Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.

In the category of:  Truth matters.

Abortion opponents are accusing doctors of infanticide. Here’s the reality of abortion late in pregnancy, according to a doctor.

Dr. Kristyn Brandi is a New Jersey OB-GYN with fellowship training in family planning, and a board member of Physicians for Reproductive Health. As a doctor, she delivers babies and cares for pregnant women, and also performs abortions. She told me that because of today’s legal requirements for abortion procedures, it’s essentially impossible for a baby to be born alive after a failed abortion, and that equating late abortion with infanticide is insulting to patients, many of whom are grieving the end of a much-wanted pregnancy.

Trump and others describe “late-term abortion” (which, Brandi explains, is not a medically accurate term) as something that can happen at 40 weeks’ gestation, even when a woman is in labor.

In reality, as Brandi told Vox in February, “patients do not request abortion when they are in labor and doctors do not provide it.” More than 90 percent of abortions happen within the first trimester of pregnancy. But some patients do get abortions after that, in the second and third trimesters (about 1.4 percent of abortions happen at 21 weeks’ gestation or later, according to Planned Parenthood). Brandi explained to me what happens during those procedures, why patients seek them, and what the current political debate about them is missing. Our conversation, via phone and email, has been edited and condensed.

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In the category of:  The NRA

Trump accuses New York attorney general of illegally investigating NRA

In the category of:  The woman behind the man.

‘I Want Him on Everything’: Meet the Woman Behind the Buttigieg Media Frenzy

How hard-charging New York operative Lis Smith helped turn an obscure Indiana mayor into a national

The speed with which Buttegieg emerged has been astonishing, which happens to be the speed at which Smith works. Schmuhl, his campaign manager, says a typical scene from the trail for the three of them is arriving 10 or 15 minutes early to the airport gate, and while he and Buttegieg—who he’s known since 8th grade in Indiana—take a moment to relax for a minute before boarding, Smith will head to the airport bar with her laptop and phone and begins texting and emailing reporters and clapping back to critics on social media. The candidate and the campaign manager dutifully board the aircraft, and just when it seems the door is about to close, as they start looking around nervously, in comes Smith, sunglasses and coat still on, laptop and cords dangling from her arms, phone pressed against her ear.