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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Donna Britt, who capped a nearly four-decade Louisiana broadcast journalism career with periodic on-air chronicles of her battle against a debilitating neurological disease, died Thursday in Baton Rouge. She was 62.

WAFB-TV, where Britt rose from fledgling reporter to longtime, market-dominating evening anchor after joining the station in 1981, announced her death. Her husband, Mark Ballard, Capitol Bureau editor for The Advocate, said she died at home surrounded by family.

Britt learned in 2017 that she had Lou Gehrig’s disease, another name for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

“Three days of testing in Houston, Texas — six doctors, 12 tests — shows that I have ALS,” she told viewers in 2017. In June 2018, her ability to stand, walk, write and speak diminishing, she announced her retirement.

Britt, who grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi, majored in music at LSU — she played oboe, violin and piano and composed music. She had been working as a disc jockey at WYNK radio when WAFB management heard her and recruited her.

“The best anchorwoman I ever worked with was Donna Britt,” George Sells, her co-anchor from 1988 to 2012 said in The Advocate. “I’m talking about aggressiveness, ability to dig out a story on the telephone when nobody wanted to give it to us. … She could write.”

She was also celebrated in Baton Rouge for civic and volunteer efforts that included work with Susan G. Komen Baton Rouge, Volunteers in Public Schools and numerous other organizations. Every Christmas season for years, Britt would stand with a red kettle and ring a bell to solicit donations for the Salvation Army.

“To know Donna was to love her,” Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said in a social media tribute. “She poured out her life to this community and we are richer for it.”

Britt is survived by her husband and their daughter and son.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana will continue to use an expanded version of absentee-by-mail voting for the upcoming spring elections that will fill two U.S. House seats, under a coronavirus emergency plan that won bipartisan approval from lawmakers Thursday.

Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, already had announced his support of the plan submitted by Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican. Ballots submitted by lawmakers and released by each chamber showed 80 of 105 House members agreed to the proposal, along with 35 of 39 senators.

With that final legislative decision, voters for the March 20 and April 24 elections — which include competitions for the vacant 2nd District and 5th District congressional seats — will have five COVID-19-related reasons to request an absentee ballot rather than vote in person.

Louisiana’s absentee balloting procedure is usually limited to people 65 or older, members of the military, overseas voters, people who are hospitalized, people who are physically disabled and people who won’t be in their parish for the election.

The emergency rules will allow people to seek an absentee ballot if they are at a higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 because of medical conditions; are subject to a quarantine order; are advised by a health provider to self-quarantine; are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 and seeking medical confirmation; or are caring for someone who is isolated because of the disease.

Those are the same expanded absentee-by-mail voting rules that were in place for the summer and fall elections, including the November presidential competition.

But Ardoin won’t be increasing the number of days of early voting as he did in the previous elections.

While absentee-by-mail voting increased in recent elections, most mail-in votes were cast by people legally able to do it without the emergency rules. Only small percentages of voters used the COVID-19 rules in submitting absentee ballots for the 2020 elections, according to the secretary of state’s data.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak. Follow Melinda Deslatte on Twitter at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte.

KENNER, La. (AP) — Authorities are investigating after a motorist was found unconscious inside a car submerged in a canal.

The 58-year-old man was rescued from the canal in Kenner Wednesday evening, The Times Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. Kenner police brought him to a hospital.

The man’s condition was not immediately available, and few other details were released.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Julia Letlow, the widow of Republican U.S. Rep.-elect Luke Letlow, described herself as “both full of grief while also having hope for the future” as she registered Thursday to compete for the congressional seat her husband was unable to fill because of his death from COVID-19 complications.

After filing her paperwork for the March 20 election, Julia Letlow faced reporters at the same podium where she stood with her husband six months earlier when he signed up for his bid to represent northeast and central Louisiana. This time, she stood alone.

She pledged to continue Luke Letlow’s vision for the 5th District, defended her own accomplishments and talked of the respect for public service she shared with her husband and wanted to pass along to their two young children.

“We don’t always get to choose what happens to us. But we do get to choose how to respond. Today, I choose to continue to move forward. Today, I choose hope,” said Julia Letlow, 39, a Republican who lives in the small town of Start in Richland Parish.

Her husband died Dec. 29 at the age of 41, only weeks after winning a runoff election for the congressional seat and days before he was scheduled to be sworn into office.

Julia Letlow said she knows the issues of the poverty-plagued district from traveling with her husband during the campaign and because of Luke Letlow’s tenure as chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, a Republican who stepped down after three terms and endorsed Luke Letlow for the job.

Abraham now is supporting Julia Letlow for the seat in the special election.

“I wouldn’t have done this without his blessing,” Julia Letlow said of Abraham.

Julia Letlow has never run for office “besides sixth-grade president” but said she often had conversations with her husband about the possibility. She dismissed suggestions she was riding her husband’s political coattails or trying to capitalize off sympathy to get the congressional job, saying she has her own experience to qualify her for the position.

“While Luke and I were a dynamo team and I miss him every day, still you’re your own individual person with your own qualifications and accomplishments in life, and I feel like I am very well qualified to run for this 5th Congressional District seat,” Julia Letlow told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. “Look at my qualifications. Take a look at my bio. Make your decision there.”

She has a career in higher education, with a Ph.D. in communication. She’s on leave from her job with the University of Louisiana at Monroe, where she works as top assistant to the president for external affairs and community outreach.

Five other contenders are vying for the congressional seat on the March ballot, including two who ran last fall. One of them, Allen Guillory, an Opelousas Republican, said Wednesday he’s worried about Julia Letlow’s two young children. Guillory said if Julia Letlow wins the congressional seat, “those kids could lose two parents.”

Julia Letlow responded that she’s running because of 3-year-old Jeremiah and 1-year-old Jacqueline. “I hope to illustrate for them the power of fortitude, resilience and perseverance,” she said.

Her campaign platform remains similar to her husband’s priorities, with a focus on job development, expanded access to broadband internet and support for agriculture industries. She said she intends a bipartisan approach, “while staying true to my conservative ideals and values that I hold dear.”

Asked if she thought President Joe Biden was properly elected to the office, Julia Letlow paused. Then, she said she believes Biden “is the legitimate U.S. president.” When pressed, she said she does not have the continuing concerns that some Republicans have cited about fraud. She noted those allegations were litigated in many court cases, where no widespread voter fraud was found.

“I have faith in our election cycle, I do,” she said. “I have faith in our democracy.”

The sprawling 5th District covers all or part of 24 parishes, including the cities of Alexandria and Monroe. It’s one of two congressional seats on the March ballot. Voters also will fill the New Orleans-based 2nd District seat, which is open after Democrat Cedric Richmond left the position to work for President Joe Biden’s administration.

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Follow Melinda Deslatte on Twitter at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Texas should be allowed to halt a common second-trimester abortion procedure, the state’s lawyers told a federal appeals court Thursday in a hearing punctuated by debates over fetal pain and the rights of women to medically safe abortion.

A 2017 Texas law, which has never been enforced, prohibits the use of forceps to remove a fetus from the womb — what supporters of the law call a “dismemberment abortion” — without first using an injected drug or a suction procedure to ensure the fetus is dead.

The state has long argued that it has a legal interest in barring what it calls a “brutal” procedure. Abortion rights advocates argue that the law effectively outlaws what is often the safest method of abortion for women in the second trimester of pregnancy — a procedure medically known as dilation and evacuation. They also argue that fetuses cannot feel pain during the gestation period affected by the law, and that one alternative outlined by the state, the use of suction to remove a fetus, also results in dismemberment.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans blocked enforcement of the law last year, and other federal courts have blocked similar laws. But opponents of legal abortion hope the Supreme Court, now with three appointees of former President Donald Trump, will take a new look at the issue.

Against that backdrop, a majority of the full 17-member 5th Circuit agreed to Thursday’s full-court rehearing, which featured sometimes sharp discussions on whether a fetus can feel pain.

Kyle Hawkins of the Texas Attorney General’s Office argued that fetuses in the second trimester are “pain capable.” He said the law does not pose an unconstitutional burden on a woman seeking an abortion and that the state has a legitimate interest in requiring a “more humane” abortion method.

“Even in high school, if you’re going to dissect a frog, you kill him before you start taking him apart,” Judge Edith Jones said later as she questioned Molly Duane, attorney for the Center for Reproductive rights.

“First of all,” Duane responded, “the record clearly shows that fetal pain is not possible at the gestational ages —”

“Well, we don’t know about frog pain, do we?” Jones interrupted. “It’s a matter of taking creatures and not tearing them apart limb by limb.”

In briefs, the center cites findings by the American Medical Association, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical organizations that pain cannot be felt before 24 weeks of gestation.

The Texas law can cause needless delay for a woman seeking abortion and the requirements are medically unnecessary, Duane argued. Also, Duane argued, a physician cannot be certain of fetal death in many cases until a procedure has begun, raising questions among 5th Circuit judges Thursday of whether the physician performing the abortion with forceps becomes liable for prosecution if the drug has not worked.

Hawkins said the physician in that circumstance has options including a second injection.

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear arguments over a decision blocking a similar Alabama law. But abortion opponents have read another opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts in a separate abortion regulation case as indicating that states have greater leeway to regulate abortion.

Since then, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett has also joined the Supreme Court, boosting abortion opponents’ hopes that the nation’s highest court may be open to new restrictions on the procedure.