The conviction of Kermit Gosnell on three counts of first degree murder, one count of involuntary manslaughter, and hundreds of lesser charges should make it very clear that the horrors he committed in his squalid West Philadelphia clinic were illegal. This should be crushingly obvious, but it’s been ignored by the right-wing pundits who have tried to turn this deeply disturbing case into an argument against legal abortion.

This has always been a story about illegal abortion, a phrase that appears over and over in the Gosnell Grand Jury report. It’s about what women will subject themselves to when they see no other option for ending an unwanted pregnancy. It’s about the appalling lack of health care for poor women in this country, especially when it comes to abortion, which, thanks to the Hyde Amendment, isn’t covered by Medicaid. It’s about murdered babies from pregnancies that never should have gone as far as they did.

We met up with the second line just past Claiborne and just started dancing. At that time they hadn’t starting marching yet, so we watched some of the little kids dancing and danced along with the music. There were hundreds of people out there. The police had the street shut down, and they led the parade. As it started, we jumped in behind the third band and started dancing down the street. I danced with a mom holding her daughter. I turned and saw my better half, Emily, letting loose like no one was looking. It was the unique New Orleans experience that our friend Matt had wanted to show his mom, who was visiting from out of town. Black, white, young, old, and everyone in between, just dancing in the street and wishing each other a happy Mother’s Day.

The parade was moving back toward the Marigny, and we crawled across Claiborne. The parade took a right onto a side street, and everyone packed in a little closer, so the parade slowed down a bit. We hadn’t quite made it to the next street, Frenchmen, when we heard a sound like firecrackers, like the little Black Cats that explode in quick succession. We were on the left side of the street, about 10 feet from the next block.

Tonight marks the television premiere of The Invisible War, an Oscar-nominated documentary feature and last year’s winner of the prestigious audience award at the Sundance Film Festival.

Many years ago, a man I was seeing in therapy decided he wanted to take up a new hobby: high explosives. The state he lived in licensed purchasers of dynamite and other incendiaries only after a background check. He wanted to know: Would I write a letter declaring him fit to blow up stuff in his backyard for fun?

Aside from the fact that this was how he wanted to pass the weekend, I didn’t have any reason to think otherwise, so I gave him the note. He got the license. A few years after he stopped seeing me, I had occasion to visit him at his office. He had all his digits and limbs and, to my knowledge, had committed no antisocial acts with his legally obtained explosives. My note attesting to his mental health was framed on his wall.

I’ve been thinking about this guy recently, ever since our politicians’ imaginations have fastened upon background checks as the solution to our gun problems. I’ve also been thinking about a couple of other patients. One of them, a middle-aged professional, a ramrod-straight retired Marine, father of a little girl, faithful husband, the kind of man who buys a special lockbox just for transporting his weapon between home and gun club. The other: a 27-year-old hothead, an absentee father who never met a drug or a woman he didn’t like. His idea of fun was riding his motorcycle between lanes on the interstate at 100 mph, and he was the proud owner of (by his count) 37 guns. In the three years prior to arriving at my office, he’d been fired from four jobs, arrested for six or seven driving offenses and a few drug charges, and helped to bury three of his friends who met untimely and violent ends.

It can take close to a day to get from Manhattan to the Clinton Correctional Center in upstate Dannemora, New York. I vividly remember the long journey nearly a decade later, riding in a small prop plane, boarding a bus, hopping a ferry and then renting a car – all in order to have a face-to-face interview with Malcolm Shabazz, the grandson of Malcolm X.

We’d become pen pals through his attorney months before, and he’d regularly send me long, hand-written letters that sometimes included cherished photos of the grandfather he’d never met but clearly idolized in every way. I’d decided to visit him so I could return his precious family photos and discuss what he thought the future might hold for him once he was released from prison.

The surveillance photos show the backpack of a man in a black stocking cap growing ever fuller as he proceeded from ATM to ATM, starting at 4:31 p.m. on Feb. 19 with three withdrawals totaling $2,409 at the Bank of America at Broadway and West 86th Street in Manhattan.

The man, identified by federal prosecutors as Jose Familla Reyes, drew no particular attention from the other customers in the photos. None could have imagined it was part of what investigators are saying is one of the biggest bank heists ever, as the suspect made three more withdrawals totaling the same amount at 5:10 p.m. at another B of A, at Broadway and West 72nd Street, and then again 18 minutes later at another branch eight blocks further downtown.

In Northwest Washington, D.C., the intersection of mostly white gentrifiers and mostly black locals isn’t a sandwich shop or a dive bar. It’s Target. And while new and old residents alike have mixed feelings about the neighborhood’s rapidly changing face, any resentment spares the big box store.

The two-floor Target, which anchors a massive shopping center at 14th and Irving Streets, serves both the area’s longtime black residents and its young professionals who can’t quite afford consumer staples from higher-end outlets. According to store manager Matt Roy, the Columbia Heights location has the company’s second-highest sales of ethnic hair care supplies.