the Houston Comets. (She later married a man.)
Brittney Griner of the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury.
Chamique Holdsclaw, former WNBA player most recently with the San Antonio Silver Stars.
Megan Rapinoe, member of the US Women's National Team, now playing soccer professionally in France.
Lori Lindsey, USWNT member in the 2012 Olympics who currently plays for the Washington Spirit in the National Women's Soccer League.

There have also been a number of out stars in individual sports—including Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova in tennis and Orlando Cruz, a professional boxer.

There have also been other male professional athletes in team sports who have come out, even if they're not in the "big four" professional sports—like Andrew Goldstein, the goalie for Major League Lacrosse's Long Island Lizards.

Boy Scouts of America Proposes Dropping Ban on Gay Kids—But Not Gay Adults

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Apr. 19, 2013 10:14 AM PDT

While the nation's attention was turned to Boston on Friday morning, the Boy Scouts of America announced that it intends to end its ban on gay members, as long as its board approves the change. The organization would still, however, prohibit gay adults from serving as troop leaders or volunteers.

The proposed new policy states, "No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone." The proposed policy also reinforces the organization's position that "Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether homosexual or heterosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting." You can read the proposal here, or the media statement here.

The change would apply only to members; it does not change the policy regarding gay troop leaders or other volunteers. "The BSA will maintain the current membership policy for all adults," Deron Smith, the group's spokesman, told Mother Jones via email.

BSA's long-standing ban on gay members has been a huge source of controversy. In January, the group announced that it was considering whether to allow individual troops to admit gay members but put off making a decision until May. As my colleague Dana Liebelson has reported, the group lost some major funders because of the gay ban. Most recently, a number of high-profile musical acts ditched the Boy Scouts' annual Jamboree for this reason.

If the Scouts' 1,400-member board approves the change at its annual meeting in May, it would take effect January 1, 2014.