Hi, I'm Dana Taylor, and 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

U.S., it created new faultlights and added fuel to one of America's most contentious debates.

At the center of this debate, our places like Carbandell, Illinois, a place reporter Chris

Kenning describes as a blue dot in a sea of red, a symbol of abortion rights in America

today.

Chris Kenning spent a year covering how the issue has transformed the city over the past

year and now joined me to talk about his reporting for this story.

Chris, thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

So your report focuses on Carbandell, Illinois, a place you call a quiet college town.

Tell me about Carbandell.

Sure.

Carbandell 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, and it's now kind of a medical

hub now, but it's still, you know, it's a quiet small town of, you know, neighborhoods

and churches, but it also has a thriving, you know, LGBTQ community and a cannabis dispensary.

And, you know, it's, 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.

...