you should feel that, like, right back here. oh, yeah, i felt that! good, that is so much better than last week. thanks, i've been doing 'em every night while i'm watching tv. - oh, what are you watching? it's a mystery. high quality care that meets you where you are. i'm ending homelessness and reviving downtown. how will san francisco do these things while

cutting its budget amidst a huge deficit? mayor london breed will be here to discuss the challenges. and tis the season to be tipping. but just how much should you tip your uber and doordash drivers? the drivers themselves weigh in and it's not what you might think. our media partner, the san francisco standard, has the scoop. but first, a texas woman sued for an emergency abortion and the court said no because she didn't prove her life was in danger, leaving her life in the hands of a judge with no medical training. the details in a case that's capturing national attention an you're watching getting answers. thanks for joining us. i'm kristen sze kate cox, whose fetus had a fatal condition, didn't qualify for an abortion in texas. not even after four e.r. visits elevated vital signs and risks of a uterine rupture. and with her ability to have more children in jeopardy. so now her attorney says she's left texas to get that abortion. this ends her unprecedented challenge to one of the most restrictive

bans enacted utd since the fall of roe versus wade. her argument ultimately rejected by the texas supreme court, was based on health hers and her fetuses. joining us live now to help us better understand her situation is abc7 special correspondent dr. alok patel. dr. patel, it's great to see you. it's been a long time. >> likewise. it's good to be here. i wish it was for a different reason. just hearing you read that intro gave me hypertension, but i'm going to keep it together. we can talk through this for the sake of our viewers. >> they need to understand, right? because. absolutely. this woman, kate, who's 31 years old, discovered that her fetus had trisomy 18. what is that? >> so trisomy 18, kristen is a congenital anomaly. it has to do with our chromosomes and it affects heart development. organ development can cause severe intellectual disability and the reality is, is that right now estimates say that about 1 in 5000 pregnancies will have this a lot of them die actually in utero. a lot of these babies don't even survive to birth the ones who do survive to birth often die quickly in the hospital. about 90 to 95% of kids with trisomy 18 will not

live past age one. and all this does depend on the individual. there are some situations where someone may say, hey, this fetus is not going to live, and if you continue the pregnancy, this could actually jeopardize not only your fetus life who isn't going to live, but also your life as well. >> well, having been pregnant twice, i know that each time there is risk involved. but let's talk about trisomy 18 just a little bit more for that 1% or the teeny tiny percentage that does make it past year one or lives a little longer. i don't know what the record is and also what kind of life it looks like for them. >> severe intellectual disability. and i mentioned some some organ damage, some some heart conditions that can be there as well. i have seen kids with trisomy 18 be stillborn. i've seen kids with trisomy 18 basically live and never leave the neonatal icu until they ultimately pass on. now, like i mentioned, there are some kids who live past a year of age, but they are on continuous support, breathing treatments, basically not having any quality of life, which is why this is such a loaded topic to make a generalization about any fetal anomaly without actually understanding the characteristics and the

resources it takes is missing all the evidence and science in the conversation, because that is not one of the exceptions that the texas law affords. >> i think they said, you know, in case where doctors determined it necessary, necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman, how is that determined? like, where is that line drawn? right. it's not. >> and this is one of the most frustrating, if you will, parts for reproductive rights activists, obgyn, practitioners, people looking at these laws in several states that do have a trigger ban. and they will say that an abortion can be undertaken if it threatens the life of a mother. but you will not actually see in these laws the specific condition or vital signs situation for a physician or hospital will say, hey, in this situation an we can go ahead and abort and we've seen this play out in texas, in other states several times when someone may have a high risk pregnancy and there's a situation where a physician will say, hey, this is going to ultimately jeopardize your life, your health, your baby is not going to survive. but it because there's a heartbeat. but because

we aren't really sure when that time is going to be, we can't yet get an abortion and they have to wait. >> there was a woman last year with sepsis right in texas. >> and it was a very heartbreaking case. she actually had her water broke at around 22 weeks of pregnancy, went to the hospital, and the physician said, there's nothing we can do about this. but because of this and i hate to use these words, dying fetus still had a heartbeat. they could not induce labor or get an abortion. so they essentially had to tell this pregnant mom, you have to go home and wait. and when the baby dies, then we could do something about it. or if you get severely ill and it threatens your life. and three days later, she went into sepsis, which is a life threatening bacterial infection affecting her, her blood, her blood, her organs. she wound up in the icu. she lived. but they had to wait until that point to get an abortion. and essentially, with this case we're seeing right now in in texas, this individual, this pregnant mom, she spent all weekend kind of in limbo and what do i do until the ruling came down today? right. >> well, her doctor, i think her

lawyer said that this if she were to continue this pregnancy, which was going to most likely result in a sadly dead baby, that she her health could be threatened and that maybe she wouldn't be able to have a baby in the future. her fertility could be threatened. how so? like, how does continuing a pregnancy lead to that possibility of being less fertile in the future? >> if we look back to that case last november that we were just speaking about, the woman who was who was septic after her, after her birth, after i shouldn't say birth, after she lost her fetus and was treated. she had uterine scarring. we still don't actually know if she's going to be able to have another pregnancy. she doesn't even know in this situation. we have to remember that pregnancy is a very high stress situation on a body physiologically affecting all totally healthy woman for a totally healthy woman with a healthy pregnancy. look at the cdc statistics. there's about a 20 times increase risk of pregnancy complications and death from pregnancy complications versus abortion. that's how high risk pregnancy can be. so in a situation like trisomy 18, we

don't know all the details of what was seen in her labs from the physician exam, but it was determined by this physician, this is a high risk pregnancy. you're going to lose this fetus and you are going to put yourself at risk as well. but because of the physician's wording and saying it's upon their their their best faith that this patient should get an abortion, it wasn't good enough for the supreme court. >> can i ask you, does that scare doctors as to practice in those states and to make the decision be the one to draw the line? >> i've heard from several of my colleagues who practice who are ob gyn practitioners, family practice practitioners. people will have to have these conversations that they're absolutely afraid because on one hand, you know that this medically indicated treatment remember, abortion is health care in these situations could actually land you in prison if the state does not agree with your decision. so there are physicians in states like texas or other states kind of around texas that have these trigger bans in effect, who might say we we're going to need to have an abortion. but when the attorney

general says that i will prosecute this like homicide up to 99 years in prison, you can understand that a risk averse hospital will say, we don't know what to do. patients are going to be in limbo while we try to go get the legal backing to take care of them and protect their life. >> there's also the emotional toll right, of carrying a child to term that you know won't be viable. the months spent thinking about that and the devastation afterwards, those are all things to consider, too. but can i just get back to why there is so much risk in pregnancy and giving birth in america today and how we can lower that. you think this is a massive public health catastrophe and part of it has to do with the fact that we simply do not have the adequate amount of prenatal resources and access, basically access to health care for pregnant women, high risk pregnancies. >> and if you actually look at some of the data this came out, this year, several states that have these very strict abortion bans also are maternal care deserts. so if you have a high

risk pregnancy, see that potentially threatening your own life or you have a fatal fetal anomaly, you may also not have access to a reproductive rights to an abortion clinic. you may not have access to ob gyn specialists and you may not have the money to travel elsewhere for it's a devastating situation. fortunately, some individuals do have the means to travel like this situation right here. but imagine if she didn't. >> imagine if she didn't. dr. patel. thanks for joining us today. >> thank you for having this conversation. it's so important. >> but you know, we learned a lot. so that's what we do. thank you so much. all right. don't go away. new numbers suggest san francisco's homeless outreach is not going as hoped. so what else is mayor london breed going to try? a week after our abc's have a town hall she joins us in the studio to discuss what's next amid some massive budget challenges. when getting

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is not frequently successful, and 60% of the time people offered shelter last month turned it down. joining us live now to discuss this and other pressing issues is san francisco mayor london breed. mayor breed, nice to have you on the show. >> thanks, kristen. good to be here. >> yes. but is that a disheartening number that 60% of the folks offer said, no, thank you. >> so, yeah, definitely. because when we are out there with our homeless outreach teams, we are out there to offer help. we're out there to offer shelter, support services and the team that goes out to do this work. they're committed to this work and they're committed to helping people. so, yes, it is really frustrating. but we are also very grateful when we do get at

least one, two, three, sometimes six people to say yes to the help that we're offering, because that means six less people who are on the streets of san francisco right. >> there are so many, though. this was a main issue at our town hall a week ago, held with you district attorney jenkins and police chief scott in response to an audience question on action. you said this what we are doing is being as aggressive as we can to get people off the streets and give them, um, you know, an ultimatum. >> it's either you are going to accept the help that we're offering or we're going to have to move you from the sidewalk during are you sticking to that? >> what does that mean? moving you from the sidewalk to where so before the clarification on the ninth circuit court of appeal, we had a lot of difficult 8-80 with forcing people to move from the sidewalk because they were technically involuntarily homeless. >> and now when we offer someone a shelter bed, the definition is

that they are no longer involuntarily homeless. and so what? that means is we can clean and clear the sidewalks, whether they accept help from us or not. and we're definitely being a lot more aggressive. we're being compassionate, but at the same time, we need to clean and clear our streets and we don't want to hear the excuse of why people are refusing to accept help. we're offering people not just shelter beds in some cases directly moving people into housing, including a senior couple that we took right around the corner to get them housed. i mean, we are going to continue to do what is necessary to make people, from my perspective, uncomfortable so that they accept the help that we're offering to them. >> where is the limit to that, though, that couple you spoke of, you bring them there. what if they want to leave right away and kind of go back to the same spot? but you know, what is the

longer term plan? >> well, at the end of the day, people have the right to do what they want to do. i think that the good news is that we have a new state law, legislative policy that passed sb 43, which will give us the ability to use use substance use disorder to as something that could potentially allow for us to conserve individuals who can't make a decision for themselves for various reasons. so on day one, january first, when this law goes into effect in the state of california, san francisco has already agreed to opt in. and so we're prepared to move forward the process for those who are severely ill on the streets of san francisco in order to get them indoors, in order to get them the treatment and the support that they need. so in some cases, we're going to have a bit of a leverage to do that, but not in every single case. and 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 suitable enough for people to basically say, look, we'll accept the help that you're offering, 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 soc team, these various homeless outreach 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 while you're trying to tackle this problem, is it more challenging because of the fact that you are now looking at a big deficit? >> right. just a couple of months ago, we passed that $14.6 billion record budget and now you're looking at a half billion dollar deficit by 2025. did you see this coming? and where are you going to make the cuts? >> well, we definitely saw it coming. and just to give you some perspective on what we've been doing in san francisco, we have helped over. 13,000 people exit homelessness since 2018.

and we have never had that many people on any of our point in time counts. we've seen a reduction. so we have been making progress. but we also can't solve the entire world's problems. we know there are a lot of, you know, people who are coming to san francisco for various reasons, including the issues that we're dealing with around drug use and drug dealing. and we are tackling those issues as well. as far as the budget is concerned. and just like we balanced the budget last year, our plan is to introduce a balanced budget. this year, prioritizing the things that are the most important clean and safe streets, homelessness and the challenges that continue to persist in our city. we are making significant progress, changes happening as we speak with retail theft, with car break ins and other things. and we don't want to lose the momentum we have that is pushing for the change that we need. but we are going to have to make

some hard decisions and there will be some trade offs, but not for the priorities that are most important to san franciscans. >> what about reparations? is that not going to be created or looked at now? >> the resources that were allocated by the board of supervisors for the office of reparations was already taken allow for us to balance our budget, along with a number of other other programs that were created that have not been spent , and the money that has not been used because as we need to prioritize, you know, the things that are most pressing at this time in san francisco. all right . >> i know. reviving, reviving downtown is one of them. and we're showing you some video. i think i saw union square with the holiday decorated cable car. what's going on there? are you doing anything to make it easier to have music and draw people back? >> oh, definitely. we i introduced legislation for permits that we provide during the pandemic as a way to allow

outdoor music and to bring joy to people. and these permits were very popular for restaurants, small businesses and places that typically would not pay for or bring in a musician to perform or now doing so. and the fees for those permits came back after the emergency declaration for the global pandemic was over. and so what we decided to do because of what it meant to residents and neighborhoods all over san francisco, is to bring it back, to waive the fees to make it easier for businesses in this city, to bring in artists live entertainment and to do more fun activities. all over the city, which bring a lot of joy to people's hearts and minds. >> how is it going so far? i think we're, what, three weeks now into the holiday season? three more to go in terms of the efforts made to get people downtown and really make it feel safe and make it feel festive. what do you think? >> well, i'm really excited

because just early indications during black friday, we saw a 75% reduction in retail theft, too, because of the great work of the police department and dealing with those various operations that are making the arrest. and our district attorney who's holding people accountable now. but the ice skating rink, tyler florence, who opened up miller and lux, that line is out the door. and people i mean, they're selling out every single day. people are shopping and they're experiencing san francisco. this friday, we're going to open up a winter walk in the union square area where there'll be food trucks. there'll be similar to how we closed it when we were working on the central subway. it was such a popular destination during the holidays. we're bringing it back. so there's been a lot of great activities, not just downtown san francisco, but in the neighborhoods. i know the bayview is hosting a big event this weekend as well as the western edition. i was in chinatown this past weekend. so

many of our neighborhoods have great activities, light shows. golden gate park is amazing. what a great light show by entwine. so there's just entwine. >> i love it. i love it. we're out of time. so much to talk about. unfortunately so i could go on and on about the great things to do in san francisco, but it's a magical place, so let's keep the magic going. all right. sounds good. thank you so much for coming on, mayor. thank you. and we posted the entire commercial free town hall event online on abc7 news bay area streaming app as well. you can find it wherever you stream. all right. tis the tipping season so are we expected to give more during the holidays when we take an uber or use doordash, our media partner, the san francisco standard breaks down the new tipping etiquette next

from nannies to postal workers. but what about your ride share

or food delivery drivers? what's expected or appropriate? our media partner, the san francisco standard, has an article out on its website, uber doordash drivers spell out the new rules of christmas tipping. joining us live now is reporter garrett lahey, who researched and wrote this piece. all right, garrett, so what are the new rules? >> sure. so thank you for having me. the consensus i got from drivers, you know, they ask for a little more during the holiday season, but how much they ask for extra differed from rider driver to driver. one driver i spoke to mentioned he'd like to see a tip of like 30 to 40% as a way to be extra grateful to your rider. he mentioned he's got kids, he's got to buy presents for. another rider driver i spoke with mentioned an extra 5 to 10% might be appreciated. appreciated. so a little extra during the holidays is helpful is what i've heard. but the actual percentage can can differ from driver to driver. but certainly if you want to show

your thanks to your uber driver, you know, another 5 to 10% is a good way to do it, right? >> i mean, that's reasonable. but i'm curious, what's the average like? what's the norm and what is the better than the norm for the holidays? >> so i would say for the better than norm, the driver, one of the drivers i spoke with, mentioned he would like to see a tip between 30 and 40. if you want to be extra generous. okay >> so let me just ask you, do they incur extra costs during the season so they can they if they're busier during the holidays, that increases the cost of gas costs, the maintenance. >> there's also, you know, the extra costs that we all have during the holidays, which is buying gifts, booking travel, taking time off, which means, you know, if you're a gig worker , that's time you're not working. so to help finance all of that, getting an extra tip can really be really be essential is what i heard from drivers. >> you know, what's been the trend in tipping? because i know that some people say, oh, the platforms have raised their costs and it's more expensive to

ride. now, does that come out of people's tipping for drivers? >> so as far as the trends for tipping, i i'm not sure if i can necessarily say. what i would say is that the tipping for drivers, what it helps go towards is all of those costs that i mentioned earlier, which is things like gas, car maintenance, because that's not subsidized by by uber and lyft drivers are independent contractors, which they have to pay all their business expenses and so the drivers i spoke with can spend hundreds, if not thousands a month when it comes to paying off their car loans, car insurance, gas maintenance, all that. so the tips help finance all of those overhead costs. is what they said. >> right. i think i remember reading in your article. that's what i was referring to that as the basic cost has gotten more expensive, people are going, oh, well, that's all i'm going to pay. i'm not going to pay more, so i'm going to tip a little bit less. i don't know if that's been happening here. >> so, you know, we weren't able to get a hold of customers and

get their thoughts for tipping for uber. but we do know that the cost of getting an uber and lyft has gone up quite a bit since the mid 20. tens when it was not uncommon to get an uber across the city for under $10. now heavily funded by double or triple that back then. >> okay, so if we forget to tip immediately because sometimes you're in a hurry getting out of the car. right. can you go back to it and do it later? >> you can. that's the thing about uber and lyft that they have mentioned to me and that i've seen as i'm sure many watching at home have. is it will show you, it will prompt you to leave a tip and rate the driver, you know, sometimes hours or even days after the ride is concluded. according to uber, you can do this up to 30 days after taking your ride. so if you don't have time to tip right, then when you step out of the car, next time you open up the app, it'll prompt you to leave a tip for the driver. the next time you request a ride. all right. >> got to remember that garrett lahey from the standard. thank you so much for coming on. >> thank you. >> all right. and you can check

out garrett's story and more of the san francisco standard's other original reporting on their website, shefs .com abc7 will continue to bring you more segments featuring their city focused journalism. look for that twice a week right here on getting answers. we'll

you should feel that, like, right back here. oh, yeah, i felt that! good, that is so much better than last week. thanks, i've been doing 'em every night while i'm watching tv. - oh, what are you watching? it's a mystery. high quality care that meets you where you are.

from around the bay area. i'll see you back he tonight, breaking news. just a short time ago, ukraine's president zelenskyy here in the u.s., pleading for help. funding halted by republicans and their demands. president biden saying it's shocking it's gotten to this point. also breaking as we come