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Podcast playlist: Voter suppression then and now

Podcast playlist from The Democracy Group, focused on voter suppression
Stefan Ilic/Gettty Images
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumOct 19, 2020
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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Voter suppression has a long, dark history in the United States, full of both legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible people from registering and casting ballots. This podcast playlist examines that history -- and where such efforts are continuing today.

This playlist is part of The Fulcrum's partnership with The Democracy Group, a podcast network at Penn State University. All of its shows are committed to engaging in civil discourse, inspiring civic engagement and exploring the future of our democracy.

This list features episodes from member shows Future Hindsight, Democracy Matters, Democracy Works, Another Way, and Swamp Stories, as well as from Democracy in Danger and Solvable.



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Rural hospital labor and delivery closures are creating maternity care deserts—and costing communities physicians, jobs, families, and economic investment.

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No Doctor, No Delivery, No Future

Today, less than half of rural hospitals in the U.S. still offer labor and delivery services, and since 2020, 139 of them have stopped delivering babies altogether. That's usually treated as public health statistic. It's also an economic one. Each closure doesn't just push expectant mothers into longer drives to the hospital, it pushes out physicians, jobs, young families, and the investment that follows them. So, what happens to a town after it loses its only labor and delivery unit?

The answer, it turns out, is a lot more than a longer drive to the hospital. More than a third of U.S. counties, 35.1 percent by the most recent national count, are now what researchers call maternity care deserts: places with no hospital or birth center offering obstetric care and no obstetric clinicians at all. Since the end of 2020, 139 rural hospitals have stopped delivering babies, and today less than half of rural hospitals nationwide still offer labor and delivery services.

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Seven months ago, I attended the first day of my Reporting on Race class at USC. Taught by journalist and immigration reporting expert Jean Guerrero, the course offered growth I hadn’t yet imagined, showing me how much I could evolve as a journalist in just one semester.

For the next five months, I researched and reported on an immigration story of my choosing. I wrote about how educators in Los Angeles protect and advocate for students and communities living in fear of ICE deportations. These educators organized community street patrols to keep their neighborhoods safe. Finding sources and producing the final draft took months, but it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my journalism studies so far.

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This nonpartisan policy brief, written by an ACE fellow, is republished by The Fulcrum as part of our partnership with the Alliance for Civic Engagement and our NextGen initiative — elevating student voices, strengthening civic education, and helping readers better understand democracy and public policy.

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