On today’s episode of the 5 Things podcast: As we pass the 1-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned Roe v Wade, we look at how the controversy over abortion rights has transformed Carbondale, Illinois. USA TODAY reporter Chris Kenning describes how this small blue dot in a sea of red has become a symbol of abortion rights in America today.
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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Dana Taylor:
Hi. I’m Dana Taylor. It’s Sunday, June 25th, 2023. The one-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade is this weekend. That ruling not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent that had enshrined abortion rights in the US, it created new fault light and added fuel to one of America’s most contentious debate. At the center of this debate are places like Carbondale, Illinois, a place reporter Chris Kenning describes as a blue dot in a sea of red, a symbol of abortion right in America today. Chris Kenning spent a year covering how the issue has transformed the city over the past year and now joins me to talk about his reporting for this story. Chris, thanks for joining me.
Chris Kenning:
Thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
So your report focuses on Carbondale, Illinois, a place you call a quiet college town. Tell me about Carbondale.
Chris Kenning:
Sure. Carbondale is a town of about 22,000 people. It’s in a rural part of southernmost Illinois. It was founded in the 1850s as a railroad junction, later became the home of Southern Illinois University. It’s kind of a medical hub now, but it’s a quiet small town of neighborhoods and churches, but it also has a thriving LGBTQ community and a cannabis dispensary. It’s all centered in this downtown that’s got a 1950s Dairy Queen that people line up for at night and an Amtrak line that runs from New Orleans to Chicago. But really, one of its most important attributes is that it’s been a democratic leaning outlier in this more conservative, red, rural area of Illinois.
Dana Taylor:
Carbondale also happens to be accessible to five states where abortions are banned or otherwise unavailable. How did you and your team set your sights on Carbondale for this story?
Chris Kenning:
Last summer after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, we knew that red state lawmakers across the South and the Midwest we’re going to push to enact restrictions in bans on abortion. At the time, abortion providers were looking to figure out what to do, where they going to cross state lines and reopen to keep serving their clients in as close proximity as they could. As these moves started to take place, we wanted to see how this would play out in some of these small towns with opponents and providers and cities that were going to find this issue landing on their doorstep. So we look for a spot that might be especially pivotal to access and Carbondale was located amid a lot of states that were going to ban or restrict abortion. Its location as the southernmost point in an abortion rights state dipped into the South was going to make it extra pivotal in importance.
Dana Taylor:
Well, so this really interesting thing is that a year ago, there were no abortion providers there. So elective abortions, they hadn’t been performed there or available since 1985. Now there are two, maybe a third coming soon. How did that come about?
Chris Kenning:
Yeah, it is really interesting. Really began even before the leak of the decision happened last May. Choices Clinic in Memphis, Tennessee had been eyeing Carbondale for a while. Lawmakers in Tennessee had passed restrictions over the years that included a trigger ban or trigger law, which would go into effect to effectively ban abortion if Roe ever fell. In May of 2021, when the court decided to take up the Dobbs case, which was the 15-week ban in Mississippi, and they said that they were going to rule on the constitutionality of all prohibitions on abortion before viability, Pepper decided that this court was looking to overturn Roe and she needed to find a new location. She chose Carbondale for some of the reasons we talked about, that it was a liberal dot in this mostly conservative area, so might be more welcoming. Then at the same time, another clinic, the Alamo Women’s Clinic, which was operating in San Antonio, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, was also deciding to open a clinic in Carbondale. So those got it started and there’s another one city officials say that we expect to see open later this year.
Dana Taylor:
Well, you mentioned in your piece that these clinics are now the closest source for abortion care for over a million women from surrounding areas that effectively live in abortion deserts. How have these women been hearing about these clinics?
Chris Kenning:
A lot of women had to do a lot of searching online. In a lot of cases, it was folks that these clinics were already serving from a number of states that had already restricted it quite a bit. For example, the directors of the Alamo Clinic had told me that for a lot of their clients, this had just been one thing after another because Texas, for example, banned abortion after roughly six weeks in 2021, and that meant that they couldn’t serve a lot of the clients that they were serving. So they would send them nine hours away to their clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Then Tulsa passed a very restrictive ban and then a month later, the Supreme Court overturned Roe, so they had to completely stop. It wasn’t until November when they opened in Carbondale that they finally started serving those clients again.
Dana Taylor:
Well, you spoke with some of the women who’ve been accessing abortion care in Carbondale, and I wonder if they were reluctant to share, eager to share their stories. What did they tell you?
Chris Kenning:
One common theme was that they had faced an incredible challenge of getting there. Like I say, these long drives. They had to get off work and find a ride or even a flight. They had to get childcare, some of them. Then there were the expenses of staying overnight for folks who wanted to do that. Another theme was that they would arrive and they’d often have to pass protestors. Once inside, a lot of folks I talked to felt like some of the anti-abortion protestors cast their decision to have an abortion as maybe [inaudible 00:06:17] and not thought through. They talked about how complex and personal these decisions were, and in some cases, difficult. I think they felt like that’s lost in the political discourse about it.
Dana Taylor:
Well, abortion is obviously a polarizing and sensitive topic. What was the process of reporting this story like?
Chris Kenning:
It really is a tough topic. I traveled there starting in the summer and visited multiple times in the fall, winter, and the spring, talking to people over time. Talked to a lot of residents and everyone there felt like the stakes were high for them in various ways. But I think the fact that we could spend so much time there and we weren’t just parachuting in for a day, we were able to gain trust.
Dana Taylor:
You followed the story for a year, Chris. Did you sense that the community became more polarized during that time?
Chris Kenning:
Some people said it caused tensions, more tensions in town among people of differing views. We saw some people putting up yard signs. We saw other people driving by clusters of a handful of demonstrators and giving them obscene gesture as they drove by. I think some people thought it reflected and reinforced some of these larger political blue-red divides that we see.
Dana Taylor:
So how are clinic leaders facilitating patient access for people who are traveling these great distances and/or have limited funds?
Chris Kenning:
Yeah, great question. A lot of people are being helped by abortion funds, which are nonprofits that are playing an increasingly important role as women have to travel farther and farther for care. I spent time with one person who helps run the Midwest Access Coalition, which has been around for a few years. This woman runs the hotline on some days out of a farmhouse in Illinois. She’s getting messages all day from women who need gas money, airfare, hotels. I remember one day, she was texting with a 24-year-old woman from Arkansas who had an appointment in Carbondale and she was given $150 for gas, $40 for food, and a room at the Best Western in Carbondale. That was going to be the difference maker about whether she was going to get there. But this group and a lot of these abortion funds are swamped. The demand is really, really high, so they said even with their help, they’re seeing a lot of women wind up having to manage their own abortion through medication or wind up carrying an unwanted or even a dangerous pregnancy deterrent.
Dana Taylor:
So I imagine Carbondale has also attracted a sizable group of the medical community who used to work in some of the regions where abortions have now been restricted or even eliminated. Were you able to talk to any of them?
Chris Kenning:
One story that really struck out to me was the administrator of the Alamo Clinic decided to move herself and her entire family 14 hours north from San Antonio to Carbondale, a place she’d not been to before to help operate the clinic. She said, “We’re in the same position as these women are, having to travel to preserve care and access.” She wondered how that would look different for her in a city of over a million. She saw protestors at work every day, but rarely out in the community and she wondered, “Well, will I see them at the grocery store, at schools. How will that look?” I think some other folks had some worries about that too, but generally, I think over time, clinical staff found that they’re really welcomed in the community.
Dana Taylor:
Closest abortion destination clinics, they’ve become their own rapidly growing trend. Did you find other blue dot cities surrounded by red regions that have also stepped up to provide abortion access?
Chris Kenning:
It’s happening in a number of small towns where you see clinics moving from West Wendover, Nevada to Cumberland, Maryland, which is where a clinic that left West Virginia is set to open this month.
Dana Taylor:
How does your story fit into the broader context of the battle around reproductive rights?
Chris Kenning:
The movement of clinics across state lines is just one part of a landscape of access that’s still unfolding in a lot of ways. Nearly a year later, it’s still shifting. Right now, there are 14 states where abortions are banned or unavailable. Other states have enacted gestational limits like six-week bans. Some of those are blocked by state courts currently, places like Ohio. At the same time, voters and lawmakers in some states have worked to expand abortion rights, places like California, Illinois, Vermont, Oregon, New York. So you still have some of these challenges going through the courts. Another issue is the fight over medication abortion. That issue is still out there. There’s just a lot of unknown still.
Dana Taylor:
What surprised you the most in reporting this story?
Chris Kenning:
Well, a lot surprised me, but the one thing that really struck me, has stuck with me is how oftentimes these abstract political debates that are abstract to a lot of folks really take on different dimensions when they’re real and right in front of you. That’s what happened just to some folks in Carbondale. I remember talking to a clinic worker who was new to the field and wanted to be part of this effort saying that when she would talk to the women that were coming in, she was struck by how complicated and sometimes painful and difficult these decisions were and it gave her a really more nuanced perspective on the issue. While I think it reinforced this idea of blue-red political divide for a lot of people in town, others told me that because it was such a small town, they had to still see people and be around them and work with them. They learned to stay friendly and look past some of those differences. So I found that hopeful.
Dana Taylor:
Chris, thank you so much for spending time today.
Chris Kenning:
Thanks so much for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to Mark Sivell, Alexis Gustin, and Cherie Saunders for their production assistance. Our senior producer is Shannon Rae Green, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcast@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I’m Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow with another episode of 5 Things.