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(AP) — Officials assessed the damage on Sunday after a strong storm system moved across the southern U.S. over the weekend, spawning tornadoes and killing at least four people.

There were at least 45 reports of tornado damage across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. Crews will do damage surveys to confirm tornadoes.

The storms during busy holiday travels caused some treacherous road conditions along with delays or cancellations at some of the busiest U.S. airports. As of Sunday afternoon, there were over 600 flight delays affecting Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, according to flight tracker FlightAware.

“It’s not unheard of, but it is fairly uncommon to have a severe weather outbreak of this magnitude this late in the year,” said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center.

In the Houston area, National Weather Service storm survey crews confirmed that at least five tornadoes hit north and south of the city on Saturday.

At least one person died. The 48-year-old woman was found about 100 feet (30 meters) from her home in the Liverpool area south of Houston, said Madison Polston of the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office. She said the exact cause of death wasn’t immediately known.

Four other people in Brazoria County had injuries that weren’t considered critical, said Polston, adding that at least 40 homes and buildings were significantly damaged.

In Montgomery County, north of Houston, about 30 homes were destroyed and about 50 others sustained major damage, county official Jason Smith said.

In North Carolina, a 70-year-old man was killed Sunday in Statesville, just north of Charlotte, when a tree landed on the pickup truck he was driving. Highway Patrol Trooper DJ Maffucci said “it was just a freak accident” and he believed Matthew Teeple, of Cleveland, North Carolina, was killed instantly.

“It’s very sad, just terrible timing,” Maffucci said, adding that the storms were responsible for a number of downed trees and “quite a few wrecks.”

Two people were killed in storms in Mississippi, officials said. An 18-year-old died after a tree fell on her home Saturday night in Natchez in Adams County, said Emergency Management spokesperson Neifa Hardy. Two other people in the home were injured.

Another person died in Lowndes County and at least eight more were injured across the state, officials said.

The National Weather Service said two tornadoes hit around Bude and the city of Brandon, ripping roofs from several buildings.

Storm damage also was reported in the northern Alabama city of Athens, northwest of Huntsville.

Holly Hollman, spokeswoman for the city, said most of the damage from the early Sunday morning storms occurred downtown. She said it hurled large HVAC units from the tops of building and ripped the roof off a bookstore. A full-sized, stripped-down military helicopter was toppled from a pole where it was on display, she added.

“I stepped out on my porch and I could hear it roar,” she said of the storm. “I think we are extremely lucky that we got hit late at night. If it had hit during the busy hours, I think we might have had some injuries and possibly some fatalities.”

As of Sunday afternoon, over 40,000 people were still without power in Mississippi, according to electric utility tracking website PowerOutage.us. Texas, Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia each had about 10,000 customers without power, it said.

The storms closed some roads in western North Carolina, a region broadly devastated by Hurricane Helene this fall. That included part of U.S. 441, also known as the Great Smoky Mountains Expressway, which closed north of Bryson City due to high winds.

In Bumpus Cove, Tennessee, Justin Fromkin, president of Raising Hope Disaster Relief, worked Sunday to save what he could from the organization’s supply tent — filled with clothes and food — after about 6 inches (152 millimeters) of rain fell.

He’s spent the past few months delivering aid to areas in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee that are still reeling from Helene. The ground in some parts of the mountains is still unstable from Helene, Fromkin said, and Sunday’s downpour adds to the problem.

HOUSTON (AP) — At least two people were killed and six more injured as several tornadoes touched down in Texas and Mississippi on Saturday, damaging homes and flipping vehicles as the storm system moved east across Alabama early Sunday.

The National Weather Service’s severe storm tracker indicated the system was moving east through Alabama into Georgia shortly before 4 a.m. The agency issued severe thunder storm warnings with the possibility of tornadoes in western Georgia and the northwestern tip of Florida directly above the Gulf of Mexico.

One person died in the Liverpool area, located south of Houston, and four people suffered injuries that were not considered critical, according to Madison Polston of the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office.

There were “multiple touchdown points” in the county between Liverpool, Hillcrest Village and Alvin. Officials knew of around 10 damaged homes but were working to determine the extent of the damage, Polston said.

In Mississippi, one person died in Adams County and two people were injured in Franklin County, according to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.

The National Weather Service said two tornadoes hit around Bude and the city of Brandon, ripping roofs from several buildings.

“These storms are probably going to get a lot worse this evening and overnight the further east you go,” said Josh Lichter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

It appeared at least six tornadoes touched down in the Houston area, though they may discover there were more when crews go out to survey the damage, and there was damage in the area from both tornadoes and straight-line winds, Litcher said.

North of Houston, mobile homes were damaged or destroyed in Katy and Porter Heights, where the doors of a fire station were blown in, the weather service said.

The storms also caused departure delays of over an hour Saturday afternoon at Houston’s two main airports, Bush Intercontinental and Hobby, according to the website FlightAware.

About 71,000 utility customers were without power in Mississippi Saturday and the number was expected to rise, said Malary White, chief communications officer for the state’s Emergency Management Agency.

Around 3:30 a.m. Sunday, nearly 81,000 customers were without power in the state, down from 93,000 around 1 a.m., according to electric utility tracking website PowerOutage.us.

The emergency management agency did not have official damage reports Saturday. First responders were focused on ensuring safety and making sure everyone was accounted for, White said.

“We do anticipate more thorough damage assessments starting in the early morning hours,” she said.

The National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama, issued overnight severe thunderstorm warnings for several areas in the southern part of the state, advising residents to seek shelter to avoid possible damaging winds up to 60 mph (96.5 kph).

HOUSTON (AP) — At least two people were killed and six more injured as several tornadoes touched down in Texas and Mississippi on Saturday, damaging homes and flipping vehicles.

One person died in the Liverpool area, located south of Houston, and four people suffered injuries that weren’t considered critical, said Madison Polston, spokesperson for the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office.

Polston said there were “multiple touchdown points” in the county between Liverpool and Hillcrest Village and Alvin. She said that so far officials knew of around 10 damaged homes but were still working to determine the extent of the damage.

In Mississippi, one person died in Adams County and two people were injured in Franklin County, according to a spokesperson for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. The National Weather Service said two tornadoes hit around Bude and the city of Brandon, ripping the roofs from several buildings.

It appeared that at least six tornadoes touched down in the Houston area, though they may discover there were more when crews go out to survey the damage, Litcher said. He said there was damage in the area from both tornadoes and straight-line winds.

North of Houston, mobile homes were damaged or destroyed in Katy and Porter Heights, where the doors of a fire station were blown in, the weather service said.

The storms also caused departure delays of over an hour Saturday afternoon at Houston’s two main airports — Bush Intercontinental and Hobby — according to the website FlightAware.

About 71,000 utility customers were without power in Mississippi, and that number was expected to rise, said Malary White, chief communications officer for the state’s Emergency Management Agency.

The agency did not have any official damage reports but expected them to come in later. First responders were focused on ensuring people’s safety and making sure everyone was accounted for, according to White.

“We do anticipate more thorough damage assessments starting in the early morning hours,” she said.

(AP) — Abortion has become slightly more common despite bans or deep restrictions in most Republican-controlled states, and the legal and political fights over its future are not over yet.

It’s now been two and a half years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door for states to implement bans.

The policies and their impact have been in flux ever since the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Here’s a look at data on where things stand:
Abortions are slightly more common now than before Dobbs

Overturning Roe and enforcing abortion bans has changed how woman obtain abortions in the U.S.

But one thing it hasn’t done is put a dent in the number of abortions being obtained.

There have been slightly more monthly abortions across the country recently than there were in the months leading up to the June 2022 ruling, even as the number in states with bans dropped to near zero.

“Abortion bans don’t actually prevent abortions from happening,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist at the University of California San Francisco.

But, she said, they do change care.

For women in some states, there are major obstacles to getting abortions — and advocates say that low-income, minority and immigrant women are least likely to be able to get them when they want.

For those living in states with bans, the ways to access abortion are through travel or abortion pills.

Pills become a bigger part of equation — and the legal questions
As the bans swept in, abortion pills became a bigger part of the equation.

They were involved in about half the abortions before Dobbs. More recently, it’s been closer to two-thirds of them, according to research by the Guttmacher Institute.

The uptick of that kind of abortion, usually involving a combination of two drugs, was underway before the ruling.

But now, it’s become more common for pill prescriptions to be made by telehealth. By the summer of 2024, about 1 in 10 abortions was via pills prescribed via telehealth to patients in states where abortion is banned.

As a result, the pills are now at the center of battles over abortion access.

This month, Texas sued a New York doctor for prescribing pills to a Texas woman via telemedicine. There’s also an effort by Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to roll back their federal approvals and treat them as “controlled dangerous substances,” and a push for the federal government to start enforcing a 19th-century federal law to ban mailing them.
Travel for abortion has increased
Clinics have closed or halted abortions in states with bans.

But a network of efforts to get women seeking abortions to places where they’re legal has strengthened and travel for abortion is now common.

The Guttmacher Institute found that more than twice as many Texas residents obtained abortion in 2023 in New Mexico as New Mexico residents did. And as many Texans received them in Kansas as Kansans.

The ban that took effect in Florida this year has been a game-changer
Florida, the nation’s second most-populous state, began enforcing a ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy on May 1.

That immediately changed the state from one that was a refuge for other Southerners seeking abortion to an exporter of people looking for them.

There were about 30% fewer abortions there in May compared with the average for the first three months of the year. And in June, there were 35% fewer.

While the ban is not unique, the impact is especially large. The average driving time from Florida to a facility in North Carolina where abortion is available for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is more than nine hours, according to data maintained by Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College economics professor.

Clinics have opened or expanded in some places
The bans have meant clinics closed or stopped offering abortions in some states.

But some states where abortion remains legal until viability – generally considered to be sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy, though there’s no fixed time for it – have seen clinics open and expand.

Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico are among the states with new clinics.
There were 799 publicly identifiable abortion providers in the U.S. in May 2022, the month before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. And by this November, it was 792, according to a tally by Myers, who is collecting data on abortion providers.

But Myers says some hospitals that always provided some abortions have begun advertising it. So they’re now in the count of clinics – even though they might provide few of them.
Lack of access to abortions during emergencies is threatening some patients’ lives

How hospitals handle pregnancy complications, especially those that threaten the lives of the women, has emerged as a major issue since Roe was overturned.
President Joe Biden’s administration says hospitals must offer abortions when they’re needed to prevent organ loss, hemorrhage or deadly infections, even in states with bans. Texas is challenging the administration’s policy and the U.S. Supreme Court this year declined to take it up after the Biden administration sued Idaho.

More than 100 pregnant women seeking help in emergency rooms and were turned away or left unstable since 2022, The Associated Press found in an analysis of federal hospital investigative records.

Among the complaints were a woman who miscarried in the lobby restroom of Texas emergency room after staff refused to see her and a woman who gave birth in a car after a North Carolina hospital couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

“It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official told the AP earlier this year.
Abortion rights are popular with voters

Since Roe was overturned, there have been 18 reproductive rights-related statewide ballot questions.

Abortion rights advocates have prevailed on 14 of them and lost on four.

In the 2024 election, they amended the constitutions in five states to add the right to abortion. Such measures failed in three states: In Florida, where it required 60% support; in Nebraska, which had competing abortion ballot measures; and in South Dakota, where most national abortion rights groups did support the measure.

AP VoteCast data found that more than three-fifths of voters in 2024 supported abortion being legal in all or most cases – a slight uptick from 2020. The support came even as voters supported Republicans to control the White House and both houses of Congress.