Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello and welcome to Cool People who
Speaker 1: did Cool Stuff. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. This is
Speaker 1: a rerun episode. Everyone loves rerun episodes. Why is this
Speaker 1: the rerun episode? Well, a couple reasons. One of them
Speaker 1: is that some stuff happen this week. You might have
Speaker 1: been there, you might have noticed. But the other reason
Speaker 1: is that I'm on tour right now and I'm finally
Speaker 1: headed back home, which means that I will be back
Speaker 1: to being able to record in a more easy way
Speaker 1: instead of recording intros in a rest area somewhere in
Speaker 1: California in the morning. Is what I'm doing anyway, This
Speaker 1: rerun episode is about the Jane Collective. You see, imagine
Speaker 1: a time when abortion isn't legal in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's probably easy for you to imagine if you live
Speaker 1: in a lot of states right now, and yet most
Speaker 1: people are okay with it, which we all saw at
Speaker 1: the polls last week. What a bunch of people did
Speaker 1: as they got together and they offered abortion services safely,
Speaker 1: and developed new technology for them and did all kinds
Speaker 1: of amazing things even though it was a crime. Because
Speaker 1: sometimes resistance looks like protest, and sometimes it's just outright crime,
Speaker 1: which we would never advocate, but we sure will talk
Speaker 1: about some of the people who did it as cool
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Hello and welcome to Cool People Who
Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff. It's a podcast. The title isn't sarcastic.
Speaker 1: We actually talk about people we think are cool and
Speaker 1: who did things but we also think are cool. And
Speaker 1: you know who else is cool? Is my guest this
Speaker 1: week Samantha McVay, who is the host of Stuff Mom
Speaker 1: Never Told You and is not only my new best friend,
Speaker 1: but dear listener, she is your new best friend as well. Yes,
Speaker 1: how are you doing?
Speaker 2: Pease? I'm doing so. See. This is the thing that
Speaker 2: I've been trying to run with. This is how I
Speaker 2: make friends by trying to tell them I'm cool. So
Speaker 2: this is perfect going to be on the show about
Speaker 2: when people would do cool stuff because I want to
Speaker 2: be cool like that. That's how it works, right, and
Speaker 2: then people want to get friends with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. Okay, all right, that's what I'm relying on
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna channel this. Let's go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And we also have Sophie with us, who is
Speaker 1: not only the producer of the show, but and the
Speaker 1: coolest and it's also basically the Pope of podcasts. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the podcasts. And much like the Pope, she decides
Speaker 1: who lives and who dies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, and much like the Pope directly like tells
Speaker 2: us what's moral and what's not, even if we don't
Speaker 2: believe her half the time. And I'm just kidding, I
Speaker 2: always believe you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we just act on whatever Sophie says
Speaker 1: instead of actually listening to her. Sorry, we painted you
Speaker 1: into a corner here, so let's move on.
Speaker 2: I too like fun hats. Yeah, it is true, it's true,
Speaker 2: you do. Yeah, but you know it's not about me.
Speaker 2: Let's go, let's go.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, So today we're doing part two of our
Speaker 1: two part series on the Jaine Collective, who are a
Speaker 1: badass crew of underground abortionists in pre Roe v. Wade, Chicago.
Speaker 1: And this episode will make approximately zero sense if you
Speaker 1: don't go back and listen to part one. So go
Speaker 1: listen to part one. We'll wait. Okay. So Jane offering
Speaker 1: abortions no longer reliant on crime guy Nick Mike, but
Speaker 1: are doing it themselves. Mike Nick, Yeah, Mike Nick.
Speaker 2: Sorry, And I'm just making sure we have both versions
Speaker 2: in So, yeah, we are correct, but we did forget
Speaker 2: the title sexy, so sexy Mike Nick Sexy Nick Mike.
Speaker 1: Right right, totally, yeah, that is the title of the Yeah,
Speaker 1: like obviously, yeah, okay, So so Jane is offering abortions
Speaker 1: for every trimester and this is like really not how
Speaker 1: to DIY in abortion podcast, although if those exist, you
Speaker 1: should go listen to them, but this is not one
Speaker 1: of them. And the techniques I'm going to be talking
Speaker 1: about are like fifty years old and are transmitted through me,
Speaker 1: who is an absolute lay person, who who doesn't have
Speaker 1: a uterus and is completely grossed up by the idea
Speaker 1: of the inside of my own body. Like if I
Speaker 1: go to a training about how to apply a tourniquet,
Speaker 1: I what I do is I pretend like I'm not
Speaker 1: there and then learn the information. So just keep all
Speaker 1: of that in mind.
Speaker 2: Seems like a good method of many things. Pretendly they're
Speaker 2: not there and just learn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, but it it feels important to me to
Speaker 1: understand some of the ways that people have historically and
Speaker 1: can temporarily go about ending unwanted pregnancies. For some weird reason,
Speaker 1: it just seems like really important right now. I'm it's
Speaker 1: hard to say.
Speaker 2: Why HM as a person in Georgia with many laws
Speaker 2: of floating, I don't either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's so weird, just some in the air,
Speaker 1: I don't know. And one thing I talked to when
Speaker 1: I was talking through this show with one of my
Speaker 1: friends who's a reproductive rights justice activist person all those
Speaker 1: words in the proper order. One of the things that
Speaker 1: they were pointing out is that it's important not to
Speaker 1: present this dark age before Roe v.
Speaker 2: Wade.
Speaker 1: Legal abortion access matters, and we need to defend that,
Speaker 1: but we need to like soberly recognize that people can
Speaker 1: and have learned how to take care of not just
Speaker 1: their own health, but like on a community level and
Speaker 1: on a like a real level, so that people recognize
Speaker 1: that they do have real options if we lose Roe v. Wade, right,
Speaker 1: so that it's not like your only option is to
Speaker 1: go to someone who's really sketchy, because we need to
Speaker 1: instead fight to make sure that that doesn't become the case.
Speaker 1: So when Jane started, they're mostly doing a style of
Speaker 1: abortion called a dilation and curetage or a DNC, especially
Speaker 1: for first trimester abortions, and what they do is they
Speaker 1: injected a local anesthetic and then they scrape the walls
Speaker 1: of the uterus with a loop shape instrument called a curet,
Speaker 1: and they then provided pills and injections to stop infection
Speaker 1: and bleeding. And they recommended a gynecologist or they recommend
Speaker 1: it getting a gulogical checkup, and if you didn't have one,
Speaker 1: they recommended you one. And D and C, at least
Speaker 1: as it was performed originally, is a fairly dangerous procedure.
Speaker 1: It's not a bad procedure. It's important that people be
Speaker 1: able to do this, but it's a It evolves sharp
Speaker 1: objects and sensitive areas. And Jane was really fucking good
Speaker 1: at it. But it seems like some of the worst
Speaker 1: ways that inexperienced abortionists fuck patients up is with DNC,
Speaker 1: and especially also with herbal abortions, but we're not going
Speaker 1: to get into that on the show, and Jane didn't
Speaker 1: fuck with herbal abortions. To my knowledge, DNC is still
Speaker 1: used today, although the term is a wider usage now,
Speaker 1: basically to include things other than a sharp curet. They
Speaker 1: like suction curets, or a vacuum aspiration as it's sometimes called,
Speaker 1: where they vacuum things out instead of scraping them out.
Speaker 1: But to tell you about vacuum aspiration, I get to
Speaker 1: tell you about a bunch of other really cool people,
Speaker 1: some people who are let's go with people who are complicated,
Speaker 1: who did cool things for some of these people instead
Speaker 1: of people who I want to blanketly tell you are cool. Right,
Speaker 1: Because Harvey Carmon was not an MD, some reports claim
Speaker 1: that he is a psychology doctorate, so he was technically
Speaker 1: a doctor. Others claimed that he just had a master's
Speaker 1: degree in theater.
Speaker 2: And vastly different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, it is. He might have had both.
Speaker 1: He might have later gone back and got a doctor
Speaker 1: a degree in psychology. I don't know. Okay, when he
Speaker 1: was still a student, he was practicing abortion in California
Speaker 1: and one of his patients died and he served two
Speaker 1: and a half years in prison for it. And I
Speaker 1: literally don't have a means by which to judge whether
Speaker 1: or not he was a responsible practitioner who happened to
Speaker 1: lose a patient due to the circumstances that he was
Speaker 1: forced into by criminalization, or whether he was a sketchy, fucking,
Speaker 1: shitty abortionist. I literally don't have a way to at
Speaker 1: least my information gathering powers did not answer this. But
Speaker 1: he was an innovator, and which really doesn't answer the
Speaker 1: question of whether or not he was responsible or ethical,
Speaker 1: because just because you want to try new shit doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily make it good.
Speaker 2: Right. It's kind of like when doctors were practicing curing
Speaker 2: hysteria on women and we know what that led to, right, Totally.
Speaker 1: One time, when he's in jail for practicing abortions, he
Speaker 1: invents a new abortion technique which has revolutionized first trimester
Speaker 1: abortions and is like largely the reason as far as
Speaker 1: I understand that we have, say, first trimester abortions. However,
Speaker 1: when I say revolutionize and invented, you'll be shocked to
Speaker 1: know that Chinese doctors figured it out a long time earlier,
Speaker 1: and that information was not transmitted to the West until
Speaker 1: after a Western practitioner figured it out, which happens time
Speaker 1: and time again. Every time you're like this guy invented
Speaker 1: a thing, you're like, this guy invented for the Western world.
Speaker 2: Or got credit for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally something. But he invented something called the Carmen canula,
Speaker 1: which is a flexible curet and it basically allows vacuum aspiration.
Speaker 1: It allows the idea of using in this case originally
Speaker 1: a syringe to suck things out with a flexible tube
Speaker 1: instead of using a sharp curet and it dramatically reduces
Speaker 1: the risk of perforating the uterus, and it reduces the
Speaker 1: need for anesthesia to relax the cervix. And it I
Speaker 1: mean this just a fucking flexible tube as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell. And it gets called vacuum aspiration, or
Speaker 1: the non medical term, and I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: this in a little bit, is called menstrual extraction. The former,
Speaker 1: as best as I understand it is like the medical
Speaker 1: name and the latter as it's d medicalized name used
Speaker 1: in different people by two women who immediately took upon
Speaker 1: his concept and improved upon it. Carol Downer and Lori
Speaker 1: Anne Rothman were two of the most important underground abortion
Speaker 1: providers at the time. Yet they're rarely referred to as
Speaker 1: that because what they did is they invented and again
Speaker 1: I can't speak to everyone ever having done this before,
Speaker 1: but they invented a menstrual extraction. They took the existing
Speaker 1: vacuum aspiration and they added both a one way valve
Speaker 1: in order to keep air from accidentally going into the uterus,
Speaker 1: and then also a jarged a mason jar that's attached
Speaker 1: to it so that more rich material can be removed
Speaker 1: at once. And so now you can do a full
Speaker 1: menstrual extraction, which is basically the idea of like you
Speaker 1: can pass all of your mensies all at once instead
Speaker 1: of waiting for it to slowly pass. And what happens
Speaker 1: when you do that is if you happen to be pregnant,
Speaker 1: and if with a first trimester abortion, you are suddenly
Speaker 1: no longer pregnant, Okay. And they didn't like advertise this
Speaker 1: as an abortion technique because that would have been illegal. Instead,
Speaker 1: they like were like, oh, groups of women could just
Speaker 1: all get together and provide this service for each other.
Speaker 1: Because it actually takes multiple people to use this device.
Speaker 1: You can't necessarily self administer it just because of angles
Speaker 1: and shit. I don't know, right, and I to be frank,
Speaker 1: I had never heard of this, and about half of
Speaker 1: the people I've talked to who have universes had heard
Speaker 1: of this, and half of them hadn't. And I don't
Speaker 1: know other.
Speaker 2: Myself seeing them in person, like I obviously have seen
Speaker 2: the pictures of them. As you describing me, I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it gets called. Their invention is called a
Speaker 1: Dell M D E L space EM in case you
Speaker 1: all want to go look up how to do this
Speaker 1: kind of interesting thing. In nineteen seventy one, they invent
Speaker 1: this thing, and then they downplay the abortion side of it.
Speaker 1: But they go to the National Organization Conference of Women,
Speaker 1: the NOW Conference in California in nineteen seventy one so
Speaker 1: they can announce this invention to the world, and they
Speaker 1: were like, hell, yeah, everyone's going to love this. But
Speaker 1: instead the NOW organizers were like, this is a little
Speaker 1: bit much for a booth. I don't think you can
Speaker 1: have a booth for an abortion here. And they're like, what,
Speaker 1: it's revn structure right now, I'm putting words in their mouth.
Speaker 1: And so they put up flyers saying, hey, come to
Speaker 1: our hotel room and we'll show you how to use
Speaker 1: this device. And everyone fucking loved it, right because it
Speaker 1: fucking ruled. Yeah, And so they gathered this list of
Speaker 1: names and they went on this greyhound tour across the
Speaker 1: country giving presentations about the Dell M and I just
Speaker 1: love how like scrappy it is. Is that they like
Speaker 1: invent this thing that involves Mason Jars and they don't
Speaker 1: have a car, so they just like again, I mean
Speaker 1: maybe a car, but they go on a greyhound tour
Speaker 1: that rules. And Lorraine has a quote from two thousand
Speaker 1: and two that sums up the sort of de medicalization
Speaker 1: approach that was popular with a lot of the underground
Speaker 1: abortion access people before nineteen seventy three. What did women
Speaker 1: do before there were doctors. Let's stop the humiliation of
Speaker 1: trying to persuade the powers that be to legalize abortion.
Speaker 1: Let's just take back the technology, the tools, the skills,
Speaker 1: and the information to perform early abortions and be in
Speaker 1: charge of our own reproduction. And once again, you'll be
Speaker 1: shocked to know that this device is having something of
Speaker 1: a comeback in the modern era. And so Jane didn't
Speaker 1: use the del M specifically as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: but they did use the Carmen canula extensively, and I
Speaker 1: think in generally in combination with vacuum aspiration. They also,
Speaker 1: and this gets into the sketchier side of some of it,
Speaker 1: they use Another one of Carmen's inventions that was a
Speaker 1: lot less successful, something called the super coil. I'm actually
Speaker 1: curious have you heard of this? I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how known this is.
Speaker 2: And I don't think so. But it's one of those
Speaker 2: I'm like, as you describe it, I may know of it.
Speaker 1: Because I'm not trying to put you on the spot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to just be.
Speaker 2: Like no, no, yeah, because I'm sitting here like, Okay,
Speaker 2: We've gotten through several devices and I think I'm glazed though,
Speaker 2: but yeah, keep.
Speaker 1: Going no, no, no, So the super coil is not
Speaker 1: around today, okay, because it is a bad idea as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell. It was meant to revolutionize
Speaker 1: second trimester abortion. Basically, he was like, I have revolutionized
Speaker 1: first trimester abortion and made it easier for lay people
Speaker 1: to do it. Now I want to revolutionize second trimester abortion.
Speaker 1: And so the super coil involves coiling up like like
Speaker 1: tightly coiled plastic rings basically attached to a string that
Speaker 1: are inserted into the uterus and then left to expand
Speaker 1: so that they could be pulled out and then clear
Speaker 1: out the area as they you know, I did.
Speaker 2: Not know what this is. This is horrify though. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I feel like I've had Sophie. Yeah, so my last
Speaker 2: interaction with Robert when Sophie was them talking about a
Speaker 2: birth control that attached itself and to our people's shooters.
Speaker 2: So this is amazing. I feel like we come full circle. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we definitely have come full circle. But that thing, that
Speaker 2: thing on that episode with Robert was like one of
Speaker 2: the It like makes me itchy. I'm like, it was
Speaker 2: so terrifying. Yeah, I still see people post you. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we're back here to something that goes out, expands and
Speaker 2: tries to pull things out of people's vaginas. So I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: we're back, We're back. That's our thing, Samantha. I love
Speaker 2: being associated with this. Let's keep going. This is amazing.
Speaker 2: I mean I'm now like, yes, this is my world,
Speaker 2: let's go.
Speaker 1: This is the This is the darkest chunk of this episode.
Speaker 1: I believe even later they get arrested and it's not
Speaker 1: as dark as this chunk. So they helped Carmen test it.
Speaker 1: They they sided with him in debates to come, and
Speaker 1: they were probably about it. It was meant to help
Speaker 1: lay people provide abortions. But it was probably too good
Speaker 1: to be true. Basically like they were. At least one
Speaker 1: person I read argued that basically they were like sucked
Speaker 1: in by the idea of like, oh, we have a
Speaker 1: numerical device. This rules because they had just gotten a
Speaker 1: numerical device from the same guy. Not numerical but not numbers,
Speaker 1: but miracle device that is new. So he goes and
Speaker 1: tests it, and he first tests it through with International
Speaker 1: planned parenthood on Bangladeshi women at a large scale, and
Speaker 1: it I'm not aware of it killing anyone, but it
Speaker 1: did not do incredibly well, and there were a lot
Speaker 1: of complications.
Speaker 2: I will say it sounds like it could cause a
Speaker 2: permanent damage, yes, which is kind of the horror stories
Speaker 2: people tell that are anti choice about the permanent damage.
Speaker 2: And this seems to follow suit because I can't imagine
Speaker 2: something just at that point in time being like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's self working. It just expands and grabs the right things,
Speaker 2: doesn't what does it exactly?
Speaker 1: And I've seen a couple different things about whether or
Speaker 1: not Jane was involved in using this or testing this.
Speaker 1: I do believe they did use this successfully for a
Speaker 1: number of abortions, and again, their overall results were that
Speaker 1: they were as good as any medical facility at that time, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: But anyway, this is a darker thing that they were
Speaker 1: involved in, right.
Speaker 2: I mean that makes me a question did they give
Speaker 2: the people who came in, the patients and clients a
Speaker 2: choice on what kind of procedure they could have? And
Speaker 2: I know they were pretty good about giving like risk
Speaker 2: statistics and let them know aftercare and all of that.
Speaker 2: So I wonder if there was like a moment of like,
Speaker 2: you have these options, now, which would you like to do?
Speaker 1: I would like to get off of them the benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubt of that around that, But I don't know.
Speaker 2: And because I honestly did not know this part of
Speaker 2: this history, I was like, oh, yeah, that's a little alarm.
Speaker 2: You don't want to start testing things and when you
Speaker 2: have someone testing on a different group of people, you
Speaker 2: know is probably not good, which is the history of
Speaker 2: all medicine essentially. But you know, that's a whole different
Speaker 2: rabbit hole that I will not do as a negative,
Speaker 2: neelly moment. So I'm gonna stop now.
Speaker 1: No, No, I mean like, and this is like, this
Speaker 1: is the most warts and all that I'm going to
Speaker 1: get around this and even this is like a complicated thing,
Speaker 1: you know. One of the things that I read, one
Speaker 1: of the black women who volunteered for this was like
Speaker 1: basically defended her position being like I'm paraphrasing, but like,
Speaker 1: you're fucking kidding me. You're saying that I can't consent
Speaker 1: to this just because I'm a black woman, you know.
Speaker 1: And so there's this like I'm reading biased reports, right,
Speaker 1: I'm reading people who are trying to make positions to
Speaker 1: either claim that this was this terrible thing that people
Speaker 1: did or this brilliant, brave thing that people did, And
Speaker 1: I don't have anything near the right position to understand
Speaker 1: what is and isn't ethical for what happened here, and
Speaker 1: like level of informed consent was available, But I'm also
Speaker 1: under the impression that a lot of their other options
Speaker 1: were worse.
Speaker 2: Right, I Mean, again, we come back to the fact
Speaker 2: that there's so many things that pushes people to a
Speaker 2: certain point, and when it's not accessible and becomes looked
Speaker 2: at as again lawful unlawful, then people I push to
Speaker 2: the point that is uh is extreme, So you do
Speaker 2: what you can, and people being in that point, we
Speaker 2: are going to choose what they think is lesser uh
Speaker 2: able for them. Yeah, and it's not the case like
Speaker 2: that's he shouldn't have to be even that conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And and so as a Carmen, he kind
Speaker 1: of disappears after this whole fiasco. He's like, I tried
Speaker 1: to invent a thing and it didn't work, and he
Speaker 1: kind of his trub was cold, at least from my
Speaker 1: my slooping at this point.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a medical doctor, right, you're saying that he's
Speaker 2: either gone maybe maybe in psychology, but also maybe theater.
Speaker 1: Like you just right did a thing. However, as as
Speaker 1: a different states would legalize abortion, he was so well
Speaker 1: known that he would be invited to come participate in
Speaker 1: legal abortion areas because he was a really experienced abortionist.
Speaker 1: But that also empowered him to do all of these
Speaker 1: things that are real messy, and so it's just like
Speaker 1: kind of interesting that like this is the person who
Speaker 1: did the thing that got say, first trimester abortions available,
Speaker 1: you know, right, I mean some good did come of it, right,
Speaker 1: and now we have chemical abortions for first trimester that
Speaker 1: are safer and better than this method. As far as
Speaker 1: I understand him, a circumstances, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's so many things to this in this conversation about
Speaker 2: what this looks like when it is not considered healthcare
Speaker 2: and why it's so blase, and yes, some good did
Speaker 2: come of it, but some bad to come of it,
Speaker 2: and then there's this need of like understanding it is healthcare.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally okay, but who is cool? Yes, I will
Speaker 1: go on a I don't know limb to say is
Speaker 1: another abortionist to popularize some shit that Jane wound up
Speaker 1: using a guy named Robert Spencer. And Robert Spencer was
Speaker 1: a true believer and he was not a grifter. He
Speaker 1: was a doctor, an actual medical doctor, and the coal
Speaker 1: fields in Ashland, Pennsylvania, and he cut his doctoring teeth
Speaker 1: inventing new ways to treat black lung and coal miners,
Speaker 1: including a lot of pioneering work. And I don't know
Speaker 1: to pronounce this word bronchoscopy. Bronchios is ticking cameras down
Speaker 1: people's throats, I don't know, looking at people's throats. And
Speaker 1: he did experiment with black lung. But this is also
Speaker 1: a situation where you're like, oh, these coal miners are
Speaker 1: dying and no one here is like paying attention to
Speaker 1: black lung except me, and so he's very well liked,
Speaker 1: this doctor in this town. And then sometime in the
Speaker 1: early twenties, he starts a coal miner's wife is like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm pregnant. I'd really rather not be. And
Speaker 1: I tried calling Jane, but the number isn't active yet
Speaker 1: or something. I'm like forty years too early. So he
Speaker 1: he performs an abortion, and then he just starts performing
Speaker 1: abortions in this town. And he single handedly performed something
Speaker 1: like forty thousand abortions. He died in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: before his work could become legal, and his wife burned
Speaker 1: all of his records, I guess to either protect his
Speaker 1: legacy or maybe his staff or maybe herself, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And he eventually the entire town's economy, like huge chunk
Speaker 1: of the town's economy relies on this guy because people
Speaker 1: are coming from all over the place to get abortions here,
Speaker 1: and they like staying at hotels and shit. But the
Speaker 1: hotels didn't some of the hotels at least didn't let
Speaker 1: black patients stay. So he built accommodations so that black
Speaker 1: patients could still come and get abortions. In this town.
Speaker 1: He was arrested three times for providing abortions. One of
Speaker 1: the times he was arrested, at least was because a
Speaker 1: patient died. They died from anesthesia problems. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a doctor. I know that anesthesia is a
Speaker 1: complicated thing, especially eighty years ago. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to like lay judgment at him for this, but
Speaker 1: he was acquitted two of the times he was arrested
Speaker 1: because I think everyone in town was like, you can't
Speaker 1: convict this guy. You what are you talking about? Like
Speaker 1: this is our guy. We like this guy. We're like
Speaker 1: abortion town.
Speaker 2: He's making his money, come on, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And like and he also had union protection, The United
Speaker 1: Mine Workers had his.
Speaker 2: Beat was it the coal Okay, okay, yeah, ok.
Speaker 1: And they're like union miners did not fuck around back then,
Speaker 1: as our boy, don't touch him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And to his quote about why why people liked him,
Speaker 1: I've been here since nineteen nineteen. I dare say I've
Speaker 1: helped out half the town, even on the abortion end.
Speaker 1: There's probably one of my patients related to a family
Speaker 1: in half the town. I think most of the town
Speaker 1: would stand up for me.
Speaker 2: That's just like I think they would stand up with me.
Speaker 2: I think I think we're cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so he's seventy nine years old. He keeps
Speaker 1: going into retirement and then coming out of retirement because
Speaker 1: people need his help, right, because he's really fucking good
Speaker 1: at his job, and he provides abortions for cheap And
Speaker 1: I'll get to that. And he's seventy nine and he's
Speaker 1: awaiting trial for a third time and he dies of
Speaker 1: old age while like actively practicing, and he was performing
Speaker 1: three to four abortions a day right up to the end.
Speaker 1: There's this whole article from Village Voice from nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: I think it's called the Death of an Abortionist, and
Speaker 1: it's a journalist who travels down there to basically just
Speaker 1: to meet him, just to be like, you are amazing.
Speaker 1: You are the reason that people feel safe, you know.
Speaker 1: And he charged the cheapest rates, some of the cheapest
Speaker 1: rates of anyone. His first abortions cost five dollars, and
Speaker 1: then as the cost of drugs and overhead went up,
Speaker 1: at the end, he was charging two hundred dollars. In
Speaker 1: the late sixties, but again most abortions were costing six
Speaker 1: hundred to two thousand dollars. He was this like lovable weirdo.
Speaker 1: He treated everyone kindly. He covered his office in like
Speaker 1: weird plaques from tourist traps. And the Village Voice journalist
Speaker 1: who showed up, she asks him, like, why did you
Speaker 1: perform abortions when the people first asked you? And he said,
Speaker 1: because I could see their point of view? And I
Speaker 1: just I love that as an answer, you know, just
Speaker 1: like basic human empathy. And his name never really appeared
Speaker 1: until he died. His name like didn't really appear much
Speaker 1: in print. I think one place dox him or whatever,
Speaker 1: but he was always just printed as the legendary doctor
Speaker 1: s and Okay. And he popularized a technique or using
Speaker 1: something called I don't pronounce this word Loundback's paste Loanback's
Speaker 1: paste to help dilate the cervix. It's like a soft soap.
Speaker 1: Is not currently in use, but Jane used it and
Speaker 1: was very glad for it. It helped make their whole
Speaker 1: anesthesia process much safer. And they I don't know whether
Speaker 1: they made their own or got it from Robert Spencer,
Speaker 1: because Robert Senser was making his own because it was
Speaker 1: no longer commercially available. I don't know. I think he's
Speaker 1: cool too, And I really liked that Jane was building
Speaker 1: from This was part of this larger framework of people
Speaker 1: who were like, how do we do this like absent
Speaker 1: of like the medical industry, how do we actually like
Speaker 1: figure out how to do this safely.
Speaker 2: And well right, actually caring about their patients? That's revolutionary?
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, God, I wish I wish that revolution that's stuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know who does care about their patients?
Speaker 2: Who? I'm ready?
Speaker 1: Well, potatoes, I've been I've been trying to get advertised
Speaker 1: by potatoes. I don't know how potatoes have become doctors,
Speaker 1: but I think potatoes are great. And I want to
Speaker 1: be sponsored by entirely wholesome things. So if you hear
Speaker 1: anything unwholesome in the ads, that was a mistake.
Speaker 2: It's Robert's fault. It's Robert again, it's Robert's fault.
Speaker 1: Agreed. Yeah, And so here's some ads for potatoes and
Speaker 1: maybe some other stuff. And we're back and we're discussing
Speaker 1: whether or not we should actually expand our list of
Speaker 1: sponsors to include kittens.
Speaker 2: I mean, you cook cute and cut it dogs. I
Speaker 2: think yes, I mean it's good to diversify. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it's important that we talk about kittens and puppies.
Speaker 1: Right, I think so. We just have to make clear
Speaker 1: that we're advertising the concept of kittens and puppies, not
Speaker 1: the people who traditionally go about selling kittens and puppies.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's very clear. Not a kitten mill or puppy
Speaker 2: mill type situation at all. Is the idea of just
Speaker 2: cuddling with some kittens or cuddling with a dog maybe,
Speaker 2: or at least looking at cute pictures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, while one kitten is in one arm and one
Speaker 1: puppy is in the other arm.
Speaker 2: My favorite is when kittens and dogs are friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I can't wait to introduce my dog to
Speaker 1: more cats. It's actually never gone. Well, so I actually
Speaker 1: think my.
Speaker 2: Dog does not love cats either. This is the fantasy though.
Speaker 1: Well, my dog loves cats, the cats don't love the dog.
Speaker 1: That's fair. He does not know how to play. So
Speaker 1: I want to quote a little bit at length from
Speaker 1: why Jane Collective did this work. It's from a statement
Speaker 1: about why they did is a pamphlet that they gave
Speaker 1: to prospective clients. Abortion as a social problem. We are
Speaker 1: giving our time not only because we want to make
Speaker 1: abortions safer, cheaper, and more accessible for the individual women
Speaker 1: who come to us. But because we see the whole
Speaker 1: abortion issue as a problem of society, the current abortion
Speaker 1: laws are a symbol of something subtle but often blatant
Speaker 1: oppression of women. In our society. Women should have the
Speaker 1: right to control their own bodies and lives. Only a
Speaker 1: woman who is pregnant can determine whether or not she
Speaker 1: has enough resources economic, physical, and emotional at a given
Speaker 1: time to bear and rear a child. Yet at present,
Speaker 1: the decision to bear the child or to have an
Speaker 1: abortion is taken out of her hands by government bodies,
Speaker 1: which can have only the slightest notion of the problems involved.
Speaker 1: The same society that glamorizes women as sex objects and
Speaker 1: teaches them from an early childhood to please and satisfy men,
Speaker 1: views pregnancy and childbirth as punishment for immoral or careless
Speaker 1: sexual activity, especially if the woman is on edge, cad, poor,
Speaker 1: or black. Our society's view of equal opportunity means that
Speaker 1: lower class women bear unwanted children or face expensive, illegal,
Speaker 1: and often unsafe abortions, while well connected, middle class women
Speaker 1: can frequently get safe and hush hush dncs and hospitals.
Speaker 1: Only women can bring about their own liberation. It is
Speaker 1: time for women to get together to change the male
Speaker 1: made laws and aid their sisters caught in the bind
Speaker 1: of legal restrictions and social stigma. Women must fight together
Speaker 1: to change the attitudes of society about abortion and to
Speaker 1: make the state provide free abortions as a human right.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 2: There's so many things that like it just applies today.
Speaker 2: I know we're talking about that, but the problem is
Speaker 2: because it is women centered typically, and especially during that time,
Speaker 2: people see that as being less important in conversation. Has
Speaker 2: become made in a moral ground. Yeah, even though it's
Speaker 2: very political obviously, but yeah, I do love that sentiment
Speaker 2: and h and we still need that sentiment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No. I I like like sometimes when I get
Speaker 1: like lost in the weeds about like this is how
Speaker 1: they did this one thing and this is how they
Speaker 1: did this other thing, and then instead you're just kind
Speaker 1: of like, here's like a hundred people who got together
Speaker 1: to commit felonies to try and keep people safe, and
Speaker 1: it's just like that's always cool, you know, like like
Speaker 1: and there's always something I don't know, So I like
Speaker 1: hearing the the why they did it. But speaking of felonies,
Speaker 1: this is not an ad transition. I'm not advertising felonies
Speaker 1: on the I'm probably advertising felonies on the show, but
Speaker 1: not from the point of view of a sponsorship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not trying to get money for it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well you got to go out and get
Speaker 1: your own money, you know, felonies, just say it. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so Jane is this big open secret and everyone knows
Speaker 1: about it. They advertised and they had security procedures in place,
Speaker 1: but clearly the police knew about them, and most of
Speaker 1: the reporting about Jane basically says the cops didn't bust
Speaker 1: them because the cops kind of liked them. They were
Speaker 1: clean and safe and no one was dying, so why
Speaker 1: bust them? Right? To me, this fundamentally misunderstands the nature
Speaker 1: of the police, especially the Chicago Police Department. In a
Speaker 1: nation of corup police departments, Chicago like consistently stands out
Speaker 1: as one of the crookedest. And the other thing you'll
Speaker 1: hear is that police put up with it because the
Speaker 1: wives of police and the wives of politician were amongst
Speaker 1: their clients. And this feels more plausible to me. But
Speaker 1: I suspect that politicians' wives at least could afford a
Speaker 1: trip to New York, and so I feel like there's
Speaker 1: some kind of like, to be clear, I think crime
Speaker 1: is cool, But the same accounts also say that mafia
Speaker 1: didn't come after them for similar reasons. They're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they're not really making a profit, so why would the
Speaker 1: mafia care? And this doesn't sound like if that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like the police, and that doesn't sound like the mafia.
Speaker 2: So this is amazing, all of this, all this moment
Speaker 2: is amazing.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just I'm enjoying this entire thing, all right.
Speaker 2: The other part of this is because they don't see
Speaker 2: this as an issue for them because at that point
Speaker 2: in time, I think the majority of the police were men. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just speaking, so since it was a woman's thing, it's
Speaker 2: also kind of like same level of like not talking
Speaker 2: about periods and being shameful about women's bodies. So it
Speaker 2: was like a good point, we're gonna particular you don't
Speaker 2: exist because it's easier for us to ew icky, even
Speaker 2: though I mean to be frank, the majority of the
Speaker 2: times kind of like today when we talk about abortion
Speaker 2: and abortion rights and abortion being healthcare men typically outside
Speaker 2: of the morally loud, like this isn't just whatever, just
Speaker 2: don't care because it has nothing to do with them,
Speaker 2: and it's just gross and it's like, eh, it's women's issues,
Speaker 2: so we'd rather just ignore it, and doesn't think it's
Speaker 2: necessarily important. Of course we've got the religious bits.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, this is actually, this is actually that
Speaker 1: helps sell me on it better because like all I
Speaker 1: can see, I am again really not trying to use
Speaker 1: anyone who might be alive of any kind of crime,
Speaker 1: but it seems like the mafia might have been getting
Speaker 1: a share out of this. I don't know, again like
Speaker 1: no judgment of whatever people need to do to keep
Speaker 1: the shit running. But yeah, because everyone knows about this
Speaker 1: and no one's doing anything about it. But the thing
Speaker 1: you're saying also about like basically people being like we're
Speaker 1: just not going to fucking touch it is also completely possible.
Speaker 1: And then the way it all falls apart, well, it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually really fall apart. The way that some people
Speaker 1: get in trouble can be told a couple different ways.
Speaker 1: I've run across one probable story and then one maybe story.
Speaker 1: One day in nineteen seventy three, a Catholic woman comes
Speaker 1: to get an abortion, and at the time, I actually
Speaker 1: behind the bastards did a better podcast. But this and
Speaker 1: I remember exactly when the Protestants started caring about abortion,
Speaker 1: but for a while, like only the Catholics cared. Catholic
Speaker 1: woman comes in to get an abortion, and she was
Speaker 1: a mixed minds about the whole thing. A Jane volunteer
Speaker 1: named Genie Gallitzer Leve spends a long time talking with
Speaker 1: her about it and like counseling her, and later she's
Speaker 1: really bitter about the long time she's spent talking to
Speaker 1: her about it. Her sister in law, the patient's sister
Speaker 1: in law, was there with her, and her sister in
Speaker 1: law called them in. And what I've heard is that
Speaker 1: she didn't call them into the police station in the
Speaker 1: district where they were like seen as friendly, but instead
Speaker 1: called them into a different district, and so suddenly bad
Speaker 1: things happen. But that's the story I hear most often told.
Speaker 1: Another account is that the anti abortion lobby was trying
Speaker 1: to get some arrests in to do some damage on
Speaker 1: the legal front because Supreme Court was about to see
Speaker 1: Roe v. Wade, and which spoiler alert legalized abortion federally
Speaker 1: across the US and a seven to two ruling, So
Speaker 1: maybe someone wanted to get some abortionists on trial and hurry.
Speaker 1: And then there's a third story, which comes from the
Speaker 1: person who's very critical of the super coil testing, that
Speaker 1: the bust happened on a day that they were planning
Speaker 1: on doing supercil testing and that it was like related
Speaker 1: to all of that. I tend to believe the the
Speaker 1: Catholic story best, but I feel like there's something I
Speaker 1: actually don't believe any of these stories. Frankly, that's what.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we just know that they got raided and we
Speaker 2: don't know how it began. But yeah, it could be
Speaker 2: any of the stories. But that's the one I heard too,
Speaker 2: is the Catholic Two Catholic women have reported them, but
Speaker 2: any physical reason. Again, it was coincidentally around and I
Speaker 2: will use air quotes more coincidentally around Roe versus Wade
Speaker 2: and the big back ladging back and forth and controversy
Speaker 2: with that. So yeah, yeah, I've had them with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I would put the most likely is
Speaker 1: the combination of the first two things. Is the Catholic
Speaker 1: women and some people trying to get some shit on
Speaker 1: going on. I don't know, but yeah, they get raided.
Speaker 1: A May third, nineteen seventy two, Genie is working at
Speaker 1: the front and she's caring for three children left behind
Speaker 1: by a patient. When she hears a knock at the door.
Speaker 1: She thought it was another Jane who had just like
Speaker 1: dropped off some snacks, come back to drop off more snacks,
Speaker 1: or maybe forgot's something or something, and instead it was cops,
Speaker 1: really really tall cops. Genie is like, let them in
Speaker 1: and told everyone in the waiting room, these are the police.
Speaker 1: You don't have to tell them anything. And then Genie,
Speaker 1: describing the event, says, they were really tall, really weird.
Speaker 1: I developed this whole theory. I love crackpot theories. I
Speaker 1: intend to be a crackpot when I grow up. This
Speaker 1: is Genie, not me, although it is also true of me.
Speaker 2: No, this is even better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, quote, I intend to be a crackpot when
Speaker 1: I grow up. My theory is that you had to
Speaker 1: be really tall to be a homicide cop. These were
Speaker 1: homicide cops because abortion was a homicide, and they were
Speaker 1: homicide cops who hated being there. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: easy to make homicide detective. You have to be really good.
Speaker 1: It's not even political, like taking the sergeant's exam. You
Speaker 1: have to really do something, and they do it because
Speaker 1: they want to. And by and large, what they do
Speaker 1: is track people down who kill other people, and they
Speaker 1: think of themselves as good guys and they hated being there.
Speaker 1: This was not their kind of crime. End quote.
Speaker 2: That is an interesting theory. I really like there's so
Speaker 2: many observations about just the male appearance, that these characters
Speaker 2: are so like that they're all tall, very tall.
Speaker 1: She is though I know, right, all the cops are
Speaker 1: like five foot seven, you know, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, average, but they're tall as I'm four foot eleven, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, or maybe they like scent. They're like, there
Speaker 1: are three people who are, you know, six foot six?
Speaker 1: Over to go arrest everyone. So they detain everyone at
Speaker 1: the front and they start asking everyone questions. And the
Speaker 1: way they figured out who the Janes were, apparently, is
Speaker 1: that when they asked the Janes questions, the Janes refused
Speaker 1: to answer. And while this did get them separated out
Speaker 1: for arrest, it probably saved them later in court, or
Speaker 1: at least it was very helpful in court. Their lawyer
Speaker 1: later thanked them, was like, I'm so glad you all
Speaker 1: didn't say anything, right, And patients, though, were asked all
Speaker 1: kinds of questions and they largely answered one question that
Speaker 1: left the cops completely confused. They kept asking how much
Speaker 1: the Jane's charged, and everyone gave wildly different answers. The
Speaker 1: police came, I guess, maybe expecting a mafia style for
Speaker 1: profit enterprise, and they didn't find one. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, the cops arrive at the place and arrest
Speaker 1: everyone there. And apparently they showed up and they were like,
Speaker 1: where are all the men? Though, you know who's doing
Speaker 1: the abortions? Right, So I guess they actually really didn't
Speaker 1: know Jane inside it out, you know, if they think
Speaker 1: all these things and so at least they probably weren't infiltrated, right,
Speaker 1: if this is what the cops.
Speaker 2: Think true, no spies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I tend to think that, like the cops know everything, right,
Speaker 1: because we talk about how we live in a pentopticon
Speaker 1: and we're all being studied all the time or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then like every now and then the cops are
Speaker 1: just like they don't know shit. I want to tell
Speaker 1: a completely off based story about all of this right.
Speaker 1: One time, my friend was being investigated as the leader
Speaker 1: of international anarchism by the FEDS, and never mind, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell that story. Okay.
Speaker 2: So there's so many levels of understanding why. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have I have a cookie cutter of vanilla life,
Speaker 2: and I'm really sad that I'm not a part of this.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be investigated because I do not
Speaker 2: have the anxiety to go through an investment. But just
Speaker 2: knowing someone, I'm like, yeah, hell yeah they are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well the spoiler alert, there is no leader of international anarchism.
Speaker 1: It goes against the whole idea, and eventually the fense
Speaker 1: figured that out. But the more personal details about it,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into.
Speaker 2: You're not You're not gonna do that, Okay, Yeah, but okay, So.
Speaker 1: They're all thrown into paddy wagons. They're taken off to jail,
Speaker 1: and Genie says that when they were taken off to
Speaker 1: jail on the paddy wagon, all the all the other
Speaker 1: women in the in the paddy wagon were sex workers
Speaker 1: who kept everyone in good spirits by just like telling
Speaker 1: fun horrible stories about their lives or whatever. And I
Speaker 1: really like that they were there to keep everyone's spirits up.
Speaker 1: And then in the paddy wagon, the jaans all pulled
Speaker 1: out all the index cards with all of the patient
Speaker 1: info and shit, and they rip them up in the
Speaker 1: little pieces, passed them out and ate them, which is
Speaker 1: a great badass. They only spent one night in jail,
Speaker 1: probably because they're middle class white women. One of them,
Speaker 1: I think, one of them, who was a nursing mother,
Speaker 1: was let go that night because she had to go
Speaker 1: home and feed her kids. And Genie talks about how
Speaker 1: the cops like treated them all well as fellow middle
Speaker 1: class white people while being rude to any of the
Speaker 1: patients who ended up in jail and all the other
Speaker 1: people and all the other women in jail, which yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess doesn't really surprise anyone who's listening to this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but in jail all the only food they got offered
Speaker 1: was bolooney sandwiches, which Genie couldn't eat, presumably because she
Speaker 1: was vegetarian. And the reason that I include this is
Speaker 1: because one time I was arrested at this demonstration in
Speaker 1: DC thirty years after all this shit, and in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, and they gave us all Bolooney sandwiches,
Speaker 1: and we all just like sat there and like laughed
Speaker 1: at our Blooney sandwiches because we were all fucking like
Speaker 1: vegans and vegetarians and shit, and we're like, what are
Speaker 1: we going to do with this? And it was it
Speaker 1: was mostly a bad experience. But I was only in
Speaker 1: jail for like thirty six hours, possibly because I'm middle
Speaker 1: class and white and I don't know, so I didn't
Speaker 1: get to eat in jail and sucked, but whatever. I
Speaker 1: just like that this has been like a true thing forever.
Speaker 1: Is that like when hippies and activists and shit get arrested,
Speaker 1: they're like, what the fuck am I gonna do this?
Speaker 1: Blooney sandwich? Yeah, So they get led out on bail
Speaker 1: and they're each facing one hundred and ten years because
Speaker 1: the eleven counts of homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide
Speaker 1: in the case that will be known as the abortion seven.
Speaker 1: And at least according to Genie, Jane kind of distances
Speaker 1: themselves at this point from them, and they I guess
Speaker 1: like as like they were like, Oh, it's this strategic necessity,
Speaker 1: We're going to keep going. And Jane did keep going
Speaker 1: while the trial was ongoing, but it still doesn't sound
Speaker 1: good to me, honestly, and Genie at least felt really betrayed.
Speaker 1: According to the interview I read with her. The rest
Speaker 1: of the feminist movement kind of though, had her back.
Speaker 1: There was a defense committee formed with the sick name
Speaker 1: of the Abortion Task Force the ATF, and several of
Speaker 1: the arrestees were part of an organization called the Leche Lee,
Speaker 1: which was a pro nursing organization. Nursing, I guess was
Speaker 1: out of style at the time, and La Leche League
Speaker 1: had their back, which fucking rules that the like the
Speaker 1: Mother's Association was like, yeah, of course we're defending these abortionists,
Speaker 1: you know. And I don't really know what the distancing
Speaker 1: looked like because several of the Abortion seven actually went
Speaker 1: back to work for Jane while they were out on bail,
Speaker 1: which is also fucking badass, and they spent a while
Speaker 1: finding lawyer. Most of the lawyers they found were terrible.
Speaker 1: One guy was very movement focused and wanted them to
Speaker 1: basically go to prison, was like, yeah, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: martyrs for the cause, you know, and they're like, we
Speaker 1: don't like that very much. This is not actually our plan.
Speaker 1: And so finally they settled on Joe Anne Wolfson, who
Speaker 1: one account calls the Queen of the hopeless, and she
Speaker 1: once ran away from home to join the circus and
Speaker 1: like work with elephants and shit. Okay. So her brother
Speaker 1: was an attorney too, who once got sentenced to seventy
Speaker 1: years in prison in nineteen eighty five after pleading guilty
Speaker 1: to racketeering in an anti corruption case in Chicago. That'
Speaker 1: saw a fuck ton of the judges, lawyers, and cops
Speaker 1: sent away for organized crime. So, okay, mafia and corruption
Speaker 1: shit just runs deep in Chicago. Yeah, of course, So
Speaker 1: this is their lawyer and she is the what I
Speaker 1: do know about her, she was the right lawyer for
Speaker 1: the job, and she rules. She saw Roe v. Wade
Speaker 1: on the horizon and she was like, all right, here's
Speaker 1: the plan. Let's delay this shit as long as possible.
Speaker 1: And the court was fine with that plan too, because frankly,
Speaker 1: they saw the writing on the wall and they didn't
Speaker 1: want to waste court resources on it. So in January
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, the Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth
Speaker 1: Amendments guarantee of the right to privacy included the right
Speaker 1: to have abortions in a very I had my lawyer
Speaker 1: friend try and explain this whole thing to me recently,
Speaker 1: and Roe v. Wade is like complicated as a from
Speaker 1: a legal perspective, but it worked for now for good.
Speaker 1: We'll see maybe but time you're listening to this anyway. Whatever.
Speaker 1: So prosecutors knew if they wanted, they could come after
Speaker 1: them for practicing medicine without a license, but they decided
Speaker 1: it was more trouble than it was worth and they
Speaker 1: really just didn't want to make a fuss out of it.
Speaker 1: That said, also, my your friend was explaining to me
Speaker 1: that most Supreme Court decisions are not retroactive. But basically
Speaker 1: they're like this shit, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: they're like, this shit is way too political. We don't
Speaker 1: want to fucking touch this case. So they made they
Speaker 1: cut a deal. We don't charge you with practicing medicine
Speaker 1: without a license, you don't ask for your medical equipment back,
Speaker 1: and the Jane seven said, oh my god, yes please.
Speaker 1: They took their deal and their charges were dropped. The
Speaker 1: end of Jane that's the name of my little section
Speaker 1: in the script. Roby Wade fucking rules and I don't
Speaker 1: want to pretend like it doesn't. The fact that it's
Speaker 1: under threat is fucking bad.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I hope that this doesn't sound like we're talking from
Speaker 1: distant utopian past when you all hear this episode come
Speaker 1: come out, because this episode will probably come out about
Speaker 1: a month after we record it. But it's not enough,
Speaker 1: and the women of Jane knew that right because abortion
Speaker 1: was legalized, but it was also remedicalized. It went back
Speaker 1: in the hands of maile doctors. It became it tied
Speaker 1: once again into an inaccessible medical system that treats women
Speaker 1: like bodies like cars to be fixed. Jane actually continued
Speaker 1: for a few weeks after the ruling, but everyone was
Speaker 1: just so fucking exhausted and burned out and the fire
Speaker 1: was gone. And ironically, they were afraid that they might
Speaker 1: catch charges for because the for profit medical industry might
Speaker 1: lead the charge on them for practicing medicine without a license.
Speaker 1: They threw a fucket were done now party, and Jane
Speaker 1: was over after their fucket were done now party, which
Speaker 1: is the way I'm praising it, And I like that
Speaker 1: people miss the intensity of it. Jane. Activist Ruth Circle
Speaker 1: put it like this. For the people I know, it
Speaker 1: was the single most intense period of our life, and
Speaker 1: when it stopped, there was something missing and you couldn't
Speaker 1: find anything to do that carried quite that energy for
Speaker 1: a long time. But you know what does carry energy
Speaker 1: is potatoes. And you should eat food of some type,
Speaker 1: whatever type you like, but it is healthy and good
Speaker 1: and that's why we advertise it on this show, the
Speaker 1: concept of food.
Speaker 2: Have we talked of sweet potatoes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all potatoes. All potatoes are great as well as
Speaker 1: whatever's abby and advertised. And we are back. And so
Speaker 1: this intensity leaving is something that I think is familiar
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who are involved in activism,
Speaker 1: especially like more intense activism. I'm guessing that anyone who
Speaker 1: was radicalized by the twenty twenty demonstrations has felt this
Speaker 1: when you leave this moment of intensity. But people keep
Speaker 1: going right. TRM. Howard, the black civil rights leader who
Speaker 1: is the first abortionist the network called. He kept providing
Speaker 1: abortions now legally and his private black owned practice offered
Speaker 1: abortions for fifty dollars less than what local hospitals charged.
Speaker 1: The Defense Committee with that sick name the ATF, they
Speaker 1: switched to becoming a new group that also had a
Speaker 1: sick name health evaluation and referral services. Hers. It's a
Speaker 1: shitty name, but it's a great acronym, and I feel
Speaker 1: like they really, I don't know, they started off with
Speaker 1: not strong naming game, but I think that they over
Speaker 1: the course of time they figured it out.
Speaker 2: Get in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Hers and Heather Booth, Jane's founder, they went
Speaker 1: on to start the Chicago Abortion Fund in Chicago nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, which is a nonprofit that is still around
Speaker 1: today and is a simple, clean, honest name that does
Speaker 1: what it says on the tin. And as the host
Speaker 1: of cool people did cool stuff, I appreciate a thing
Speaker 1: that just does what it says on the tin. So
Speaker 1: I want to talk about some of the other direct
Speaker 1: action abortionists who've come since, because this need continues, right
Speaker 1: and there are millions of people who've done this kind
Speaker 1: of work. Probably as long as there's been legal restrictions
Speaker 1: on abortion, there have been people fighting against it. You
Speaker 1: talked about some of them actually at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the show, and I'm hoping you chime in with more
Speaker 1: of them as I go through some of these and
Speaker 1: I want to do more episodes about more of these people,
Speaker 1: or I think people can listen to other podcasts that
Speaker 1: talk about it too, So normally I stick with people
Speaker 1: in the past for this show, but this issue just
Speaker 1: feels too important to me right now to not include
Speaker 1: some of these. So there's Women on Waves, which is
Speaker 1: a Dutch organization that was started by the physician Rebecca
Speaker 1: Gombert's in nineteen ninety nine. And she used to be
Speaker 1: the ship's doctor aboard a Greenpeace ship and she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: boats are fucking cool, which is my paraphrasing, not a
Speaker 1: direct quote. So she got a boat and she headed
Speaker 1: out to various countries with restrictive abortion practices. She loads
Speaker 1: up patients on shore heads twenty miles out to sea,
Speaker 1: and since it's a Dutch ship, Dutch law is in effect,
Speaker 1: though even the Dutch are a little wary about the
Speaker 1: whole thing, and the ship is only authorized to provide
Speaker 1: the abortion pill non surgical abortions to pregnancies up to
Speaker 1: nine weeks. And they don't just provide abortions, they provide
Speaker 1: contraception and education. And the first place they go is
Speaker 1: Ireland because you don't have to go very far from
Speaker 1: the Netherlands to go to a country that had terrible
Speaker 1: abortion laws in two thousand and one. Ironically, Ireland is
Speaker 1: liberalizing as abortion laws just as the US is regressing.
Speaker 1: And this boat is super contentious. And also it's contentious
Speaker 1: when you tell people who have ships that they're called
Speaker 1: boats because they don't like that. They like to be like,
Speaker 1: this is a ship, not a boat. But I think
Speaker 1: it's funny because boat is a cuter name. So Portugal
Speaker 1: blocks women on waves from approaching with a fucking warship.
Speaker 1: And then in Guatemala they make it less than a
Speaker 1: day before a war ship comes and pushes them out
Speaker 1: to see and oh, in the you actually were talking
Speaker 1: about Poland earlier. Women on Waves once flew a drone
Speaker 1: carrying abortion pills into Germany from Poland, in case anyone
Speaker 1: needs any ideas amazing and Rebecca Gomperts goes on in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen to form a nonprofit called aid Access that
Speaker 1: focuses on helping pregnant people self manage their own abortions
Speaker 1: with abortion pills, which are generally a combination of I
Speaker 1: don't know how to pronounce these words. I'm terribly sorry.
Speaker 1: Maybe you do, MiFi, prestone, and mysoposatol. These are the
Speaker 1: primary abortion pills that people are taking right now to
Speaker 1: end first trimester abortions and sending them through the mail
Speaker 1: in the US and to other countries that are increasingly
Speaker 1: criminalizing abortion. And they field at about fifty thousand requests
Speaker 1: in the first year that they were operational. At least
Speaker 1: one organization is bulletproofing vans getting ready to help people
Speaker 1: safely leave Texas to get to states where they can
Speaker 1: get the healthcare they need. They're like park getting ready
Speaker 1: to park the vans right outside the border of Texas.
Speaker 1: And frankly, what isn't isn't legal, doesn't dictate what is
Speaker 1: and isn't safe. Right During the fifty years we've had
Speaker 1: Roe v. Wade in the US, abortion workers have regularly
Speaker 1: risked and sometimes lost their lives in order to help
Speaker 1: people terminate unwanted pregnancies. Receptionists, security guards, and clinic escorts
Speaker 1: have all been murdered, kidnapped, attack threatened, you name it, right,
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons I bring that up, I
Speaker 1: hate ending on this kind of darker note, but one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I bring that up is because we
Speaker 1: can have this concept that direct action abortion can only
Speaker 1: happen when it's illegal and that's just not true. Like
Speaker 1: I don't know. In one southern city I lived in,
Speaker 1: there were for years there were no clinic escorts because
Speaker 1: the people and clinic escorts, for anyone who doesn't know,
Speaker 1: are the people who waited outside of clinic and shield
Speaker 1: patients from the abuse from anti choice protesters. And there
Speaker 1: are no clinic escorts in this town because all the
Speaker 1: escorts have been followed home and had their windows shot out.
Speaker 1: And my sister does clinic escording, and I just want
Speaker 1: to shout her out. She's a direct action hero from
Speaker 1: my point of view. Even if what she's doing is legal,
Speaker 1: you know, it's still a risk. Yeah, totally. I only
Speaker 1: did it once. It was a long time ago in Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: And basically as I understood it, I was told by
Speaker 1: the punks in town. They were like, the anti choice
Speaker 1: protesters here are like really scary, so they want the
Speaker 1: scary punks to come be the clinic escorts. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: because like normally, if you don't have really bad protesters,
Speaker 1: you kind of don't want the scary people to come
Speaker 1: to like help escort people in. But when people are
Speaker 1: really threatening, then you call the really threatening looking people,
Speaker 1: which when I was twenty, I was a very threatening
Speaker 1: looking person just by being a punk.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love that be'st the threat. It's like,
Speaker 2: I'm a punk, that's right, come.
Speaker 1: On, yeah yeah. And we were all like full of ourselves,
Speaker 1: like twenty year old anarchists who were like, we'll do anything,
Speaker 1: you know, And the world needs lots of angry twenty
Speaker 1: year olds. Also, unfortunately, it also needs a lot of
Speaker 1: the angry twenty year olds to stop. It depends on
Speaker 1: what they're angry about, really.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, just a reminder, I mean, I just
Speaker 2: want to put this also sad little fact in here.
Speaker 2: Even after a Rowe Versus waged in the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy seven, we had the High Amendment, which
Speaker 2: is still in place and has never gone away, which
Speaker 2: restricts funds for health care and access, which means pretty much,
Speaker 2: it is a very classist and racist amendment making sure
Speaker 2: those who really probably are the ones that need it
Speaker 2: and need this help and need this choice are the
Speaker 2: ones that can't get access to safe abortion and safe
Speaker 2: reproductive care in general. And then that has always been
Speaker 2: in place and it has not been removed, and it
Speaker 2: has not even come close to being removed and could
Speaker 2: have been and should have been by some administrations. But
Speaker 2: that's something to remember to Yeah, but that's part of
Speaker 2: the problem is we have other things that yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: now we supposedly have the right to do so, but
Speaker 2: we don't have access to do so. And that's a
Speaker 2: conversation we need to have in pretending like it's actually
Speaker 2: free and it's not or not actually free, that it's
Speaker 2: actually accessible and it's not, and who that truly affects
Speaker 2: and why it's such a bigger conversation, as well as
Speaker 2: the fact that the gag rule exists, which Title ten
Speaker 2: came in trying to help out to get those funds,
Speaker 2: and then we have the gag rules saying like well, nah,
Speaker 2: I guess individuals can choose this. So it gets so
Speaker 2: convoluted and there's so many policies and amendments on top
Speaker 2: of each other that it becomes almost impossible to know
Speaker 2: what is accessible and what is legal. And yeah, just
Speaker 2: because it's not legal doesn't mean you can't get it, yeah,
Speaker 2: or you should be. But like that's this whole conversation
Speaker 2: in this bigger picture of like we're coming back to
Speaker 2: the basics unfortunately, but we because we were never unable
Speaker 2: to unravel the minute details that really bind us. For
Speaker 2: those who want to get that ability, they just have
Speaker 2: a choice. And again, reproductive care is not just an abortion,
Speaker 2: Like there's just a whole bigger conversation once again, the
Speaker 2: fact that the COBA morbidity for black women is higher, Like,
Speaker 2: it's just there's so many conversations and what these policies
Speaker 2: are and who they truly affect and why these policies
Speaker 2: are in place. It's it's supremacy, patriarchy, those things. The
Speaker 2: reason we keep harping on these two, these three words,
Speaker 2: and people get pissed off about it is because it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's no other ex I'm sorry, I'm sorry it bothers you,
Speaker 2: and that you've been benefiting from that fuck you is
Speaker 2: still true.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I ran finished, No, no, no, I incredibly,
Speaker 1: this is part of why I'm really excited that you're
Speaker 1: the guest for this is the High Amendment. Is that
Speaker 1: the thing where like I know that like at least
Speaker 1: for a while, there was like only one abortion clinic
Speaker 1: in Kentucky and it was because you weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: have an abortion clinics hallways must be exactly and I'm
Speaker 1: making this number up thirty one inches wide, whereas a
Speaker 1: normal clinic has to have thirty three inch wide things.
Speaker 1: And so they would do the shit where you like,
Speaker 1: cannot have any a clinic that is anything other than
Speaker 1: an abortion clinic, which means that it is entirely financially
Speaker 1: it's just mistable and impossible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it starts stripping things. Essentially, the High Amendment really
Speaker 2: took away the funding, so any public funding could not
Speaker 2: go into it. So if you had accessibility to so
Speaker 2: if you say, yes, we offer abortion care, then you're
Speaker 2: automatically stripped of it. You cannot get government funds okay, period.
Speaker 2: So any kind of like services that would take Medicaid
Speaker 2: amatic care, you cann't go to there and get abortion
Speaker 2: because that was restricted for government funds. So like it
Speaker 2: absolutely was a classist law, yeah.
Speaker 1: Which just continues the previous status quo where the rich
Speaker 1: have access to reproductive health in them and.
Speaker 2: It's so sneaky. It's so sneak because people don't know
Speaker 2: about it much like they really think they have access
Speaker 2: because it's a liberal state.
Speaker 1: But High Amendment, Yeah, reproductive care is so much more
Speaker 1: as you said reproductive cares so much more than abortion,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of it is also about like
Speaker 1: the ability to choose to have children, right.
Speaker 2: Right, people who have children. This is a high risk
Speaker 2: thing for many, many people, and they need that care.
Speaker 2: And there's a reason why people died in childbirth and
Speaker 2: it shouldn't have to be because there are advancements that
Speaker 2: can prevent that, but people can't afford that. Like that,
Speaker 2: that in itself is that conversation that we don't actually
Speaker 2: care about those who are giving birth, like to make
Speaker 2: sure they're healthy. That's not pro life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally. God, the hypocrisy of all that stuff
Speaker 1: like can like keep me up at nights sometimes because
Speaker 1: I like, I try to have empathy with people I
Speaker 1: disagree with, and it short circuits my empathy because I
Speaker 1: can't understand it because it makes no fucking sense, right
Speaker 1: that you're like claiming to be you know, this one
Speaker 1: thing and then you just don't give a shit about
Speaker 1: people when they actually have children, and like, I don't
Speaker 1: know whatever.
Speaker 2: I love that. That's why you quoted that doctor from
Speaker 2: what was the Kentucky Pennsylvania Well, yeah, that's the same.
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding Pennsylvania, because just seeing their perspective, that
Speaker 2: is the true point of it, and this conversation of
Speaker 2: late term abortions, A majority of the people who are
Speaker 2: having late term abortions are not by choice. Typically they
Speaker 2: have been preparing for their child. And I know many
Speaker 2: of people who were anti choice for the longest time
Speaker 2: when they had to be put in that situation and understanding, oh,
Speaker 2: this is still technically an abortion, they may have different
Speaker 2: terms for it, realizing that, oh, and then costing thousands
Speaker 2: and thousands and thousands of dollars, putting their lives at risk.
Speaker 2: Coming back to being pro choice, realizing what this conversation
Speaker 2: of what these types of laws really hurt and who
Speaker 2: they really hurt, and how damaging it is. Because there's
Speaker 2: this mystic religious moral background that when order to demoralize
Speaker 2: and demonize those who even talk about it as an option.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the moral crusaders are just being used as useful
Speaker 1: idiots by people who want to do this other shit.
Speaker 1: And they like get people riled up into being like
Speaker 1: this is what is moral, and they're like okay, and
Speaker 1: you run off and go do the thing, and like
Speaker 1: that's not what the people controlling those people and give
Speaker 1: a shit about any of.
Speaker 2: That, right, this is not about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're just you're being used if you made
Speaker 1: it this far and you're you're a moral anti rant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just being fucking used.
Speaker 2: You warned them in the first episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going a bit.
Speaker 2: We're on this length, so you know, they know, y'all,
Speaker 2: y'all know, right, But yes, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: bringing those because I love talking about the history. I
Speaker 2: definitely learned more because I was like, what what is that?
Speaker 2: Things I didn't want to know and things I didn't
Speaker 2: want to know, So thank you for giving me that blend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I yeah, I was realizing. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is a thing that some people know a lot
Speaker 1: about and some people don't know about it all, And like,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited that more and more information is coming
Speaker 1: forward and people are coming more and more aware about
Speaker 1: Jaine Collective and all of the people who've done this
Speaker 1: kind of work, because like, because we fucking need it,
Speaker 1: and and we've already said that a bunch of times
Speaker 1: on the show, but it just it feels worth repeating.
Speaker 1: Is that, like we need to know that we can
Speaker 1: like be brave and do the right thing, you know,
Speaker 1: and we need to know that the means by which
Speaker 1: to do it, do the right thing. We can have
Speaker 1: those means. We can figure that out right, you know,
Speaker 1: so can't give up. Yeah, well, well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on and being a guest.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I am a new best friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah well so many new best friends also because all
Speaker 1: the listeners. But I want to be more of the
Speaker 1: best friend than them.
Speaker 2: Any plugs at the end here, Like I said on
Speaker 2: the last episode, which I hope you listened to and
Speaker 2: you stayed around for the second part, I'm on stuff.
Speaker 2: Mom never told you a podcast with iHeartRadio. You can
Speaker 2: get it wherever you listen to your podcast. We are
Speaker 2: on Instagram and on Twitter. We don't type. We don't type.
Speaker 2: Is that this is how old I am. We don't
Speaker 2: post a lot. I don't type things on there a lot,
Speaker 2: but we're there. We love getting messages. I am also
Speaker 2: on the social media's obviously not very good at it.
Speaker 2: On Instagram with McVeagh Sam and Twitter Sam McVeigh because
Speaker 2: that's how creative I am.
Speaker 1: And you can see pictures of her dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, that's pretty much all it is is pictures
Speaker 2: of my Dog. So if you like that, come on
Speaker 2: check it out and then we'll be back next week
Speaker 2: on Monday and Wednesday. All right, Margaret yay wherever.
Speaker 1: Talk to you all soon. Bye, everyone, buy listeners.
Speaker 2: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media. For more po podcast from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 2: visit our website foolzonmedia dot com or check us out
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