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Now, massive cuts to Medicaid, which covers more than 40% of US births and an even greater share in rural areas, could put further pressure on rural hospitals and force more to close. At the same time, dramatically higher costs for H-1B visas threaten another way rural communities have been addressing physician shortages. Rural counties rely on H-1B physicians at nearly twice the rate of urban ones. And these risks are not shared equally. Maternal mortality is significantly higher among Black and Indigenous women than white women, and 87% of maternal deaths are considered preventable. For people giving birth in rural America, access to care is already a matter of life and death. These policies threaten to make it even harder to get the care they need. 

A gunshot split the night. She reached for the rifles, thinking the police had found them. But the guns were gone. Vikram sat up, then fell forward. He died with his head in her lap. This 48-hour siege that marked a turning point in Phoolan’s life will be one key focus of Richie Mehta’s new film Phoolan, set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 16 September. The film is based on Phoolan Devi’s 1996 autobiography I, Phoolan Devi: The Autobiography of India’s Bandit Queen.

The story of Phoolan Devi is about how a poor, lower-caste girl was successively denied childhood, marriage, safety, dignity and justice — and then built an identity around refusing to remain a victim. The dacoit became a folk hero, the fugitive became a politician, and the woman who once carried a rifle through the ravines eventually entered Parliament. When cinema tried to tell her story, she fought back against that version too. Today we mark her birth anniversary.