This election day, voters will have a direct voice in deciding whether to preserve or enhance abortion rights in 10 states, including six in which abortion is outlawed or seriously restricted.

As it happens, new data points arrive almost weekly to inform voters what’s at stake in these ballot campaigns. To put it bluntly, the health of pregnant women and those of childbearing age hangs in the balance.

With the election now less than five weeks away, let’s take an up-to-date look at this increasingly dismal landscape.

There can no longer be any doubt that the abortion bans enacted in more than 20 states threaten women’s health.

The bellwether state is Texas, the only state to impose its abortion ban as early as September 2021, even before the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the nationwide abortion right guaranteed by Roe vs. Wade in 1973.

That timing has allowed analysts to generate statistics on maternal mortality in 2022 (for other antiabortion states, those statistics won’t be available until early next year). The Texas statistics are horrific.

As compiled by the Los Angeles-based Gender Equity Policy Institute initially at the request of NBC News, they show that maternal deaths rose in Texas to 28.5 per 100,000 live births in 2022, exceeding the national rate of 22.3.

“The data are telling us that Texas is a harbinger of what is to come in states that ban abortion,” says GEPI President Nancy L. Cohen.

The maternal mortality rate rose by 56% in Texas from 2019 through 2022, the figures show, well exceeding the national increase of 11%. The rate for Black women rose by 38% and for Hispanic women by 30%.

What was especially striking, Cohen told me, was that the maternal mortality rate for white women in Texas nearly doubled in 2019-22, while rising by only 6% nationwide.

“To see middle-class women with health insurance and all the privileges in the world experiencing this causes real alarm about what we might see coming down the road,” Cohen says. “We expect to see significant increases in maternal mortality in all the ban states.”

New antiabortion initiatives are surfacing all the time.

Most recently, as of Tuesday, Louisiana’s classification of two drugs used for medication abortions — mifepristone and misoprostol — as controlled substances went into effect, making possession without a prescription punishable by up to five years in prison. Since Louisiana already bans all abortions except to protect the life or physical health of the mother, that effectively rules out the use of the drugs to terminate a pregnancy.

Another noxious new wrinkle is efforts to prevent pregnant women from leaving antiabortion states to obtain abortions where they’re legal. On Monday, the goonishly malevolent Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton sued the city of Austin to block its spending of public funds to pay for residents to travel outside the state for abortions. The city appropriated $400,000 for the purpose in its current fiscal year budget. City officials decried Paxton’s lawsuit as an attempt to “score a few political points.”

Antiabortion Republicans have also objected to Biden administration rules extending the federal medical privacy law, HIPAA, to cover requests from authorities in antiabortion states for medical information about residents who have sought abortions in states where they’re legal. Among the 30 GOP lawmakers who sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra last year, demanding that he rescind the rule, was Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), currently the GOP candidate for vice president. The rule remains in place.

Antiabortion statutes in many states have been cynically drafted with purported exemptions that afford physicians some leeway to perform abortions for women in extreme cases — say, for women in imminent danger of death or severe medical complications. They don’t work.

“The so-called ‘life’ or ‘health’ exceptions are so vague that doctors fear jail time or fear for their licenses, so they cannot provide the standard of care,” Cohen says. “None of the states that have banned abortions have meaningful exceptions.”

That may be what caused the death of a 28-year-old Georgia woman who perished while physicians debated whether her pregnancy-related infection was severe enough to warrant operating. The doctors, according to a report by ProPublica, were so worried that acting might expose them to felony charges under Georgia’s abortion ban that they waited 20 hours before performing surgery. It was too late, and she died.

It’s important to understand that even explicit laws protecting abortion rights cannot always safeguard those rights in the face of determined interference. That’s illustrated by the lawsuit that California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed Monday over the refusal of St. Joseph Hospital, a Catholic hospital in Eureka, for its alleged denial of an emergency abortion to a patient, Anna Nusslock, who suffered a major pregnancy crisis in February.

Doctors at St. Joseph understood that the patient’s health was threatened and the twins she was carrying were not viable, the lawsuit states. But they couldn’t perform the operation because Catholic Church rules that govern healthcare at the institution forbade it. Instead, they recommended that Nusslock be helicoptered to UC San Francisco for an abortion.

Nusslock said at a news conference Monday that she was concerned about the $40,000 cost of the trip. She was advised against driving the 300 miles to UCSF — “If you try to drive, you will hemorrhage and die before you get to a place that can help you,” her physician at St. Joseph warned her, the lawsuit says. Instead, she was told to drive 12 miles to Mad River Community Hospital for treatment. A nurse gave her a bucket and towels in case she continued bleeding in the car.

Bonta alleges that the hospital’s discharge of Nusslock while she was experiencing a pregnancy-related crisis violated at least four provisions of California law. It may also have violated the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which mandates that hospitals with emergency rooms stabilize any arriving patients before discharging them.

A spokesman for Providence, the Washington-based Catholic chain that owns the Eureka hospital, told me that “while elective abortions are not performed in Providence facilities, we do not deny emergency care. When it comes to complex pregnancies or situations in which a woman’s life is at risk, we provide all necessary interventions to protect and save the life of the mother.”

The hospital chain said it is “immediately re-visiting our training, education and escalation processes in emergency medical situations to ensure that this does not happen again.”

It should be clear that if even some of Bonta’s and Nusslock’s allegations hold water, Providence’s right to continue running the Eureka hospital should come under question.

“Elective abortion” is not a medical term but one favored by the Catholic Church to signify abortions that cannot be performed in its hospitals, according to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, which is promulgated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

I asked Providence who, if anyone, provided an interpretation of the directives to the doctors on hand when Nusslock was at the hospital that prevented them from providing her with necessary care, and why licensed physicians need to retrained and reeducated about how to respond to an emergency in the emergency room at Eureka, but haven’t received a reply.

Providence’s alleged actions suggest that state laws protecting abortion rights are not impervious — and that would especially be so if Republicans regain the White House and control of Congress in the coming election.

“We expect that if Donald Trump is elected he will find a way to impose a nationwide abortion ban,” Cohen says. “Then we will start seeing these tragedies and near-tragedies in every state. Under a national ban, state protections will be meaningless.”

Trump has given equivocal indications about his abortion policies in a second term. But he also has bragged about appointing the Supreme Court justices who cemented the majority that overturned Roe vs. Wade.

Moreover, Project 2025, the manifesto for a second Trump term drafted by the Heritage Foundation, several of whose authors have close ties to Trump, calls for stringent limits on reproductive healthcare rights.

Among other provisions, Project 2025 calls for revoking the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, which would mean taking the abortion drug off the market, or barring that, reinstating restrictions on mifepristone, including requiring in-person dispensing and eliminating prescribing via telehealth.

It would exempt abortion from EMTALA, so that even treatments in the most dire emergencies could not include abortion. It would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood and “all other abortion providers,” and allow states to ban Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs.

Project 2025 also advocates removing Medicaid funding for states that require health insurance plans to cover abortion, as is the law for many health plans in California.

There are reasons to fear a second term for Trump. But few have such immediate life-or-death consequences as his policies on healthcare.

Tesla’s quarterly vehicle deliveries rose for the first time this year, giving the company some welcome good news after a bumpy road that nonetheless left investors underwhelmed.

Elon Musk’s electric car company delivered 462,890 vehicles in the third quarter, a 6.4% increase over the same period last year. Price cuts and offers of free charging for new owners helped drive sales, and the company was free of production issues that had dragged down delivery numbers last year.

Although the results were more or less in line with analysts’ expectations, investors were unimpressed. Tesla shares were trading at about $249 on Wednesday afternoon, down more than 3% for the day.

Shareholders and Tesla executives alike hope the increase in deliveries marks a turning point for a company that has struggled this year.

The third-quarter increase in deliveries was “good and a step in the right direction,” wrote Dan Ives of Wedbush. Ives cautioned that there would be pressure on the company’s stock because investors had been hoping for even better.

“Overall, this is a clear improvement from the first half and we believe getting in the range of 1.8 million [vehicles delivered] for the year is still the key,” Ives said.

Tesla sales fell early in 2024 amid flagging demand and an increasingly competitive electric vehicle market, in which newer companies such as Rivian are giving buyers more options at varying price points. Traditional vehicle makers such as Hyundai and Ford have also released lines of electric options, crowding the market further.

Electric vehicle sales are down in California after years of growth, a trend that has hit Tesla particularly hard. The number of all-electric cars registered in the state dropped from 102,730 in the second quarter of 2023 to 101,443 over the same period in 2024, a 1.2% decrease. As recently as summer 2023, the growth rate of the number of all-electric cars in the state was 55%.

Consumer concerns over range, charging time and ability to complete long trips have contributed to faltering sales of electric vehicles even as Tesla has lowered its prices. Analysts estimated that Tesla’s average vehicle sales price was $42,500 in the third quarter this year, the lowest price in four years.

A large portion of Tesla’s sales come from its least expensive models, 3 and Y, indicating a consumer focus on price point. The company sold only 22,915 of its more expensive models in the third quarter, including Models X and S and the Cybertruck.

Musk’s company got a boost this quarter, however, from a Chinese government incentive program that encouraged drivers to trade in older vehicles for electric models. Tesla has also been in the spotlight for Musk’s highly anticipated robotaxi, which is scheduled to be unveiled at an event next week.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Three days after the Angels concluded the worst season in franchise history, their fans faced a new and urgent concern: Would they be able to watch their team on television next season?

The answer appears to be yes, and probably in the same way they did this season. On Wednesday, however, the parent company of Bally Sports indicated that it was prepared to step away from broadcasting games of the Angels and all but one other team.

A federal bankruptcy court has the final say, so nothing is definitive for now, and the Angels and Major League Baseball declined to comment. Here are questions and answers about what we do know.

What is happening in court, and what is happening with the Angels?

Bally filed for bankruptcy 19 months ago. Its latest plan to get out of bankruptcy could involve walking away from contracts for all teams besides the Atlanta Braves. It does not preclude other teams from negotiating new contracts that would save Bally millions in rights fees.

For the Angels, that is Plan A. The team is in discussion with Bally to restructure its current deal. The Angels would surrender some guaranteed revenue in order to avoid the financial uncertainty of a streaming-first future.

If the Angels do not reach a restructured deal with Bally, would I be able to watch the Angels on television next year?

Almost certainly. MLB could deliver the games as it now does for the San Diego Padres, Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies: offering a streaming option while cutting deals with cable and satellite companies. As an example, the Padres’ monthly streaming price this year was $19.99.

Could the Angels explore other options?

They could. The Ducks, for instance, are offering a free streaming option as well as 65 free, over-the-air games on Channel 11 or Channel 13. The Ducks are one of several NBA and NHL teams sacrificing revenue — at least in the short term — in exchange for the ability to reach any fan in their local market.

Where does MLB stand?

Unlike the NBA and NHL, MLB has urged its teams not to take a new Bally’s deal at a significant discount.

MLB long has hoped to launch a national streaming package, provided the league could secure streaming rights for a critical mass of its 30 teams.

The Bally strategy could push MLB in that direction. The plan unveiled Wednesday would free 11 teams from any ties to Bally.

With three other MLB teams recently dropped by another broadcast company, that could give the league the opportunity to market streaming rights to roughly half its teams at once.

One party that might be interested in those rights: ESPN, for its ESPN+ service. ESPN reportedly is thinking about whether to renew or renegotiate its national MLB package — highlighted by Sunday Night Baseball, the Home Run Derby and wild-card games — and streaming rights could be a lure to retain ESPN.

If the Angels and other teams return to Bally or go elsewhere, that could complicate the MLB plans, depending on the terms of those deals. Generally, regional sports networks offer streaming rights only to subscribers. Last season, five MLB teams — not including the Angels — had granted Bally the rights to stream their games to non-subscribers.

Would the Dodgers be part of a national streaming package?

Almost certainly not. The Dodgers’ record $8.35-billion contract with SportsNet LA extends through 2038.

The Dodgers and other large-market teams that own local cable channels — including the New York Yankees (YES), the Boston Red Sox (NESN) and Chicago Cubs (Marquee) — stand to make much more money on their own. It is unlikely that small-market clubs would agree to pay the billions it would take to buy out the big-bucks teams, even if those teams agreed to entertain a buyout offer.

What is the Angels’ current television deal?

In 2011, what was then called Fox Sports had lost the Lakers to Time Warner Cable, and the Dodgers’ television rights were about to hit the market. Angels owner Arte Moreno brilliantly leveraged that situation, opting out of a Fox Sports contract worth $500 million and signing a new one worth $3 billion.

That contract, inherited by Bally, remains in effect at the moment. The Angels were owed $112 million in rights fees from Bally in 2023, according to Moreno. The team generated an estimated $407 million in total revenue that year, according to Sportico.

The uncertainty over what might happen to about 28% of the team’s revenue could dampen the amount Moreno might approve in player spending over the coming winter.

What has commissioner Rob Manfred said about teams that have lost their regional sports network?

“We think that reach is a really important change,” Manfred said at the All-Star Game in July.

“San Diego is kind of the leader in the clubhouse there, approaching 40,000 subscribers, which is a really good number. Having said that, from a revenue perspective, it is not generating what the RSNs did. The RSNs were a great business. Lots of people paid for programming they didn’t necessarily want, and it’s hard to replicate that kind of revenue.”

In 2023, the league guaranteed that any team losing its local television deal would retain at least 80% of the revenue from that deal, with MLB making up any shortfall. Is that guarantee still in effect?

No.