indeed all that making a list and checking it twice puts a strain on many people. a california therapist joins us with some tips to stay emotionally healthy. but first, san francisco's district attorney is under new attack after comments she made at abc seven's town hall regarding fighting the homelessness crisis . you're watching, getting answers. i'm kristen sze. thanks for joining us. homeless advocates are now denouncing da brooke jenkins answer to a question posed by abc seven insider phil matier regarding what to do about the many unhoused san franciscans who refuse shelter when offered. >> so i think the recourse is obviously outside of the criminal justice system. but is it? it is. i mean, the criminal justice system is just say no, i'm camping here. well, no, they have to be made to be uncomfortable. is the truth of the matter. we cannot make it comfortable for them to pitch a tent on our sidewalks and stay. >> joining us live now to talk

about the blowback and has to do with the word comfortable, uncomfortable. uh. the man who asked the question himself, phil matier. phil, did you know when she said that when you heard that that this was going to raise eyebrows and generate some heat? i knew it was going to raise eyebrows. >> and i think it's generated heat, but it's also generated support for the district attorney. we're in a place now. i ask you, when was the last time you remember a san francisco district attorney even commenting on homelessness? >> uh- i'm thinking, i'm thinking. >> and in terms of their office, no, they have studiously avoided it. as a matter of fact, for years we actually even downplayed the drug selling in the tenderloin, saying that it was a victimless crime. we don't want to continue the war on drugs. it's failed. we need to come up with alternatives. well the situation got out of hand. and now brooke jenkins, who took over as district attorney after the recall of chesa boudin, is changing course on this. and some people are not comfortable with it in this particular case, what she was talking about were people sleeping on the streets of san francisco in their tents

and the question was with 50 to 60% of the people on any given night saying no to shelter, what do we do to somebody that just decides they want to pitch a tent? and she was very clear there wasn't something criminally that she could do. it wasn't going to charge them. that wasn't going to be it. but she said, you know, we can make them feel uncomfortable. and that upsets some people because they said, well, what makes you think it's comfortable to be on the street? and to begin with? but her point i spoke with her, her staff today is that we can't just be compliant with it. and while she's concentrating now, much of her strength on going after the bigger dealers in the drug war on drugs right now that are selling openly. we also have a lot of users in those tents, people that are repeatedly found to be intoxicated and she is making it uncomfortable for them because what she's doing is she's citing them and going to continue to cite them and have the police sent and if there's enough sites, you might wind up in jail where you have to start thinking about what you're doing. >> so that's what uncomfortable means. >> what it means is, is from my

understanding, talking to them is that the small things that we , he said were too small to get involved with or we didn't want to criminalize have now snowballed into big things, and we've got to be consistent in enforcing the laws we have now. not we're not going to put out new ones or bans things, but we have to be consistent. and that's something we're hearing from the mayor as well. >> in fact, we have that because she was here. on getting answers yesterday. and let's go ahead and roll what she said. >> my hope is that with the work that we're out there doing to try and get people indoors, that we are making it uncomfy enough for people to basically say, look, we'll accept the help that you're offering. um, but what we can't do is just let anyone be on the streets of san francisco with anything goes. and our hot team and our uh- h soc team, these various homeless out reach services teams, they're being very aggressive, but also very compassionate in their offer of help to the people on the streets of san francisco. >> so all right, so she used the

same word uncomfortable. but she also said compassionate. yeah. the people who are criticizing that line of, you know, talking, speaking, using that terme, whether it's jenkins or mayor breed, what do they want done. >> well, they want everyone to have housing. housing first, their own apartment. okay. and i don't think that that's possible in san francisco. we have to be realistic. that would be the goal. shelters for everyone one, in other words, have as many shelter beds or more than there are homeless on the streets because there's a waitlist right now, right? >> even though people are turning it down, they're still waiting. right. >> but so that's what they want. and they wanted that for years. but the situation that the city finds itself in and it's not alone. we're seeing this up and down the west coast from seattle to san diego. is that even with the shelters, the tents are proliferating and they are a visible and they are taking the toll on the rest of the citizens in the city. and the question is, if you are in law enforcement or public health or whatever, what do you do about this? i mean, compassion goes so

far, but what do you do about this? and i had in the advocates answer is, well get everybody housing and it sounds good, but it's just not. we don't have that in san francisco's notorious for not building housing. so it's a gridlock situation. you see the mayor now you have the advocates and you have the general public, the general public, polling shows, has shifted in the last couple of years where they want, you know, they want accountability. that's what they want on just about every level of this program. if you if programs are available for drug users, then drug users should use the programs. there's a feeling that possibly it's just been you want to say too easy, too easy. that would be it. and that's what brooke jenkins is saying as well, is that we don't have to make it. we don't have to make it illegal, but we don't have to make it easy for what's going on either. >> i hear you. okay. so in terms of the providing shelter for all, let me ask you, is one realistic option what san jose is now talking about and looking at the safe sleeping sites like

basically sanction encampments that san francisco has those oakland has those, we have those all around the state. >> yes, we are doing safe sanction for, uh, mobile homes. we're doing it for people in their cars. we're doing it for, for these. and but that's there is still going to be a certain group that's not going to want to, to, to deal with that. we have people that are homeless. we have people that are mentally ill. we have people that are addicted to drugs. you put them all together and here's the thing. there's not one solution for all. so different advocates advocate different solutions for that particular thing. but in this case it's an interesting thing. brooke jenkins is not backing down. and as you said, the mayor is there to. so this town hall meeting we had really sort of signaled that there is a change being attempted at city hall, a significant change. and now we are starting to see the resistance to that. how it plays out remains to be seen. we still have a board of supervisors, various commissions that can deal with this, but that's that's where it is right now.

>> um, also in that town hall, you guys addressed retail theft and crime, and prop 47 came up. it came up again during brooke jenkins one on one interview with liam melendez. they sat down a few days after the town hall. what is happening with that? because i think jenkins sounded like she was almost hoping that voters will see. >> here it is. the bottom line is that voters approve prop 47, which said that if you steal anything up to the value of $950, it's a misdemeanor, you get a ticket for it. okay? a lot of people point to that and say that has led to this explosion in retail crime. it may or may not have, but sacramento has consistently said no to any tightening or toughening of laws, whether it's drug laws, whether it's even car break in laws or or the retail theft laws, they have said no. even though the governor advocates for it, he doesn't push it in the legislature. so what she's saying is probably the only people that are going to change the law are voters. and she would like to get it in front of voters. that's a difficult thing. but that's what she's

saying is that basically, sacramento does not appear to have the will or the inclination to do that. so it's going to have to go to the voters before i let you go. >> speaking of voters, i mean, as you mentioned in the past couple of years, the winds have shifted. um, how much time do they have to work with? i mean, breed goes before voters next year. >> it's tight. it's very, very tight. her people were saying last year that she had you know, she has until about this summer to either show change or show voters that it's capable of change. otherwise she's going to be hit with the two little too late. so the stakes are high here. the stakes are high for the mayor, not so much for brooke jenkins. she's got more time. she's got more time and the public seems to be much more supportive of her than in the mayor. at this point. >> all right, phil, material was great talking with you. thanks so much. coming up next, our nation's highest court is taking on a case about access to an abortion pill ahead. a uc law professor at uc school of law in san francisco, formerly hastings, breaks down the legal battle and theossible implications it could have

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of a widely used abortion pill, mifepristone. this is the high court's first time touching abortion again after it overturned roe versus wade last year. joining us live now to discuss the political impact of the case, professor radhika rao at uc law, san francisco. she specializes in constitutional law and law and the human body. so professor rao, thanks for joining us. look, there are two abortion pills in this country that are approved. the one being considered in this case is mifepristone. it blocks a hormone needed for pregnancy to continue and is often taken with misoprostol to end a pregnancy

before ten weeks. it's been fda approved for use since 2000. what is the lawsuit that brought it before the high court? >> yes. so the lawsuit that brought it before the high court originated in texas, actually, with with a texas judge district court judge kazmarek, who is quite famous for issuing conservative rulings. and essentially, he argued that the fda should not have approved this drug that the drug is dangerous. there was a lawsuit brought by emergency room physicians claiming that they feared that if the drug had ill effects, they would have to treat women. now, there's a question whether that's actually even the case and whether these doctors have standing to bring the lawsuit, because this is all hypothetical. there are, in fact, no women who faced these ill effects, um, and have had to go to emergency rooms to be treated. um, so that's one of the lawsuits that's before the

court. okay. >> so what are the legal considerations that the decision will turn on? what's relevant here? >> well, what's relevant is whether or not the drug actually is safe and effective. and the evidence shows that it is. and the evidence before the agency, um, you know, when the agency approved it all, suggested that it was safe and effective. but, um, so this the implications of this lawsuit are to be second guessing that kind of agency judgment. um, which is quite unprecedented and would have troubling implications for wide range of other drugs which have been approved by the fda as safe and effective. you can imagine challenges being brought against all of those drugs as well. >> can they say in their ruling that even though this has been proven safe since, because it's been in use for over two decades, you didn't know it then when you improved it. so the approval still gets kind of like

ixnayed. and back to the drawing board. >> well, there are a number of different claims. so one of the claims is the agency and challenging its, um, approval of the drug. but there's another claim involving a very antiqua comstock act, um, which has never really, um, you know, been used in this way, uh, which prohibits the mailing of publications that are obscene. and there suggesting that that law also prohibits mailing of something like an abortion pill, which is, of course, very common now, especially in the red states, where surgical abortion is often banned. >> now, since roe got overturned. so women are getting it mailed to them in these like unlabeled packages because they're doing it in secrecy. but let me just ask you, what is the potential impact, especially for people in california? i'm wondering, does this affect us in any way? what could be the potential outcome here? >> well, so in a state like texas, for example, we just

recently just yesterday saw a case involving the texas supreme court ruling that the texas abortion law did not permit an exception for a pregnant woman who's physician said that her health required her to have an abortion in texas because the fetus that she was carrying was diagnosed with trisomy 13. um, and that either was unlikely to survive. um, or, you know, if she did give birth, would probably face a very premature, um, demise. um, but the texas supreme court ruled that in that case, that texas abortion law would not permit an exception unless the in the physician's reasonable medical judgment, the woman's life or health was at stake. so if that's the case, then women in states like texas facing draconian on abortion laws rely. upon something like the abortion pill to be able to have an abortion, that this

particular woman in the texas case for she was able to travel out of state. >> yeah, but what about us? what have they say the fda should never have approved mifepristone . what does that mean for california? well even for californians, many californians live in counties where, um, abortion clinics may be difficult to reach, and many of them rely upon an abortion. >> the abortion medication, abortion, um, so that they don't have to travel a large distance to get to an abortion clinic and this is safe and effective early within the pregnancy. in the first trimester. so if the approval were to be reversed, that could have a huge impact, not just in states like texas, but even in states like california. >> i mean, there are women in california where surgical abortion is allowed who still opt for the medical option for a lot of reason, like the pills. right? maybe they don't want their parents to know. maybe they can't get to a site like you said. but i'm looking at the overall landscape. professor rao, um, you've got what happened in texas. like you cited that kate cox case,

arizona supreme court, i understand, is hearing a case on a 1864 law near-total abortion ban. there's that case there that, you know, could have impact any of these things. could they end up there's another case in kentucky where where a woman who. is fetus has, um, show showing no cardiac activity is bringing a lawsuit out. >> um, under the state constitution saying that her constitutional state considers a right to privacy, suggests that she should be permitted to have an abortion. so there are cases all over the country. >> so can i just ask you, where does this all lead? right. you have all these different states, all these different cases. do you foresee something ending up in front of the supreme court that will either cause there to eventually be a national ban on abortions, or the restoration of it as a constitutional right? do you see that in the pipeline? >> well, that's a really interesting question, because in dobbs, in the decision, when the

court overturned roe versus wade , what it said that it was doing , justice alito's opinion for the majority suggested that this would end the abortion wars. but in fact, and i predicted this, the result has been actually quite the reverse. it has accelerated the abortion wars. so we're now seeing these cases across the country challenging abortion restrictions. so i think that the situation was quite predictable and ultimately it may end back at the supreme court. i don't think that this court is likely to reinstate a constitutional right to an abortion if anything, it seems, um, unwilling to permit it. you know, even i mean, the frightening thing about the abortion medication abortion ruling that the supreme court has taken is that it might diminish access to medication abortion in as well. uh, so i think this is quite ominous.

>> we'll have to follow this professor radhika rao at uc law, san francisco, thank you for coming on the show. >> thank you. >> we're going to shift gears for many people with the joy of the holidays comes an extra dose of stress. there are some things you can do though to keep the holidays calm and relaxe

we can all take steps now to make this time of the year less emotionally draining and more about making lifelong memories. joining us live right now is petaluma based family therapist and author caitlin sully. with a holiday stress survival guide. hey, thank you so much for joining us, caitlin. >> thanks for having me. always good to be on okay. >> so why why is this a stressful time of year for people? what are the major stressors there?

>> there are a lot of stressors this time of year, but i think we can kind of all agree that the main stressors are the sense that we have to make the holiday season magical and especially for us parents, this idea that we really want to do, you know, bring the joy and do all the things. and so there's just not enough time and space to do all the things that we want to do. so definitely this idea that the holidays are supposed to be joyful and they are they can be. and then also the time to be able to do the things that we want to do. another big stressor is, you know, finance, right? financial stressors, they pressure to, you know, get gifts for everyone on your list especially i think for women and moms, the pressure to again shop and do all the things can be really, really heavy. and then lastly, one of the biggest pressures i think, is this idea of getting together with family, which can be really fun. but as we know, can also be problematic sometimes and a little bit stressful. >> oh yeah, again, it always comes down to are they going to

be happy? are they going to be satisfied? okay so you have some main stress prevention tips for us this season. why don't you go ahead and share those with us. >> sure. so i like to think of this as like an approach to the holiday season as opposed to like strategies. strategies are like take a deep breath, but this approach is going to help us decrease stress overall and find more joy. so the first one, you don't have to do it all. this is really important. i'm going to say it again for us mom and us women who have historically felt like we need to be the sort of magic makers. so lean on your partner if you have one, or lean on friends, family, community to make this season, you know, joyful without feeling like you have to be the one to do it all and be it all. and then, you know, the second one that i think is really important, and this is one that we forget often, is to focus on what actually brings you joy. and coming a good way to do this is come back to what it is that you value about the holiday season. it could be connection. it could be time with family. it

could be adventure, or it could be just more quiet time. so really making a list of what it is that you find to be joyful or what brings you a sense of, you know, content over the holiday season and then kind of let go, invite yourself to let go of the things that don't bring you joy. sometimes people are like, well, that's not realistic, but i think if we at least start with a list of the things that bring us joy, we have a better chance of having success. yeah. um yeah. >> creating boundaries. what does that mean? >> creating boundaries is a big one. so this will help you focus on the things that bring you joy and actually leave time and space to do those things. so creating boundaries with family and friends that allow you the time and space to do the things that are most important to you. and this can look like not saying yes to the things that feel like obligations and only saying yes to things that feel like they are in line with their values, or in line with the kind of holiday season you want to have. it sounds selfish, but really it's not. it's self

preservation and we really need to create boundaries around the things that are important to us. it can also look like saying, i'll come to the party, but i'm going to have to leave by, you know, 7 p.m. i'm just starting to learn how to do that. >> and you're right, it is. you get the control back and it does feel good. um you know, but you talked about culture. so i want to ask you, for those who celebrate traditionally jewish or other non-christian religious holidays, um, you know, can they experience additional sources of stress because the holiday season may not reflect their culture. and so what's your advice? >> absolutely. i think that's a really good point. you know, we live in this culture that really obviously pushes, you know, this western idea of the holiday season. and so i would really encourage, um, people who want to focus on their family and culture and their, you know, different traditions to stay close with family, to stay close with friends in their community, um, to ask for what they need and to really just focus on that instead of letting all the outside noise kind of come in and take over. i know that can be really hard, but i feel like

now, more than ever, if we can, um, you know, stay connected with community, we're going to end up feeling better, less stressed, less overwhelmed, and less sad to be honest with everything going on in the world. >> yeah. and speaking of which, we only have about 30s. but what advice do you have for people who may feel lonely and sad and really reach out? >> i know this again sounds like, oh, what if i don't have someone? but if you have somebody in your life or in your community, you can reach out to and just have one close connection, one, you know, cup of coffee, one cup of tea is going to be really powerful. so stay connected with the people that are close to you in real life. >> i like that advice. all right. caitlin sewell, thank you so much. really appreciate this. thank you. happy holidays. all right a reminder that you can get our live newscasts breaking news, weather and more with our abc7 bay area streaming tv app. it's available on apple tv, google tv, fire tv and roku. just search abc seven, bay area and download it now. we'll take a short break and

tonight, breaking news involving president biden. the house voting moments ago to formally open the impeachment inquiry, despite no proof of high crimes or misdemeanors. the president's response just in. also, the major winter storm warnings at this hour. this system moving across the country, right i