The steel mill town being reshaped by abortion
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
Today on “Post Reports,” we take you to a conservative-leaning steel town in Illinois grappling with its new role as home to the closest abortion clinics for many patients in the South and Midwest post-Roe.
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Granite City is a conservative-leaning community in Southern Illinois that’s seen layoffs at the local steel mill and had dozens of businesses close in recent years. But the city is now becoming known for something else: abortion. It’s home to the closest abortion clinics for many out-of-state patients across the South and Midwest who can no longer access the procedure where they live because of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. v Wade.
Granite City’s geography – it sits at the bottom of a blue state, surrounded by a sea of red states with abortion bans – means as many as 14,000 people are expected to come here for an abortion in the next year.
That influx of abortion patients could infuse much-needed cash into the city. But some in Granite City are not comfortable hitching their economic fortunes to abortion.
Abortion reporter Caroline Kitchener and audio producer Ariel Plotnick went to Granite City just days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. They talked to people in the community about what this post-Roe era could mean for their city.
Transcript
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| 0:31.0 | Ken's Lounge is a bar in Granite City, Illinois. |
| 0:38.0 | It's been around for almost 50 years. |
| 0:41.0 | There's this big steel mill next to it and a hospital about a block away. |
| 0:46.0 | And this bar opens early, like 6 a.m. early. |
| 0:50.0 | There's ship workers everywhere in Granite City, Pond 2, never supposed. |
| 0:54.0 | So you need to open up 6 a.m. because there's a lot of people getting off work at 6. |
| 0:58.0 | Robin Will owns this place and she takes a lot of pride in making people feel welcome here. |
| 1:04.0 | Then come in and get a pizza. |
| 1:06.0 | Sometimes we're cooking in the morning in the summer off-riot green tomatoes a couple times throughout the summer. |
| 1:11.0 | And they'll all pile in for that. |
| 1:14.0 | The walls are filled with neon beer signs and cardinal signs and photographs of the regulars. |
| 1:22.0 | And then there are these little vases with flowers that Robin sets out on the bar every day. |
| 1:27.0 | Robin has lived in Granite City for more than 30 years. |
| 1:31.0 | She's seen a lot of the areas ups and downs. |
| 1:34.0 | She knows all the regulars and she can tell who's just passing through. |
| 1:38.0 | Sometimes we have conversations with people. |
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