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How the Apple Watch Could Become an Even Better Fitness Tracker
How the Apple Watch Could Become an Even Better Fitness Tracker
The Apple Watch, like many modern health trackers, can measure an almost dizzying number of statistics. It added blood oxygen saturation measurements to that growing list in 2020, and reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg suggest a temperature sensor could be next. But what I really want is more ways to make sense of that data... and more context to go along with it.
Who knows whether any of these capabilities will ever arrive on the Apple Watch. Apple is doing a lot of things right, but there's room for improvement.
More customization for daily goals
A day doesn't feel complete if I don't have at least one Activity Ring. But not every day is the same, and the Apple Watch shouldn't act like it should be: I want different move and exercise goals depending on the day of the week. On days when I'm commuting to the office and know I'll have time for a long workout, I'd like to set higher goals for my exercise minutes and burned calories.
I also imagine setting a schedule like this could be helpful for building a regular exercise routine. While you can change your activity goals anytime on the Apple Watch, there's no way to customize goals according to specific days. – Lisa Eadicicco, Senior Editor
Apple Watch's Workout app.
Lexy Savvides/CNET
Scores for readiness and sleep
After living off and on with the Oura Ring and several Fitbit trackers for the last few years, I've gotten really used to having both sleep tracking and a holistic type of daily "readiness score" as part of my daily watch feedback. A readiness score indicates whether your body is rested enough for a heavy workout or if you should skip the gym. The score takes a variety of factors into account, such as sleep, recent activity and heart rate variability among other metrics.
Similarly, a sleep score indicates the quality of your slumber through statistics like time spent asleep and whether you were tossing and turning, along with other elements. Both Oura and Fitbit offer their own versions of sleep and readiness scores.
To be sure, readiness scores and sleep scores aren't necessarily perfect predictors of anything, but neither are daily activity rings. I find the calculation of activity, sleep, heart rate and other factors boiled into an overall score interesting as a correlative snapshot of how I might be feeling.
Both Fitbit and Oura also fold temperature into the mix: Changes in body temperature, resting heart rate and breathing rate could possibly flag a change in how well I'm feeling. Again, it's not perfect, but Apple seems well overdue to add these features to the Apple Watch. – Scott Stein, Editor atLarge
The Apple Watch could improve how it tracks rest.
Lexy Savvides/CNET
More focus on recovery
I'd love to see the Apple Watch lean more into recovery and rest. If the past couple of years have taught me anything, it's the importance of listening to my body. The activity rings are a great way to motivate me to move, but some days it's just not practical to close them -- especially if you feel unwell. Let's have a flag or toggle on the watch to signal when you need a rest day. And perhaps adjust the Move circle to instead reward that recovery or mindful rest.
With all the health data the Apple Watch already gathers, like heart rate variability, sleep and overall activity, it makes sense to consolidate this all into an easy-to-understand metric. Maybe it's a score like Scott mentioned. Or it could be another ring that is automatically filled with how "ready" you are and changes daily based on your body's responses.
With the mindfulness app in WatchOS 8 and meditation activities within Fitness Plus, Apple already has the tools to support rest and recovery. Let's see it come full circle. – Lexy Savvides, Principal VideoProducer
The Apple Watch could perhaps do more with AirPods.
Sarah Tew/CNET
AirPods health tracking with Apple Watch
There's huge potential for AirPods to pair even more closely with the Apple Watch -- beyond just music. Perhaps it's measuring heart rate or blood pressure from the ear to complement the existing heart-health features on the Apple Watch. Maybe it's even more robust with your ear acting as an additional lead for the electrocardiogram app. Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities known for his Apple product predictions, sees promise here, too. He pointed to the addition of health management functions as a potential way for Apple to grow AirPods shipments in the future, according to an investors note MacRumors viewed. – LexySavvides
The Apple Watch could also try out weekly goals as seen on Amazon's Halo app.
Lexy Savvides/CNET
Weekly fitness goals
The Apple Watch's Activity Rings are an excellent reminder to get up and move every day. Unfortunately, I haven't found an equivalent that's as motivating for quantifying progress on a weekly basis.
Amazon's Halo app and fitness tracker made me realize the value of setting activity goals by the week instead of by the day. Instead of a daily goal, Amazon sets a weekly objective of 150 points that you earn by being active. (Points are subtracted if you're sedentary for too long, too.) Measuring weekly activity gives me a better snapshot of how active I generally am throughout the whole week. I could have an extremely busy day and exceed my Apple Watch's move goal, but that might be a fluke. A weekly target may make it easier to establish consistency.
Plus, measuring weekly activity makes every bit of movement feel like it counts. A brisk walk to the subway won't be enough to close my Apple Watch's daily Activity Rings, so it almost feels pointless. But it's comforting to know it's contributing toward my weekly Halo activity goal. I'm not saying Apple should replace daily goals with weekly ones, but it would be nice to at least have the option.
There are other ways to track weekly and monthly progress on the Apple Watch, but none of them have felt as rewarding as closing an Activity Ring. For example, you can view your weekly and monthly activity in Apple's Fitness app. There's also a section in the app that shows how your last 90 days of activity are trending compared to the previous 365 days. Apple also rewards you with special app badges for meeting certain milestones, like working out all seven days in the same week or reaching your move goal 500 times. – Lisa Eadicicco
The Amazon Halo View.
Lisa Eadicicco/CNET
Apple never discusses product plans before publicly announcing them, so there's no telling whether any of these wish list features will become a reality. We're expecting to learn about the Apple Watch's next major software update at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and the company typically announces new Apple Watch models in the fall. If Apple's history is any indication, we can expect health and wellness to be a large part of both announcements.
TikTok Parents Are Taking Advantage of Their Kids. It Needs to Stop
TikTok Parents Are Taking Advantage of Their Kids. It Needs to Stop
Rachel Barkman's son started accurately identifying different species of mushroom at the age of 2. Together they'd go out into the mossy woods near her home in Vancouver and forage. When it came to occasionally sharing in her TikTok videos her son's enthusiasm and skill for picking mushrooms, she didn't think twice about it -- they captured a few cute moments, and many of her 350,000-plus followers seemed to like it.
That was until last winter, when a female stranger approached them in the forest, bent down and addressed her son, then 3, by name and asked if he could show her some mushrooms.
"I immediately went cold at the realization that I had equipped complete strangers with knowledge of my son that puts him at risk," Barkman said in an interview this past June.
This incident, combined with research into the dangers of sharing too much, made her reevaluate her son's presence online. Starting at the beginning of this year, she vowed not to feature his face in future content.
"My decision was fueled by a desire to protect my son, but also to protect and respect his identity and privacy, because he has a right to choose the way he is shown to the world," she said.
These kinds of dangers have cropped up alongside the rise in child influencers, such as 10-year-old Ryan Kaji of Ryan's World, who has almost 33 million subscribers, with various estimates putting his net worth in the multiple tens of millions of dollars. Increasingly, brands are looking to use smaller, more niche, micro- and nano-influencers, developing popular accounts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to reach their audiences. And amid this influencer gold rush there's a strong incentive for parents, many of whom are sharing photos and videos of their kids online anyway, to get in on the action.
The increase in the number of parents who manage accounts for their kids -- child influencers' parents are often referred to as "sharents" -- opens the door to exploitation or other dangers. With almost no industry guardrails in place, these parents find themselves in an unregulated wild west. They're the only arbiters of how much exposure their children get, how much work their kids do, and what happens to money earned through any content they feature in.
Instagram didn't respond to multiple requests for comment about whether it takes any steps to safeguard child influencers. A representative for TikTok said the company has a zero-tolerance approach to sexual exploitation and pointed to policies to protect accounts of users under the age of 16. But these policies don't apply to parents posting with or on behalf of their children. YouTube didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
"When parents share about their children online, they act as both the gatekeeper -- the one tasked with protecting a child's personal information -- and as the gate opener," said Stacey Steinberg, a professor of law at the University of Florida and author of the book Growing Up Shared. As the gate opener, "they benefit, gaining both social and possibly financial capital by their online disclosures."
The reality is that some parents neglect the gatekeeping and leave the gate wide open for any internet stranger to walk through unchecked. And walk through they do.
Meet the sharents
Mollie is an aspiring dancer and model with an Instagram following of 122,000 people. Her age is ambiguous but she could be anywhere from 11-13, meaning it's unlikely she's old enough to meet the social media platform's minimum age requirement. Her account is managed by her father, Chris, whose own account is linked in her bio, bringing things in line with Instagram's policy. (Chris didn't respond to a request for comment.)
You don't have to travel far on Instagram to discover accounts such as Mollie's, where grown men openly leer at preteen girls. Public-facing, parent-run accounts dedicated to dancers and gymnasts -- who are under the age of 13 and too young to have accounts of their own -- number in the thousands. (To protect privacy, we've chosen not to identify Mollie, which isn't her real name, or any other minors who haven't already appeared in the media.)
Parents use these accounts, which can have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, to raise their daughters' profiles by posting photos of them posing and demonstrating their flexibility in bikinis and leotards. The comment sections are often flooded with sexualized remarks. A single, ugly word appeared under one group shot of several young girls in bikinis: "orgy."
Some parents try to contain the damage by limiting comments on posts that attract too much attention. The parent running one dancer account took a break from regular scheduling to post a pastel-hued graphic reminding other parents to review their followers regularly. "After seeing multiple stories and posts from dance photographers we admire about cleaning up followers, I decided to spend time cleaning," read the caption. "I was shocked at how many creeps got through as followers."
But "cleaning up" means engaging in a never-ending game of whack-a-mole to keep unwanted followers at bay, and it ignores the fact that you don't need to be following a public account to view the posts. Photos of children are regularly reposted on fan or aggregator accounts, over which parents have no control, and they can also be served up through hashtags or through Instagram's discovery algorithms.
The simple truth is that publicly posted content is anyone's for the taking. "Once public engagement happens, it is very hard, if not impossible, to really put meaningful boundaries around it," said Leah Plunkett, author of the book Sharenthood and a member of the faculty at Harvard Law School.
This concern is at the heart of the current drama concerning the TikTok account @wren.eleanor. Wren is an adorable blonde 3-year-old girl, and the account, which has 17.3 million followers, is managed by her mother, Jacquelyn, who posts videos almost exclusively of her child.
Concerned onlookers have pointed Jacquelyn toward comments that appear to be predatory, and have warned her that videos in which Wren is in a bathing suit, pretending to insert a tampon, or eating various foodstuffs have more watches, likes and saves than other content. They claim her reluctance to stop posting in spite of their warnings demonstrates she's prioritizing the income from her account over Wren's safety. Jacquelyn didn't respond to several requests for comment.
Last year, the FBI ran a campaign in which it estimated that there were 500,000 predators online every day -- and that's just in the US. Right now, across social platforms, we're seeing the growth of digital marketplaces that hinge on child exploitation, said Plunkett. She doesn't want to tell other parents what to do, she added, but she wants them to be aware that there's "a very real, very pressing threat that even innocent content that they put up about their children is very likely to be repurposed and find its way into those marketplaces."
Naivete vs. exploitation
When parent influencers started out in the world of blogging over a decade ago, the industry wasn't exploitative in the same way it is today, said Crystal Abidin, an academic from Curtin University who specializes in internet cultures. When you trace the child influencer industry back to its roots, what you find is parents, usually mothers, reaching out to one another to connect. "It first came from a place of care among these parent influencers," she said.
Over time, the industry shifted, centering on children more and more as advertising dollars flowed in and new marketplaces formed.
Education about the risks hasn't caught up, which is why people like Sarah Adams, a Vancouver mom who runs the TikTok account @mom.uncharted, have taken it upon themselves to raise the flag on those risks. "My ultimate goal is just have parents pause and reflect on the state of sharenting right now," she said.
But as Mom Uncharted, Adams is also part of a wider unofficial and informal watchdog group of internet moms and child safety experts shedding light on the often disturbing way in which some parents are, sometimes knowingly, exploiting their children online.
The troubling behavior uncovered by Adams and others suggests there's more than naivete at play -- specifically when parents sign up for and advertise services that let people buy "exclusive" or "VIP" access to content featuring their children.
Some parent-run social media accounts that Adams has found linked out to a site called SelectSets, which lets the parents sell photo sets of their children. One account offered sets with titles such as "2 little princesses." SelectSets has described the service as "a classy and professional" option for influencers to monetize content, allowing them to "avoid the stigma often associated with other platforms."
Over the last few weeks, SelectSets has gone offline and no owner could be traced for comment.
In addition to selling photos, many parent-run dancer accounts, Mollie's included, allow strangers to send the dancers swimwear and underwear from the dancers' Amazon wish lists, or money to "sponsor" them to "realize their dream" or support them on their "journeys."
While there's nothing technically illegal about anything these parents are doing, they're placing their children in a gray area that's not explicitly sexual but that many people would consider to be sexualized. The business model of using an Amazon wish list is one commonly embraced by online sugar babies who accept money and gifts from older men.
"Our Conditions of Use and Sale make clear that users of Amazon Services must be 18 or older or accompanied by a parent or guardian," said an Amazon spokesperson in a statement. "In rare cases where we are made aware that an account has been opened by a minor without permission, we close the account."
Adams says it's unlikely to be other 11-year-olds sending their pocket money to these girls so they attend their next bikini modeling shoot. "Who the fuck do you think is tipping these kids?" she said. "It's predators who are liking the way you exploit your child and giving them all the content they need."
Turning points
Plunkett distinguishes between parents who are casually sharing content that features their kids and parents who are sharing for profit, an activity she describes as "commercial sharenting."
"You are taking your child, or in some cases, your broader family's private or intimate moments, and sharing them digitally, in the hope of having some kind of current or future financial benefit," she said.
No matter the parent's hopes or intentions, any time children appear in public-facing social media content, that content has the potential to go viral, and when it does, parents have a choice to either lean in and monetize it or try to rein it in.
During Abidin's research -- in which she follows the changing activities of the same influencers over time -- she's found that many influencer parents reach a turning point. It can be triggered by something as simple as other children at school being aware of their child's celebrity or their child not enjoying it anymore, or as serious as being involved in a car chase while trying to escape fans (an occurrence recounted to Abidin by one of her research subjects).
One influencer, Katy Rose Pritchard, who has almost 92,000 Instagram followers, decided to stop showing her children's faces on social media this year after she discovered they were being used to create role-playing accounts. People had taken photos of her children that she'd posted and used them to create fictional profiles of children for personal gratification, which she said in a post made her feel "violated."
All these examples highlight the different kinds of threats sharents are exposing their children to. Plunkett describes three "buckets" of risk tied to publicly sharing content online. The first and perhaps most obvious are risks involving criminal and/or dangerous behavior, posing a direct threat to the child.
The second are indirect risks, where content posted featuring children can be taken, reused, analyzed or repurposed by people with nefarious motives. Consequences include anything from bullying to harming future job prospects to millions of people having access to children's medical information -- a common trope on YouTube is a video with a melodramatic title and thumbnail involving a child's trip to the hospital, in which influencer parents with sick kids will document their health journeys in blow-by-blow detail.
The third set of risks are probably the least talked about, but they involve potential harm to a child's sense of self. If you're a child influencer, how you see yourself as a person and your ability to develop into an adult is "going to be shaped and in some instances impeded by the fact that your parents are creating this public performance persona for you," said Plunkett.
Often children won't be aware of what this public persona looks like to the audience and how it's being interpreted. They may not even be aware it exists. But at some point, as happened with Barkman, the private world in which content is created and the public world in which it's consumed will inevitably collide. At that point, the child will be thrust into the position of confronting the persona that's been created for them.
"As kids get older, they naturally want to define themselves on their own terms, and if parents have overshared about them in public spaces, that can be difficult, as many will already have notions about who that child is or what that child may like," said Steinberg. "These notions, of course, may be incorrect. And some children may value privacy and wish their life stories were theirs -- not their parents -- to tell."
Savannah and Cole LaBrant have documented nearly everything about their children's lives.
Jim Spellman/WireImage
This aspect of having their real-life stories made public is a key factor distinguishing children working in social media from children working in the professional entertainment industry, who usually play fictional roles. Many children who will become teens and adults in the next couple of decades will have to reckon with the fact that their parents put their most vulnerable moments on the internet for the world to see -- their meltdowns, their humiliation, their most personal moments.
One influencer family, the LaBrants, were forced to issue a public apology in 2019 after they played an April Fools' Day Joke on their 6-year-old daughter Everleigh. The family pretended they were giving her dog away, eliciting tears throughout the video. As a result, many viewers felt that her parents, Sav and Cole, had inflicted unnecessary distress on her.
In the past few months, parents who film their children during meltdowns to demonstrate how to calm them down have found themselves the subject of ire on parenting Subreddits. Their critics argue that it's unfair to post content of children when they're at their most vulnerable, as it shows a lack of respect for a child's right to privacy.
Privacy-centric parenting
Even the staunchest advocates of child privacy know and understand the parental instinct of wanting to share their children's cuteness and talent with the world. "Our kids are the things usually we're the most proud of, the most excited about," said Adams. "It is normal to want to show them off and be proud of them."
When Adams started her account two years ago, she said her views were seen as more polarizing. But increasingly people seem to relate and share her concerns. Most of these are "average parents," naive to the risks they're exposing their kids to, but some are "commercial sharents" too.
Even though they don't always see eye to eye, the private conversations she's had with parents of children (she doesn't publicly call out anyone) with massive social media presences have been civil and productive. "I hope it opens more parents' eyes to the reality of the situation, because frankly this is all just a large social experiment," she said. "And it's being done on our kids. And that just doesn't seem like a good idea."
For Barkman, it's been "surprisingly easy, and hugely beneficial" to stop sharing content about her son. She's more present, and focuses only on capturing memories she wants to keep for herself.
"When motherhood is all consuming, it sometimes feels like that's all you have to offer, so I completely understand how we have slid into oversharing our children," she said. "It's a huge chunk of our identity and our hearts."
But Barkman recognizes the reality of the situation, which is that she doesn't know who's viewing her content and that she can't rely on tech platforms to protect her son. "We are raising a generation of children who have their entire lives broadcast online, and the newness of social media means we don't have much data on the impacts of that reality on children," she said. "I feel better acting with caution and letting my son have his privacy so that he can decide how he wants to be perceived by the world when he's ready and able."
What States Can and Can't Do When Banning Abortion
What States Can and Can't Do When Banning Abortion
For more information about your reproductive health rights and related federal resources, you can visit the US government's
Reproductive Rights
site.
Whether someone can get an abortion or related medical procedure mostly hinges on which state they live in after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month and ended the constitutional right to abortion. But the switch from federal protection to state law isn't straightforward and has led to confusion and misinformation on what pregnant patients and physicians can do.
In this still developing landscape, how confident can people be that their treatment is still legal?
"The answer to all your questions is 'Who the heck knows,'" said Dr. Louise Perkins King, a surgeon and bioethicist at Harvard Medical School. "And that's the problem."
The US Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance on July 11 reminding physicians of their responsibilities under the existing Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTLA, which supports the need to treat and stabilize patients in an emergency, including pregnant patients who may require an abortion. Days later, Texas sued the Biden administration over the law, which allows for medical assistance to save the life of the mother, because, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said, it "seeks to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic."
On Tuesday, a judge in Texas blocked the EMTLA guidance, so physicians in that state may no longer be protected by federal law if they perform an abortion when they deem it medically necessary but it falls outside of Texas' interpretation of a life-endangering pregnancy. Physicians nationwide who are members of the American Association of Pro-Life Gynecologists and Obstetricians or the Christian Medical and Dental Association are also exempt -- a total of about 18,000 health care providers, according to the court document.
Texas' new trigger law -- which will be in effect on Aug. 25 -- bans all abortions except when the pregnancy puts the mother "at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function." Physicians who perform an illegal abortion will be committing a felony. It doesn't make exceptions for rape, incest or fetal abnormalities, and it also doesn't make an exception for when the pregnant person's risk of death would come from a "claim or diagnosis" that they'll be hurt or might die in the future. (This could be interpreted to mean a doctor can't provide an abortion if a woman threatens to die by suicide because she has depression.) All abortions are currently banned in Texas after the state's Supreme Court ruled that a law from the 1920s could stand.
Legal battles within some states will continue to shape post-Roe America, with the landscape changing by the day. And lawsuits like the one in Texas clarify the country's stance on whether state law preempts federal rule on abortion or reproductive health care. Basically, can federal regulations trump state law?
"There's going to be cases that are going to have to determine this question," I. Glenn Cohen, a professor and bioethicist at Harvard Law School, said.
The argument over medication abortion access -- which is banned or restricted in many states but still available to people if they order it (not without risk) online -- will likely also be one of the first big court cases post-Roe, Cohen said. Questions of whether federal regulations on medication abortion conflict directly enough with state restrictions will continue to be center stage.
Medication abortion, for use in early pregnancy, accounts for more than half of abortions in the US. Restricting the pills is the new frontier of abortion bans.
Robyn Beck/Getty Images
Other federal guidance issued by the Biden administration includes a reminder to pharmacists that they are required to fill medication and birth control prescriptions for patients. Failing to do so is discrimination based on pregnancy status. This was in response to the many reports of women having treatment delayed or prescriptions denied while health care workers try to navigate around new state laws.
Here's what we know today.
Can states ban abortion pills? Not completely, but some are trying.
Any state with a current total ban on abortion -- including Texas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Wisconsin -- also bans medication abortion. Heavy restrictions in other states, including Tennessee and South Carolina, which ban abortion after about six weeks, also extend to medication abortion. This means providers can't prescribe the medication in those states and patients can't fill prescriptions at pharmacies.
"If a state law bans abortion broadly, that includes medication abortions," Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy and advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told MedPage Today.
But abortion bans and state laws seek to punish abortion providers or people who assist them, not the person seeking the abortion (there's reason to believe this might change in the future). For now, people living in the most restrictive states can still order pills from an overseas pharmacy, including Aid Access. However, the pills could take awhile to arrive and potentially put the person past the point of pregnancy for which the medication is safe and effective (about 10 weeks).
Peter Dazeley/Getty Images
The fate of medication abortion pills in Republican-leaning states centers on mifepristone, the first pill given in the two-dose regimen of medication abortion. Because the US Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone as a safe and effective way to end a pregnancy over 20 years ago, states shouldn't be able to restrict it, the US attorney general's office argued the same day Roe was overturned. (Misoprostol, the second pill, is used off-label for abortion and miscarriage treatment. It's also used to treat health conditions such as stomach ulcers.)
Whether this federal regulation (and the FDA's stamp of approval) supersedes state laws will need to be decided. Cohen said this is likely to be determined by the Supreme Court as "one of the first post-Dobbs cases."
"It's unclear whether that's going to be a winner of an argument, to be perfectly honest," Cohen said.
Last year, the FDA extended a pandemic-era rule that allowed patients to get medication abortion pills through the mail, instead of requiring them to be prescribed in person. This was seen as a victory for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical groups, which viewed the in-person requirement as unnecessary for a medication that's safe and effective in early pregnancy.
But states have their own requirements for medication abortion, and providers licensed in Montana can't prescribe pills to patients who travel over from a restrictive state like South Dakota, NPR reported.
Read more: Worries About Post-Roe Data Privacy Put Spotlight on Period Apps
Ectopic pregnancies can't result in a delivery and require medical treatment. Symptoms can start with typical pregnancy signs, including a missed period, but can progress to abdominal or pelvic pain, vaginal bleeding, weakness and more.
Svetlana Gustova/Getty Images
Can states ban treatment for high risk pregnancies? The HHS says no, but doctors say state laws are restricting care.
Even though the most restrictive states banning abortions leave room for some degree of medical emergency, practicing physicians need to decide where the medical emergency line is – and risk prosecution if a state sees it differently.
This month, the story of a 10-year-old girl who was raped and pregnant and who traveled to Indiana from Ohio, where abortion is banned around six weeks without exception for rape or incest, made headlines. Not only was the physician publicly questioned by Indiana's attorney general on whether she followed state law, but Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said in the aftermath that the girl should've been able to legally get an abortion under the state law's medical emergency exemption. Ohio's OB-GYNs disagreed.
"It states specifically 'medically diagnosed condition,' and as far as I can tell, adolescent pregnancy is not a medically diagnosed condition that's listed," Dr. Jason Sayat, a Columbus OB-GYN, told the Ohio Capital Journal.
The Department of Health and Human Services reminded physicians and hospitals that if they want to keep their Medicare agreement and avoid "civil penalties," they must treat pregnant patients and provide abortions if necessary as required under the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. The EMTLA, now blocked in Texas, outlines certain life-endangering pregnancies that doctors must treat regardless of state law, including ectopic pregnancies, preeclampsia and complications of pregnancy loss.
But that narrow line of abortion exceptions for medical emergencies given by states like Wisconsin is what's troubling Dr. Jennifer McIntosh, a maternal-fetal medicine physician practicing in the state. While Wisconsin's attorney general said he wouldn't enforce a ban, physicians there stopped performing abortions because the state has a pre-Roe criminal statute that prohibits most abortions. The "save the life of the mother" abortion exception language in that law can leave out health conditions which may not be an immediate emergency but can become one down the line.
"Some of what we do is to prevent emergencies from happening," McIntosh said. "To have to wait for an emergency to actually appear puts your patient's life at risk."
The treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is termination, because terminating the pregnancy is the only safe outcome when an embryo grows outside of the uterus, typically in a fallopian tube. Without treatment, the fallopian tube is likely to rupture, which can lead to internal bleeding and death. But some laws, like one in Texas, specifically restrict medications including methotrexate, which has led to access problems for people who are pregnant as well as people who are taking methotrexate for another health reason.
Complicating confusion and risk over how abortion bans will affect treatments for ectopic pregnancies is the fact that more rare types of ectopic pregnancies exist, including ones where the pregnancy is growing inside a C-section scar or other area outside the safety of the main cavity of the uterus -- but still technically in the uterus. These rarer kinds of ectopic pregnancies are also life-threatening, and may be more difficult to diagnose and treat as such in a state that bans abortions with an emphasis on the pregnancy being in the uterus.
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
States are not prosecuting people who have abortions (yet)
Current state laws -- both those in effect and those in limbo in court -- prosecute other people involved in an abortion, not the person who's pregnant.
But the health impact may be already felt when a doctor is hesitant to treat patients, or pharmacists are reluctant to fill a prescription for mifepristone before interviewing a woman to ascertain whether her pregnancy is already ended and her situation is in line with state law.
"Even in these straightforward cases of basic OB/GYN practice, the laws leave providers questioning and afraid," Dr. Carley Zeal, an OB-GYN in Wisconsin, told The New York Times. "These laws are already hurting my patients."
Aside from hesitancy among health care providers, physicians also fear that worries people have about being prosecuted for having an abortion or miscarriage will stop patients experiencing complications from any kind of pregnancy loss from seeking care.
That's because it was already happening, before Roe was overturned. According to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, there were over 1,700 arrests or prosecutions of women from 1973 (when Roe became law) to 2020 where their pregnancies were the focus of the case against them.
So will doctors report you if they suspect you had an abortion?
"The vast majority of health care professionals will not do that, because that's not caring for their patients," King said. But, she added, "I'm sure there's a very small, but unfortunately detrimental, minority who might."
Your current access to birth control shouldn't be impacted by the overturn of Roe v. Wade. However, there's reason to believe that could change in the future.
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Birth control is still protected under the Affordable Care Act
Right now, IUDs, birth control pills and other birth control methods are legal in all 50 states. And they should also be covered at no out-of-pocket cost for those covered under the Affordable Care Act. The right to birth control is protected under two Supreme Court rulings: Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird. (Another Supreme Court Case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, chipped away a little of that protection, however, finding that some corporations are exempt for religious reasons.)
Plan B or "morning after pill" brands are also not included in abortion bans, because they will not end an existing pregnancy. Most health plans should also cover them.
Legislators in Missouri last year voted to block taxpayer funding for IUDs and emergency contraception, casting doubt that all birth control devices will be protected indefinitely, at least in some states. The claims of legislators like Paul Wieland, a Republican state senator in Missouri, are that anything that has the potential to disrupt a fertilized egg's implantation into the uterus is an abortifacient.
The medical community has been clear that IUDs and emergency contraception do not cause abortions and will not end an existing pregnancy. Copper IUDs work mostly by causing a chemical change in the sperm and egg before they meet, according to the World Health Organization. Hormonal IUDs like Mirena work mostly by thickening cervical mucus so sperm can't reach the egg, and can also prevent ovulation. Plan B and similar pills likely won't work if a person has already ovulated, meaning the chances of it stopping implantation are currently understood to be slim.
Nevertheless, unlikely occurrences or instances where a fertilized egg may be prevented from implanting into a uterus could be called into question in future court cases.
Read more: Could a Post Roe v. Wade World Impact Your Access to Birth Control?
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
The second-to-last episode of Westworld season 4 aired on Sunday, setting the stage for next week's finale. It caps off with a surprising twist -- this time involving Christina -- our brunette Dolores look-alike whose story took yet another turn.
In other news, this season's big bad, Chalores, has been replaced by her second-in-command. Let's run through what else happened in episode 7, including who's still standing on both sides as we head into the final episode.
A door to The Sublime
The episode starts with Bernard and Maeve pulling up to the futuristic Hoover Dam facility we saw in episode 1 -- the one William acquired with help from our first, nameless fly victim of the season. But eventually, the show reveals we are actually somewhere else… in The Sublime. When Bernard convened with Akecheta in The Sublime back in episode 3, he viewed these events before they took place (or it's one of the many paths he viewed that could potentially happen, I guess).
Bernard reveals to Maeve -- a version of her he's whipped up -- that "the hydroelectric server farm" they're looking at houses The Sublime. (Also called The Valley Beyond, The Sublime is a digital plane of existence we saw a bunch of Westworld hosts enter in season 2, leaving their physical bodies behind. Maeve's daughter is one of them.) In season 2, Dolores sent The Sublime -- and those in it -- somewhere out of reach. Turns out, it was here. Bernard uses the key he possesses to open the door.
Bernard tells Maeve that he's been down every possible path, and the outcome is always the same: extinction for both hosts and humans. He tells her they could escape that fate by uploading themselves to The Sublime. Maeve takes him up on the offer, and Bernard asks if that's what she would really say, or if that's just his impression of her.
Then, those events pretty much repeat in the real world (with the addition of some more on-screen action involving a big red robot). Bernard and Maeve arrive at the facility, where Bernard once again reveals it holds The Sublime and opens the door using his key. But he doesn't tell Maeve the truth about their ill-fated quest. Instead, he says that "If we get to her tower, we can save them as well as ourselves."
Chalores is shutting down the cities
Next, we spy Chalores, host William and a host version of Caleb. Like the last version of Caleb who got his neck snapped so unkindly last week, this one knows his daughter, Frankie, is alive. Chalores is a nickname for Charlotte Hale. In the past, Dolores made copies of herself -- the "self" that exists in her pearl -- and put one into a host version of Hale.
Chalores looked incredible in this episode (and has all season).
John Johnson/HBO
Chalores tells William to give them a minute, and then she reveals to Caleb that she's shutting down "the cities." (Does this mean there are more than the one we've seen?) She plans to stick humans in cold storage, mirroring how the hosts in Westworld were treated. She leaves Caleb in his confinement and tells a surprised William she's calling the human world quits because of the host/outlier issue. "If I don't do this today, there'll be less of us tomorrow," she says.
An already stressed-out host William is not happy about this news. Later, we see him visit human William again. In a long, icy spiel, human William tells his host doppelgänger that "culture doesn't survive, cockroaches do." He tells his host counterpart that if he could, he'd pull the plug on the whole world. "Only one of us needs to do what must be done," he tells the host. Host William says he understands, then stabs him.
'Dolores. Please.'
In this episode, Teddy confirms something many have probably suspected from the start: Christina is Dolores. But then the show piles on a new mystery: the version of Christina/Dolores we've been seeing in Hale's new world this season isn't actually there in the flesh. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this one.
The "Christina equals Dolores" reveal comes relatively early on in the episode. Teddy tells Christina that he and she are "reflections of the people who made us." He then calls her Dolores. At this point, I'm still viewing her as being the Dolores robot from last season, with a memory-wiped mind courtesy of the Rehoboam machine. After learning from Teddy that her kind is less susceptible to death, she gets into a bath, drowns and instantly regains consciousness.
Later, Christina pays a visit to Olympiad Entertainment, where she uses her storytelling abilities to get the human writers to destroy their "stories" (putting what we've learned from past episodes together, I'm pretty sure these stories are the "pre-scripted loops" humans are traveling in). We see Christina and Teddy wander through Olympiad at the same time as Stubbs and Frankie. Christina and Teddy walk through a doorway, and then we see Stubbs and Frankie emerge a second later out of the same doorway. Strange. Shouldn't the good guys have bumped into each other?
Near the end of the episode, chaos reigns outside (more on that later), and Christina/Dolores tries to intervene. Teddy tells Christina that people can't see her. Christina asks why, and he reluctantly gives it up: "You're not in this world," he says, "It's real, but you're not."
Caleb and Frankie reunite
After Maeve and Bernard regroup with C/Frankie, C's girlfriend Odina and Stubbs at the abandoned '20s theme park, the squad is ready to enter Chalores' city.
Once there, they split up -- Odina grabs a boat, Bernard and Maeve set out to confront Chalores at her tower, and Frankie and Stubbs head to Caleb at Olympiad. Bernard reveals to Stubbs that Stubbs isn't going to make it.
Aurora Perrineau (Frankie) and Luke Hemsworth (Stubbs).
John Johnson/HBO
Thanks to Christina/Dolores' intervention, Caleb makes it out of his holding cell before Stubbs and C/Frankie arrive. Once they do, a traumatized Caleb ambushes them, locking Stubbs in the confined space and pinning Frankie up against a wall. But Caleb realizes that she's his real daughter soon enough, and the reunion is sweet. This long-awaited scene didn't disappoint.
A showdown between Maeve and Chalores
We've known since episode 5 that Chalores' plan for her kind is for them to eventually "transcend" -- undergo a procedure where they abandon their host bodies and, as she says in this episode, "evolve into the species that we were meant to become." Their pearls (aka, their minds) are taken out of their heads and placed at the top of tall, white machines. In the latest episode, she sends a message to the hosts that it's time to ditch their current bodies for good.
Maeve and Bernard approach Chalores in her tower, and they split up. But before they do, Bernard admits to Maeve what he's been hiding from her -- "No matter what we do, we can't win," he says. "There's no way to save this world. Everyone here is going to die. But we can save one tiny part of it." He asks Maeve if she's still willing to fight, and she shows him a small smile before continuing on.
Maeve finds Chalores about to transcend -- a drone host holding a whirring device near her head. Chalores grabs the device and she and Maeve battle it out. They tumble outside and continue to fight in shallow water. Then Maeve is shot in the head by host William. Next, the host turns on his creator, offering just a few words before also shooting Chalores in the head.
We see Bernard, who's up in Chalores' tower and recording himself speaking on what looks like a tablet. He cryptically says, "If you choose to give her that choice, you can't miss. Reach with your left hand." By the end of this episode, we still don't know who the message is for.
Host William arrives and shoots Bernard in the head. He also rejigs Chalores' sound-producing tower, causing "every man and woman and child -- host and human -- to fight until no one remains but the cockroaches." Given that the humans are controlled by the sounds, he must have ordered the humans to turn on the hosts.
Who's left standing
The show pivots to Frankie, Stubbs and Caleb, and we see people around them begin to fight each other violently. The three of them manage to escape the frenzy, but a bullet wounds Frankie.
On the other side of the fight, host William is pretty much our new big bad as we head into the finale.
Lingering questions
In last week's episode, Frankie caught on to Bernard's attempts to copy her and her friends using tech Chalores put in the '20s theme park. (He didn't deny it… or explain why.) This, combined with the fact that the door to The Sublime is sitting wide open has me thinking -- are copies of some humans (maybe those who visited the park) somehow going to end up in The Sublime?
How is Teddy back this season? At first, I thought he must have been a host created by Chalores, like William. But now it seems like he may not physically exist in Chalores' new world either.
Where did Maya, the roommate, go?
Is Bernard really gone? It seems like no one can actually die on this show, but Bernard's exit seemed more final than, say, Maeve's. We see him follow Charlie, his son as part of his backstory, through a door. We also hear his voice repeat what he said to Akecheta in the Sublime: "In every scenario, I die…" It seems to nail home that he was making a real sacrifice by carrying through with the plan.
Outdoor safety tips: 10 things you can do to protect your kids
Outdoor safety tips: 10 things you can do to protect your kids
American children spend over three times as many hours in front of screens as they do outdoors. As children get older, their screen time increases on average, too, giving them less time to spend outside. Yet research suggests unstructured, outdoor play leads to higher self-directed executive functioning in children. In fact, being outdoors and playing in nature are essential to a child's overall health and well-being.
But there's a reason many parents are hesitant to send their children out the front door: outdoor play is simply riskier -- at least on an immediate, physical level -- than watching TV. Luckily, a few simple tricks can help lower the risks to children associated with playing outside.
Use the buddy system
Depending on the ages of your children, independent play can be risky without parents around to monitor it. If a child gets hurt, they might not be able to reach help on their own. Having a buddy around while playing can keep both children safer.
Emphasize personal safety
Educate your children on personal safety, especially when riding bikes, skating and playing sports. Teach your children the importance of wearing a helmet and that it's non-negotiable. Elbow and knee pads and other sports-specific gear are helpful protective measures. Instilling the importance of protective gear and helmet-wearing at all times when they're young ensures they'll make safer choices as they gain more independence.
Have a plan
In case of an emergency, you should already have a home safety plan in place. But do you also have a plan in place for your older kids as they gain more independence? When your children are old enough to leave your yard or venture away from your building, they should know what to do if they're hurt or need help of any other kind.
Talk through potential hazards with them, letting them ask questions along the way. Do they understand where to go, what to do and who to contact if something happens to them, a friend or even a stranger? Is there a plan B if you're not home, or if they can't reach you?
Chris Monroe/CNET
Use smart security as an extra pair of eyes
While many parents develop keen ears for hearing their child's distant cry -- including whether it's playful or genuine -- an extra set of eyes when the kids are outside can't hurt. Having an outdoor home security camera doesn't just protect your home; it can also give you another way to ensure child safety outdoors. Most smart security cameras can be monitored from smartphones, and some even boast smart features, like animal detection, facial recognition and person alerts, which can help give you more detailed notifications while your children play.
Remember road safety
Personal safety isn't the only thing kids should be educated about when they're playing outdoors. Many children are unaware of the surrounding dangers when outdoors until an adult explains it. Children walking and biking should know the rules of the road, including how to obey traffic laws and the correct traffic flow, like riding with the flow of traffic off to the right instead of against it. If your child has to walk a few blocks to get to the basketball court or nearest playground, do a trial run for their first time and help them navigate the roads -- using crosswalks and looking both ways for cars along the way so they know the right path to take.
Set up a kid-friendly zone
If you're lucky enough to have a backyard or other outdoor area for your kids to play, make sure it's kid-friendly by protecting against common hazards. Pools and hot tubs should be securely closed and locked to prevent accidental injuries or worse. Toys and playhouses should be checked for insect nests, snakes and other unwelcome critters (these will differ based on where you live).
Scan the yard for other potential hazards, like dead tree branches or poison ivy that may have creeped in from the neighbor's yard. If you have a trampoline or are planning to get one, know how to level it properly, especially if your yard is sloped.
For those who don't have a yard, it's important to create age-appropriate boundaries before children can safely play outdoors without an adult. There may be a creek nearby you want them to avoid, or a busy intersection they should steer clear of. Walk the boundaries, teaching them where they can and can't go along the way. If your apartment building has rules -- for instance, kids can play in the garden but aren't allowed to open the exterior door -- make sure your kiddos know the rules and can repeat them so you know they understand.
Keep track of the kids
A bit of freedom goes a long way toward unstructured play for your child's physical and mental growth, but you can't be everywhere with them. One solution is an age-appropriate tracker that can show you where they are, even without them checking in. (We recommend using these trackers only with the knowledge of your children.) You can use tracking services built into smartphones and watches, or use a separate device.
Remember medical considerations
Preparing a child with allergies or other medical issues for outdoor fun might take a couple of extra steps before they're ready to head out the door.
Make sure your children have any medication they need readily available, especially for serious allergies like bee stings. For children who need an inhaler, practice with them so they know when and how to administer their medicine on their own. If your child needs medication at a specific time, make sure they have an alarm set to come back home to take their medicine when needed, or have a system in place for them to safely take it while outside.
Even if your children don't have these concerns, that doesn't mean their friends don't. Check with parents of your children's friends to be sure you're not packing snacks that could lead friends to have serious allergic reactions.
David Priest/CNET
Encourage seasonal preparation
Children should stay well hydrated before, during and after outdoor activities -- especially when the weather is hot. Check on them every half hour to make sure they stay hydrated, and more often during hotter months. Know the signs of dehydration and have rehydration solutions like Pedialyte readily available in cases of mild dehydration.
In winter months, children should wear layers of warm, brightly colored clothes appropriate for the temperatures in your area. This way, they can remove or add layers based on temperature fluctuations, especially around dusk and dawn.
In general, asking what the kids plan to do before they leave for an hours-long play session is a good idea, too: if they say they're building a snow fort, you can remind them not to tunnel under heavy snow; if they say they're playing baseball in the street, you can remind them to watch for cars.
Set check-in timers
Kids can easily lose track of time when they're outside having fun. Help them remember to check in regularly by setting an alarm or reminder on their smartphone or tracker. You can also get an inexpensive smart speaker to set outside that will remind them to check in.
Conclusion
Encouraging outdoor play can have a lasting positive effect on your kids. But if you want to avoid any injuries worse than the usual bumps and bruises, following some safety tips can make a big difference. Make indoor and outdoor home security easier with some of these recommendations:
WWE Extreme Rules 2020: Results, awful main event, ratings and full recap
WWE Extreme Rules 2020: Results, awful main event, ratings and full recap
WWE called this years Extreme Rules "The Horror Show at Extreme Rules." That was, I think, mostly meant to spotlight the main event, a Wyatt Swamp Fight, but it unfortunately encapsulated much of the show. Despite a strong WWE Championship match, this was a very weak pay-per-view.
The main event saw Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman faceoff in a nonsensical short film at the Wyatt Swamp. Wyatt won, I think, but it was too confusing and boring to really matter. (And it wasn't for Strowman's Universal Championship). The Eye for an Eye match between Rey Mysterio and Seth Rollins had fantastic action, but it was let down by its dumb stipulation. Asuka versus Sasha Banks was excellent -- right up until the finish, which was lacklustre in several ways.
For a full recap of the show, including the new SmackDown Tag Team Champions, scroll below.
The Fiend wins Wyatt Swamp Fight (I think)
This sucked. Like WrestleMania's Boneyard and Firefly Funhouse bouts, this Swamp Fight was a short film that pitted Bray Wyatt, as Bray Wyatt and not The Fiend, against Braun Strowman. Strowman's Universal Championship was not on the line. Unlike the Boneyard and Firefly Funhouse, this was not fun at all.
Remember Bray Wyatt's promos? How they sounded kind of cool sometimes, but mostly were just empty dribble that didn't need to be paid attention to? That was the Wyatt Swamp Fight.
It began with Strowman confronting Wyatt by the entrance to the Wyatt Swamp. Bray is on his rocking chair, but laughs and disappears. Then Strowman runs to find him, beating up miscellaneous swamp dudes as he tried to find Bray. He's then hit in the back with a shovel, and then we see he's been attacked by a clone of himself. Clone Strowman hits him in the head with the shovel.
Real Strowman wakes up, chained to a rocking chair. Wyatt walks in and says... stuff. "To be the monster you were I need to destroy the monster you've become," lines like that but a way too much of them. Bray brings out a lady with a snake. The snake bites Strowman.
Strowman wakes up by a fire, and then beats up more swamp dudes. He sees visions of who I think is Sister Abegail, but in any case is the lady with the snake. I stopped paying attention because it didn't make any sense and was actively painful to watch, and when I snapped back to it, Bray and Strowman were fighting.
Strowman chokeslams Bray onto a boat. The boat animates itself and rides into the lake, but then rides itself back. Bray and Strowman fight some more. Strowman throws Bray into the swamp. He looks relieved. Bray jumps out of the swamp and pulls in Strowman. The show ends with The Fiend laughing into the camera.
The Boneyard match was fun. Firefly Funhouse was fun. Money in the Bank was fun. Every short film thing they've done since hasn't really worked. This didn't just not work, it was bad. Really bad.
Drew McIntyre retains WWE Championship
If Asuka versus Sasha Banks was let down due to its finish, Drew McIntyre versus Dolph Ziggler ended up being the night's overachiever. Drew McIntyre ended up pinning Ziggler following a Claymore Kick to end a very strong bout.
It opened with Ziggler revealing a surprise stipulation for the match: It's extreme rules, but for Ziggler only. If McIntyre uses a weapon, gets counted out or disqualified, Ziggler is the new champ. The stipulation kind of screams "McIntyre will win this match," but it ended up being fun.
But really, this match's biggest strength is that it wasn't inhibited by an obstructive stipulation or a silly finish. Ziggler's character has been weakened by regular losses, but Ziggler the performer was on top of his game tonight, and did an admirable job at coming off as a threat to McIntyre. That said, even after Ziggler hit a Famouser, Zig Zag and then a Urange onto a chair, it was hard to believe McIntyre was losing the match.
Lots of cool spots throughout, including when McIntyre called for the Claymore but ended up getting slammed with a chair to the leg by Ziggler. At the end of the match, Ziggler called for a Superkick but got countered with a Claymore for the pin. Life is all about circularity, y'all.
Rating: 3.75 stars. Super fun match.
Asuka vs. Sasha Banks
Fantastic match with a dumb finish. After Asuka accidentally sprayed the referee with green mist, Bayley hit Asuka in the back with one of the Tag Title belts and then -- and this is where it gets too silly -- puts a referee shirt on herself and counts the pin. She demands the timekeeper ring the bell, and Bayley and Banks walk out with all the gold.
So we don't know if Sasha Banks is the champion or not (the announcers all disagreed about this afterward), making this effectively a non finish. And a bad non finish at that.
The match itself was fantastic, with crisp and fluid action. Lots of back and forth, including an excellent series of counters towards the end which ended with Banks tapping out in the Asuka Lock while the ref was distracted by Bayley.
Rating: 3.25 stars. Such a fun match right until the end.
Seth Rollins 'takes out' Rey Mysterio's eye
Rey Mysterio and Seth Rollins are both outstanding wrestlers. Their Eye for an Eye match had fantastic action. But it was hamstrung by the stipulation, which was literally that to win the match you had to take out your opponent's eye. Since we know that wasn't going to happen, the match lacked the structure and tension it should have had. It ended with Seth Rollins cramming Rey Mysterio's face into the corner of the ring steps, like he did on Raw to begin this storyline. He then barfed afterwards.
The bout had plenty of memorable spots, like Mysterio finding innovative ways to slam Rollins into the barricade (see above) and, later, Curb Stomping him (also see above). Then there were the silly bits, where one or the other would try and use a chair or a Kendo stick to take out an eye. Rollins at one point got a steel spike and tried to stab Mysterio.
Not only was it dumb, it was also fairly distressing to watch a man try to murder another man under the auspices of a pro wrestling match. The ended was lambasted on Twitter -- Mysterio had a lollipop-looking eye under his mask to make it look like it was extricated -- but, honestly, watching Rollins try to stab Mysterio with a spike or a pen, and ultimately watching him force Mysterio's eye into the steel steps, was not fun. It was unpleasant, and not the good "I can't wait to see him get his comeuppance" way. Just not enjoyable.
Rating: 2 stars. Great action, but completely let down by the stipulation. These two would have easily had a 4+ star match without it.
Apollo Crews can't compete against MVP
Apollo Crews was scheduled to defend his United States Championship against MVP but, due to an attack by Bobby Lashley on Raw, isn't cleared to compete. So MVP claims to be the new United States Champion, raising the belt he had made and which he's been parading around on Raw.
Bayley retains SmackDown Women's Championship
After a lengthy match (or at least, it felt like a lengthy match), Bayley defeated Nikki Cross to retain her SmackDown Women's Championship. Sasha Banks distracted the ref, allowing Bayley to hit Cross with brass knucks, her faceplant finisher and get the pin.
This match wasn't super fun to watch. Nikki Cross is a popular performer, but her matches and character really need fan feedback to truly work. Bayley is at day 280 of being SmackDown Women's Champion, and similarly that storyline needs fans in the crowd anticipating her defeat to truly work. Of course, there are NXT students in the crowd making noise, but it's not quite the same thing.
Bayley and Nikki worked hard, and it certainly wasn't bad. But it's not one I'd go out of my way to watch.
Rating: 2 stars. Would have likely been much better with a crowd.
Shinsuke Nakamura and Cesaro win Tag Team Titles
The main show begins with a SmackDown Tag Teat Title Tables match between The New Day and Shinsuke Nakamura. It ended in spectacular fashion, with Cesaro powerbombing Kofi Kingston off the turnbuckle to the outside through two tables stacked atop each other. It was sweet.
Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura undoubtedly have the feel of two singles guys thrown together as a team because creative had nothing else for them, but they absolutely work together. Having them win the gold is a smart move: The New Day are a credible team no matter what, so the loss doesn't hurt them, while being champions solidifies Cesaro and Nakamura as a threatening tag team.
After the match, Cesaro goes to ringside and tells Michael Cole he and Nakamura are sick of being overlooked. "Overlooked no more," assures Michael Cole. We'll see about that.
The match was fine, punctuated by some exhilarating spots like Big E's terrifying spear to Cesaro through the middle ropes and a huge trust fall by Kingston. Ultimately though, despite the aforementioned awesome finish, I couldn't help but feel like these four talented stars could have put a better match on without the tables stipulation.
Rating: 3 stars.
Kickoff-Show Results
Kevin Owens pins Murphy with a stunner in a short match.
