Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. This is a rerun episode.
Speaker 2: Everyone loves rerun episodes. Why is this the rerun episode? Well,
Speaker 2: a couple reasons. One of them is that some stuff
Speaker 2: happened this week. You might have been there, you might
Speaker 2: have noticed. But the other reason is that I'm on
Speaker 2: tour right now and I'm finally headed back home, which
Speaker 2: means that I will be back to being able to
Speaker 2: record in a more easy way instead of recording intros
Speaker 2: in a rest area somewhere in California in the morning.
Speaker 2: Is what I'm doing. Anyway, This rerun episode is about
Speaker 2: the Jane Collective. You see, imagine a time when abortion
Speaker 2: isn't legal in the United States. It's probably easy for
Speaker 2: you to imagine if you live in a lot of
Speaker 2: states right now, and yet most people are okay with it,
Speaker 2: which we all saw at the polls last week. What
Speaker 2: a bunch of people did is they got together and
Speaker 2: they offered abortion services safely, and developed new technology for
Speaker 2: them and did all kinds of amazing things even though
Speaker 2: it was a crime. Because sometimes resistance looks like protest,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it's just outright crime, which we would never advocate,
Speaker 2: but we sure will talk about some of the people
Speaker 2: who did it as cool on this podcast. Hi, Margaret
Speaker 2: here with Samantha, today's guest, recording a new introduction to
Speaker 2: this episode because a lot has happened since we recorded
Speaker 2: it only a couple weeks ago. Normally, this is a
Speaker 2: history podcast in the way that our subjects tying to
Speaker 2: current events is left up to the listener's imagination. But
Speaker 2: this is kind of an exceptional moment because when we
Speaker 2: recorded this episode, which is about abortion access and direct
Speaker 2: action abortion access, specifically the Jain collective. Well, I guess
Speaker 2: you all saw that when you saw the title of
Speaker 2: the episode when you downloaded it. We kind of joke about,
Speaker 2: I think during the course of recording about not joke
Speaker 2: what we say, Well, the overturning of Roe v. Wade
Speaker 2: is a potential threat, and since then we've obviously all
Speaker 2: seen that. There's a leak's document that says, well, it's
Speaker 2: not a potential threat, it is an almost certainty that
Speaker 2: is happening. The Supreme Court intends to overthrow Roe v.
Speaker 3: Wade.
Speaker 2: Samantha, do you have a better overview than that?
Speaker 4: So here is what we have been able to read,
Speaker 4: and what we know that in this lite document, they
Speaker 4: have already voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and they
Speaker 4: did it through the Supreme Court case of Dobbs v.
Speaker 4: Jackson Women's Health Organization, which is based out of Mississippi,
Speaker 4: which also is a trigger state. And if you don't
Speaker 4: know what trigger state is, it means they are ready
Speaker 4: to go the minute Roe v. Wade is overturned, that
Speaker 4: there will be an immediate ban on abortion the second
Speaker 4: it happens. So they are called the trigger states. And
Speaker 4: there are several we'll mention that in a minute, and
Speaker 4: Mississippi is one of those. So in this brief that
Speaker 4: we read from Judge Alito, who is the one that
Speaker 4: has written this up, it is ninety eight pages long,
Speaker 4: with like forty pages of an appendix to talk about
Speaker 4: his argument about why Roe v. Wade should be overturned.
Speaker 4: And he begins his statement, and I think it's something
Speaker 4: that we need to talk about because the language in
Speaker 4: itself is going to be repeated throughout. I'm not going
Speaker 4: to read it, I swear to god, I'm not. I cried.
Speaker 4: I screamed at the computer when I was reading this,
Speaker 4: and dissecting it, and I want to vomit as we
Speaker 4: are talking about it. But in it he writes, yeah.
Speaker 4: He begins the statement with talking about how divisive this
Speaker 4: issue is and is a profound moral issue. So he
Speaker 4: is allowing this conversation to take into a whole load
Speaker 4: of feelings and automatically place what he feels is morality
Speaker 4: and his own morality onto this. So that's how it begins.
Speaker 4: And then he talks about the fact that the Constitution,
Speaker 4: and we hold that rowan Casey, which is the Casey
Speaker 4: versus Planned Parenthood, which happened in the nineties that helped
Speaker 4: keep up with the bro v Wade, that it must
Speaker 4: be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and
Speaker 4: no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,
Speaker 4: including the one on which the defenders of Roe and
Speaker 4: Casey now chiefly rely, the due process clause of the
Speaker 4: fourteenth Amendment. So in that clause, just for people, I
Speaker 4: have a feeling so many people, the people listening to
Speaker 4: this are so smart, they're gonna be like, would you
Speaker 4: shut up and move on? But just in case, just
Speaker 4: in case, it's that privacy, the right to privacy, which
Speaker 4: is not necessarily mentioned, but it is based in this
Speaker 4: and they took that language and said, yes, this is
Speaker 4: about privacy. So that's very important, as we know, because
Speaker 4: it goes to a slew of other unconstitutional constitutional things.
Speaker 4: So he talks about that, and that he continues on
Speaker 4: that provision has been held to guarantee some rights that
Speaker 4: are not mentioned in the Constitution, but many such must
Speaker 4: be quote deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition
Speaker 4: in the concept of ordered liberty. So ordered liberty as
Speaker 4: well as nation's history is going to be all throughout
Speaker 4: this brief. His whole stance is that because it was
Speaker 4: never mentioned in the Constitution, that it was never ever
Speaker 4: a constitutional thing and should not be allowed as a
Speaker 4: constitutional thing, and that it wasn't even mentioned to be
Speaker 4: a right until nineteen seventy three. And because of that,
Speaker 4: this is not a constitutional issue. And the other part
Speaker 4: to this is that ordered liberty. So when we talk
Speaker 4: about ordered liberty, this is when he is saying that
Speaker 4: he and a certain amount of people have the right
Speaker 4: to tell you what your liberties are, and they get
Speaker 4: to tell you what is orderly. So this is why
Speaker 4: we're talking about how this is going to overturn it
Speaker 4: because he's able to make this a state's right thing,
Speaker 4: in which he said that's how it's always been, that's
Speaker 4: how it's always should be. Roe v. Wade overstepped because
Speaker 4: they took something out of context from an eighteen sixty
Speaker 4: eight idea of this constitutional conversation. So where we are today, Yes,
Speaker 4: there's back and forth right now about it's not that
Speaker 4: big of a deal because the states can govern. It's
Speaker 4: not an outright ban technically what we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 4: what I was talking about earlier with the trigger states.
Speaker 4: The states are Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi,
Speaker 4: North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. And even though in
Speaker 4: my state of Georgia, they don't necessarily have a trigger law,
Speaker 4: yet what they have done is come at the abortion
Speaker 4: clinics and abortion facilities telling them go ahead and get ready,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of the clinics have stopped taking
Speaker 4: appointments and canceled the appointments at this point in time.
Speaker 4: So it's very very dangerous in where we are, even
Speaker 4: though it's not necessarily a trigger state. Those who are
Speaker 4: sitting in most likely more liberal left leaning are quote
Speaker 4: unquote okay, it is those who are what would be
Speaker 4: the red states that could be heavily heavily affected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what people I think often forget when they're
Speaker 2: like sitting comfortably in their blue states or whatever, is that,
Speaker 2: you know, the margins that we're talking about. The difference
Speaker 2: between a red state and a blue state is actually
Speaker 2: not incredibly dramatic. It's not like the red states are
Speaker 2: all like, you know, ninety percent people who want to
Speaker 2: get rid of this or something like that. It might
Speaker 2: be fifty one percent or even well, I guess actually
Speaker 2: abortion itself, what is it like sixty nine percent of
Speaker 2: Americans right.
Speaker 4: Like seventy percent who want to keep it, and in
Speaker 4: the state of Georgia is sixty eight percent as well.
Speaker 4: So even though people think of us as just like
Speaker 4: the you know, silly red state, though we prove them
Speaker 4: wrong in the last few elections. And I know this,
Speaker 4: I am with one hundred percent with everyone when I
Speaker 4: say this government is bullshit and there's things to be
Speaker 4: so many things changed, and I am frustrated to the
Speaker 4: core because nothing like somethings are better and this is
Speaker 4: better than it was, but at the same time, what
Speaker 4: happened in twenty sixteen really really fucked up everything else,
Speaker 4: and what we are seeing is the detriment of that. However,
Speaker 4: it's not a fix all. I understand this, But what
Speaker 4: we're saying is in the state of Georgia, the majority
Speaker 4: of the voters, who are typically women of color and
Speaker 4: people of color, are all about our current senators and
Speaker 4: those who are pushing to that point. But Jerry Manderin
Speaker 4: has made it almost impossible as well as voter suppression,
Speaker 4: to get to move and push it to the right direction. Nearly,
Speaker 4: I do say nearly, and it's frustrating because yes, we
Speaker 4: are going to be affected, even though Georgia is not
Speaker 4: a trigger state as we were talking about earlier. Obviously
Speaker 4: he's already had he being governor, Kemp has already put
Speaker 4: in the six week ban and just kind of sitting
Speaker 4: in a court right now. And if these things change
Speaker 4: is over Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, honestly, I mean, besides the fact that we have
Speaker 2: an unelected shadow council that makes still the decision about
Speaker 2: what happened with our bodies. Really, the point of this
Speaker 2: episode that you all are about to listen to is
Speaker 2: about direct action abortion access and how even when the
Speaker 2: law is not on your side, this is still going
Speaker 2: to happen, and how can we make it happen as
Speaker 2: well as possible, as safely as possible. There's also, unfortunately
Speaker 2: other effects that could happen beyond just this. I was
Speaker 2: talking to my lawyer, the amazing Moira Meltzer Cohen, who
Speaker 2: said that we need to be prepared for all of
Speaker 2: the penumber cases, which are cases that put forth the
Speaker 2: idea that constitutional due process implies a right to privacy.
Speaker 2: This was called the Penumber basically during Griswold versus Connecticut,
Speaker 2: which is the case that legalized birth control, and so
Speaker 2: basically saying that they had a penumber a sort of
Speaker 2: shadow that implied rights to privacy, and lawyers on both
Speaker 2: sides have been arguing that this is a terrible and
Speaker 2: flimsy legal standing for a very long time. There are
Speaker 2: things that rely on that include, as I mentioned, birth control,
Speaker 2: but also gay sex or really any sex that isn't
Speaker 2: for procreation could theoretically be criminalized once again. And so
Speaker 2: what we're going to do is we're going to link
Speaker 2: to a lot of resources in the show notes encourage
Speaker 2: people to look into things, look into ways to contribute,
Speaker 2: look into ways to if you have your own needs,
Speaker 2: how you can meet those directly, if you or help
Speaker 2: other people meet their needs directly through lots of different ways.
Speaker 4: And for those who are in a point I know
Speaker 4: people are filling a time crunch, because there is a
Speaker 4: time crunch. Abortion is still legal and accessible. The home
Speaker 4: abortion pill is FDA proved to be sent by mail,
Speaker 4: so if you need to do that, do that. That
Speaker 4: is still accessible and it's still around. And we do
Speaker 4: see organizations that are coming through kind of like the
Speaker 4: Jain Collective did on a better, bigger level, which I
Speaker 4: love every bit of that. That's kind of that silver lining.
Speaker 4: And again, yeah, things that we'd see such as birth control,
Speaker 4: we are seeing things in play. Missouri and Louisiana has
Speaker 4: decided to put in a clause in their trigger laws
Speaker 4: that includes iud's being illegal, so that means someone who
Speaker 4: has an IUD, which has become very effective, may be prosecuted.
Speaker 4: As well as the fact that those who are going
Speaker 4: through things like a topic pregnancy, which is when again
Speaker 4: I think we talk about it later, the egg is
Speaker 4: the fertilized egg is stuck in Neurophilippian two burst and
Speaker 4: kills a person can kill a person damaged and severely.
Speaker 4: This will be if you try to extract that, that'll
Speaker 4: be considered abortion as well. So this is why these
Speaker 4: laws are so important that we pay attention to it. Again,
Speaker 4: that privacy clause. That's what they're coming after. And that
Speaker 4: includes gay marriage, that includes consensual adult sex, that includes
Speaker 4: so much more. And that's why this is so damn scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we'll leave it to the listener's imagination about
Speaker 2: the methods that might be necessary when the democratic process
Speaker 2: has failed. But one thing also will say is that
Speaker 2: I love this episode that you're all about to hear,
Speaker 2: but don't listen to it to determine how to self
Speaker 2: manage abortions. Look elsewhere for information about how to self
Speaker 2: manage abortions. Medicated abortions are readily available, at least at
Speaker 2: the moment, and are substantially better than what is available
Speaker 2: and what was available to the heroes of today's episode.
Speaker 2: So what can people do? Like if people have if
Speaker 2: people want to donate, what would you what would you suggest?
Speaker 4: So I don't want to give you specific organizations because
Speaker 4: it affects different people, different in different places. But one
Speaker 4: of the things I would say is planned parenthood is
Speaker 4: not necessarily where you should donate. Maybe start looking at
Speaker 4: specific clinics and funds that you are appreciative of or
Speaker 4: think that they can do a good job. Research who
Speaker 4: you're donating to. Also, if you're in a safe state,
Speaker 4: as we said, and I'm going to call this safe state,
Speaker 4: I don't know if that's what they're called. I'm just
Speaker 4: going to quote it, like in one of the states
Speaker 4: where the government is allowing and talking about, Yeah, abortion,
Speaker 4: it should be part of healthcare. Then maybe look to
Speaker 4: the trigger states that we mentioned earlier and help donate
Speaker 4: to those days because they are in deep danger as
Speaker 4: I said before, about losing everything very quickly, very fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the people I've been talking to and asking
Speaker 2: for advice about where to put your energy in terms
Speaker 2: of organizations to support, have also suggested that abortion funds
Speaker 2: are specifically the place to go. And then also one
Speaker 2: other one that again my lawyer friend recommended, is called
Speaker 2: the repro Legal Defense Fund, which is a fund that
Speaker 2: supports people who are investigated, arrested, or prosecuted for self
Speaker 2: managed abortion or for helping and their own or someone
Speaker 2: else's pregnancy, and so that is a thing that legal
Speaker 2: defense is going to have to become part of all
Speaker 2: of this as well. Unfortunately.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And if you kind of want to know what
Speaker 4: is impacted and how you can impact better, you can
Speaker 4: also go to the National Network of Abortion Funds and
Speaker 4: they kind of have a list of who is in
Speaker 4: need of services and what type of services are news
Speaker 4: for what funds, and that could give you a kind
Speaker 4: of at least an audited sheet of who you're giving
Speaker 4: to and what they're doing.
Speaker 2: And here's the episode. Hello, and welcome to Cool People
Speaker 2: Who Did Cool Stuff, the podcast that needs no introduction.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, Margaret, it needs an introduction.
Speaker 2: Okay, Welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, the
Speaker 2: podcast that apparently needs an introduction. Every week I'm going
Speaker 2: to bring you a new story of cool people who
Speaker 2: did cool stuff. Thus the title. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
Speaker 2: And this week I have on Samantha McVay, who is
Speaker 2: the host of the also stuff related podcast stuff Mom
Speaker 2: Never Told You. Samantha, how are you doing good?
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me on the show, and yay,
Speaker 4: welcome to the fam and all the things. So excited
Speaker 4: to have you as a part of our network family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really excited. Okay, So I've also have Sophie
Speaker 2: on the call. So Sophie's the producer.
Speaker 4: How are you doing, Hi, Superheroes, Sophie over.
Speaker 3: Here doing I'm doing Okay?
Speaker 4: That is that is that is a theme of two
Speaker 4: twenty one twenty.
Speaker 2: What it is we're doing.
Speaker 4: Time is not real. It does not.
Speaker 2: Exist, especially since what we're recording will make no sense
Speaker 2: to people who are listening to it twenty five years
Speaker 2: from now.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, yeah, I hope so.
Speaker 2: But so, Samantha, I'm wondering, how do you feel about
Speaker 2: reproductive rights? Would you say that overall you're pro or
Speaker 2: anti you deciding what happens with your body?
Speaker 4: You know, as someone who does have a uterus and
Speaker 4: feels the fact that I'm a pretty smart and capable woman,
Speaker 4: that I should be allowed to have my choices, and
Speaker 4: that being dictated by cis white men telling me that
Speaker 4: they need control over my body because they're afraid of
Speaker 4: the vagina in general and uterus and the power of
Speaker 4: the uterus. I'm musa say I'm pro everything about it,
Speaker 4: and let's go ahead and say nah, bra get out
Speaker 4: of it. Well, is not a long winded answer.
Speaker 2: No, no, this is great. It would be a very
Speaker 2: different in short podcast appear answer was wildly different from
Speaker 2: that I have.
Speaker 3: I was like, Margaret, I have this really great person
Speaker 3: that I want to have on for this specific topic that.
Speaker 4: It comes on, and it's like, oh, now you know
Speaker 4: how I feel it used to be. Can I tell
Speaker 4: you this. I grew up in a very conservative For
Speaker 4: the listeners who are familiar with me, I grew up
Speaker 4: in a very conservative town. My parents are white, I'm adopted,
Speaker 4: and they're very conservative people who have always voted on moralities,
Speaker 4: including anti choice lifestyle. And for the longest time, I
Speaker 4: was told because I was adopted, I should be anti
Speaker 4: choice or I wouldn't have existed. This whole like guilt
Speaker 4: trip onto me about that, making it seem like I
Speaker 4: was in the wrong for saying but wait. The the
Speaker 4: biggest conversation is you're telling me that you really feel
Speaker 4: like you can't trust me as an adult, as a person,
Speaker 4: as an individual to make my own choices in life,
Speaker 4: and that it needed to be dictated by a government.
Speaker 4: But nothing else does. Okay, But it took me a
Speaker 4: long time to get out of that headspin, because you know,
Speaker 4: you want to acclimate and be a part of whatever
Speaker 4: your society or community you're in. Give me a while
Speaker 4: to figure out, Oh god, that's gross. What is happening,
Speaker 4: you know, and what kind of control had it on there?
Speaker 4: So honestly, if you'd asked me that twenty years ago,
Speaker 4: we would have had a different conversation.
Speaker 2: Okay, no, that I mean, that's fair and like it.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of indoctrination that we all
Speaker 2: feel with them. I'm almost sort of lucky in that,
Speaker 2: like I was always just like such one of the
Speaker 2: bad kids that I was pretty young when like my
Speaker 2: friends started having abortions. And I'm so grateful that they
Speaker 2: had that opportunity because a lot of them were able
Speaker 2: to like get out of the situations they were in,
Speaker 2: you know, because they had that access. But well, today's
Speaker 2: heroes have come to similar conclusions that we have about
Speaker 2: being pro people deciding what to do with their own bodies.
Speaker 2: And because okay, people are going to talk about fucking
Speaker 2: cool and I'm going to be talking about direct action
Speaker 2: abortion access, and in particular, I'm going to focus on
Speaker 2: one crew of women out of Chicago, the Notorious Jane Collective.
Speaker 4: Yes, oh, this is one of my favorites. Come on,
Speaker 4: I'm ready, let's go.
Speaker 2: And so I think actually the podcast that you're on,
Speaker 2: I don't think you are the host of this particular episode,
Speaker 2: but the podcast you run actually did an interview with
Speaker 2: the founder of Jane, Heather Booth. I just want to
Speaker 2: acknowledge that, and so it was fucking cool and I
Speaker 2: listened to that while I was getting ready for this
Speaker 2: one and before I start getting too deep into it.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to talk about abortion, right and so
Speaker 2: I'm going to be talking about how it is and
Speaker 2: isn't a women's issue in the modern context. I want
Speaker 2: to acknowledge upfront that abortion is not just a women's issue.
Speaker 2: A plenty of people who are not women can get
Speaker 2: pregnant and might not want to be whether that's some
Speaker 2: trans men, some non binary people, and some intersex people
Speaker 2: who can all get pregnant. And I will say that
Speaker 2: one day it's as likely as not that some trans
Speaker 2: woman is going to get pregnant. And there's this meme
Speaker 2: floating around that I really like, is that what will
Speaker 2: really drive the right wing into a rage is when
Speaker 2: the first trans woman gets pregnant. It's when the first
Speaker 2: trans woman chooses to have an abortion. But I also
Speaker 2: will say that so it's not just a women's issue,
Speaker 2: but it is also a women's issue as well, and
Speaker 2: I don't want to cut that out of the conversation either.
Speaker 2: And I spent a while trying to figure out to
Speaker 2: phrase all this right because it's a kind of a
Speaker 2: moving target to understand how we talk about this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I would say the history of the limitation of
Speaker 2: abortion access is entirely entangled with the history of misogyny
Speaker 2: and with controlling women's bodies and denying us agency. And
Speaker 2: there's plenty of women who can't get pregnant, whether it's
Speaker 2: because of age, surgeries, hormone shifts, the way we were born.
Speaker 2: But something doesn't need to affect like every single woman
Speaker 2: to be a woman's say, to be something that affects
Speaker 2: all of us, because patriarchal society wanting to control women's
Speaker 2: bodies doesn't stop with the women who can get pregnant, right,
Speaker 2: They want to control everybody. So I guess what I
Speaker 2: want to say to anyone's listening and just to kind
Speaker 2: of provide the context that I'm coming from, is that
Speaker 2: when I'm talking about abortion access, I'm trying to talk
Speaker 2: about it from both of these angles at once, to
Speaker 2: sort of intersecting axes of oppression is people with the
Speaker 2: ability to give birth and people who are women, which
Speaker 2: is very often an intersection, right, but not always. And
Speaker 2: then of course we're talking about shit that happened like
Speaker 2: fifty years ago, right, And so a lot of the
Speaker 2: existing language about the people that we're going to be
Speaker 2: talking about will be referring to people as women and
Speaker 2: will be approaching it primarily from this lens of being
Speaker 2: a women's issue, and I'm trying to, well, I'm going
Speaker 2: to try and be more directly inclusive throughout. I'm not
Speaker 2: trying to like cast judgment on these people who framed
Speaker 2: it in the ways that they understood it is the
Speaker 2: best way to frame it. So that's my disclaimer. They
Speaker 2: spent more time on than like the rest.
Speaker 4: Of the as it has to you have to though, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so abortion in legality, right, Abortion has been a
Speaker 2: contentious issue since forever, and sometimes it's about morality, Like
Speaker 2: on an individual level, a lot of people are against
Speaker 2: abortion because of what they consider morality, and some religious
Speaker 2: groups teach that life begins at conception or at the quickening,
Speaker 2: which is when a pregnant person can first feel the
Speaker 2: baby moving, which is usually about halfway through the pregnancy.
Speaker 2: It happens I guess a couple weeks earlier in pregnancies,
Speaker 2: after the first pregnancy that a person has. Other people
Speaker 2: claim that life begins at viability, which is when the
Speaker 2: fetus would be able to survive outside the womb, which
Speaker 2: is usually around seven months. And then other religions and
Speaker 2: other concepts and faiths teach that life begins at birth.
Speaker 2: And it isn't as like simple as like this religion
Speaker 2: believes this. This religion believes that there's not like one
Speaker 2: answer about like how Christianity believes or whatever. Right, It's
Speaker 2: all different and changing at different times. I also, frankly
Speaker 2: don't care on some level like whether or not I
Speaker 2: am or I'm not a religious person, Like I have
Speaker 2: no interest in letting religion dictate the laws of society.
Speaker 2: So there's this case that a lot of people make
Speaker 2: that the restriction of abortion has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: morality or religion, but instead about the control of bodies,
Speaker 2: right of women's bodies and women's bodies. And then like
Speaker 2: by extension all of the people who are in the
Speaker 2: periphery of womanhood and I don't know, it's like and
Speaker 2: sometimes they're relieve and open about this desire where it's
Speaker 2: like literally just about controlling reproduction. A lot of countries
Speaker 2: they say that motherhood is like patriotic, right, because really,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, it's about this, like, well,
Speaker 2: we want more babies to throw into the you know,
Speaker 2: gristmill of labor and war and shit.
Speaker 4: If you are looking at like QAnon level of uh
Speaker 4: of the mom groups is an interesting fight they have
Speaker 4: and a part of that solution, and part of that
Speaker 4: fight is to burn their own babies, meaning like typically
Speaker 4: white children, and making sure that that lineage continues in
Speaker 4: this big olf fight in the QAnon war. It's a
Speaker 4: whole rabbit hole in itself.
Speaker 2: I wish I didn't know that. Thanks for telling me
Speaker 2: this terrible thing that's happening. It's like it doesn't surprise
Speaker 2: me at no, no, it doesn't surprise me at all.
Speaker 2: But I'm like, wait, like, of course they're doing that.
Speaker 2: God damn it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, it's these.
Speaker 4: Are the no. I will tell you. I probably should
Speaker 4: have given you that heads up as on our show
Speaker 4: on stuff, Mo'm never told you I am the pessimist. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 4: that brings out the unfun facts. So apologies in advance.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, that's perfect because I've tried to do this,
Speaker 2: Like I mean, it's ironic. I picked this name kill
Speaker 2: Joy and then I like dedicate my life to trying
Speaker 2: to spread revolutionary hope.
Speaker 4: But I love that. I love that. I love that
Speaker 4: we have this balance today.
Speaker 3: It's perfect fun fun facts with Samantha McVay show.
Speaker 4: They're welcome. You should have a show literally just called that.
Speaker 2: I want to be guessed on unfund facts.
Speaker 4: It should be fun facts, Samantha. Okay, you need to
Speaker 4: start this up. You're the creator of all shows. Let's
Speaker 4: do this. I'm in, I'm in.
Speaker 2: Okay. So the first European government to legalize abortion was
Speaker 2: Revolutionary Russia as far as I can research, and in
Speaker 2: October nineteen twenty they legalized abortion. And some people will
Speaker 2: talk about how they did from a feminist point of view.
Speaker 2: A lot of other stuff will say they did it
Speaker 2: because they were all starving and so they just were like, uh,
Speaker 2: it's okay to not have babies for this moment, right,
Speaker 2: And I think there's a lot of a strong case
Speaker 2: to be made for that that they didn't actually some
Speaker 2: of them cared, some of them didn't care, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Because they also got rid of abortion again various points,
Speaker 2: and then they had like huge pro natal PR campaigns,
Speaker 2: and then of course Stalin made it illegal again because
Speaker 2: he's Stalin and he only does bad things. And Okay,
Speaker 2: the law that he passed on June twenty seventh, nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six, is the most Soviet name I've ever heard,
Speaker 2: which is the Decree on the Prohibition of Abortions, the
Speaker 2: improvement of Material aide to women in childbirth, the establishment
Speaker 2: of state assistants to parents of large families, and the
Speaker 2: extension of lying in homes, nursery schools in kindergartens, the
Speaker 2: tight you know, of criminal punishment and the non payment
Speaker 2: of alimony, and on certain modifications on levorce legislation that.
Speaker 4: Rose right off the tongue. That was amazing, It was
Speaker 4: so beautiful.
Speaker 3: Good jobs on certain modifications in divorce legislation. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: I'm just making sure I got yeah, yeah, okay, cool,
Speaker 3: cool obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then one of the other times that abortion
Speaker 2: was legalized in Europe. I actually think was really cool
Speaker 2: and not like, oh, maybe why are they doing this?
Speaker 2: But during the Spanish Civil War in I guess probably
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six or so, I don't remember the actual year,
Speaker 2: and an anarchist became the first men, the first woman
Speaker 2: minister of health and like one of the first women
Speaker 2: ministers in government in Europe. This is anarchist woman. Federica
Speaker 2: Monsani became the Minister of Health of the Second Spanish
Speaker 2: Republic and she legalized abortion because it was the right
Speaker 2: thing to do. And then Franco successfully invaded the special
Speaker 2: Second Spanish Republic and it was a whole war thing
Speaker 2: that happened, and it didn't really go very well, and
Speaker 2: Spain got fascist owned instead of legalized abortion. So close
Speaker 2: to getting it right, I know, I almost like don't
Speaker 2: know where to stick this. But one of the things
Speaker 2: that I think about a lot when I'm talking about
Speaker 2: how like why are they making abortion illegal? Is it
Speaker 2: morality or is it social control? And I think that
Speaker 2: as soon as you start throwing birth control into it too,
Speaker 2: it becomes so obvious that it's not about morality, it's
Speaker 2: about social control. Because all of the same stuff that's
Speaker 2: illegalizing abortion is like, you know, I'm going to do
Speaker 2: a whole episode about the birth control fight at some point,
Speaker 2: But it's just this whole parallel thing where basically they're like, right,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't have sex, that doesn't make babies. That's wrong, right,
Speaker 2: it's because they.
Speaker 4: Just which is by the way, a new headline that
Speaker 4: I've seen all of a sudden coming back round from
Speaker 4: the right wing conversation is the same narrative of you
Speaker 4: shouldn't have sex is for making children. If you can't
Speaker 4: handle having children, you shouldn't be having sex. Like this
Speaker 4: new I've seen it trending in I was like, what
Speaker 4: is happening? Are we bringing that back again? Is this
Speaker 4: really the nineteen eighties, seventies, sixties however, which, by the way,
Speaker 4: abortion didn't happen till like the nineteen sixties in the US,
Speaker 4: Like why are we back here? But yeah, it's I
Speaker 4: agree with you, this whole level of like when we
Speaker 4: really look at it, obviously, that's the conversation we've had
Speaker 4: about is it really your pro life? Are you just
Speaker 4: anti choice? Like that's the conversation.
Speaker 2: Totally, No, totally yeah, because yeah, you're literally anti people
Speaker 2: choosing to have like, you know, sane, consensual whatever, the phrasiness,
Speaker 2: the safe sex that's consensual and happening and all that shit.
Speaker 2: But then, okay, so when I'm doing all this like
Speaker 2: preface stuff, I'm going to get to Jane soon. A
Speaker 2: lot of feminists, including today heroes, they weren't necessarily even
Speaker 2: just fighting for the legalization of abortion. One of the
Speaker 2: cases that I want to make because it kept coming
Speaker 2: up as I was researching these people and a lot
Speaker 2: of the other abortionists at the time, is especially the
Speaker 2: feminists and the women involved, was that they were fighting
Speaker 2: for the demedicalization of reproductive health. Basically, they were fighting
Speaker 2: to take reproductive health like birth control, abortion, pregnancy and
Speaker 2: birth out of the patriarchal field of western medicine and
Speaker 2: to have direct control over their own bodies, which doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily mean like diy at home abortions, but it means
Speaker 2: abortions performed by competent practitioners, whether they're in the medical
Speaker 2: field or not. And there's this argument that my friends
Speaker 2: have made very convincingly to me that I tend to
Speaker 2: believe that a lot of the shit that's going on
Speaker 2: in the witch hunts in Europe in medieval Europe were
Speaker 2: basically a lot of it was about like, here are
Speaker 2: these people who are health practitioners who are not tied
Speaker 2: into the sort of male and academic field of health
Speaker 2: that we're trying to build, and so we should murder
Speaker 2: them all because we want to be the ones controlling
Speaker 2: everyone's bodies instead of like all of these women and
Speaker 2: actually a lot of I think gay men and other
Speaker 2: people involved in sort of like swept up in the
Speaker 2: whatever periphery of women. I don't know how to describe this.
Speaker 2: And so it's just it's hard to control population in
Speaker 2: people's bodies if there's all these like wild and free
Speaker 2: practitioners running around helping people control their own bodies. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that's so interesting about this argument
Speaker 2: is that it basically means the medicalization of reproductive health
Speaker 2: was a violent process that required mass murder. You just
Speaker 2: killed all the practitioners, as you probably guessed anyone listening
Speaker 2: to this. I'm not here to convince you to be
Speaker 2: pro choice, because I'm assuming that you are anyone who's
Speaker 2: listening to this, and if you're not, you should. Maybe
Speaker 2: you'll get something out of this episode. Maybe listening to
Speaker 2: it would be good for you. Maybe you'll just hate me,
Speaker 2: that's fine. And because I'm not really here to like
Speaker 2: balance the moral weight of abortion today, I just want
Speaker 2: to like celebrate heroic, badass women who refuse to go
Speaker 2: along with this US society that told them they couldn't
Speaker 2: recontrol their own reproductive health. And so I want to
Speaker 2: celebrate the Jaine collective.
Speaker 4: Amen, yay, Amen, I'm proud.
Speaker 2: Sometime around nineteen sixty five, there's a lot of arguments
Speaker 2: about exactly what year had happened. I'm actually the person
Speaker 2: who does know is alive, but lots of people writing
Speaker 2: lots of different things on the Internet and in books
Speaker 2: because everything doesn't match up with this off anyway. In
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five is a white Jewish socialist student in
Speaker 2: Chicago named Heather Booth who got a call from her
Speaker 2: friend and her friend was despondent. His sister was pregnant
Speaker 2: and she didn't know what to do. Abortion was illegal
Speaker 2: in every state in the US at that point, with
Speaker 2: a few medical exceptions here and there, different in different places,
Speaker 2: and Heather hadn't given much thought to abortion access until
Speaker 2: that moment. But she was like, all right, I'll see
Speaker 2: what I can do. And basically, just with that willingness
Speaker 2: to step up when someone needed help, she started one
Speaker 2: of the most radical and interesting abortion access groups in history,
Speaker 2: which is a lesson to everyone that sometimes you just
Speaker 2: step up when the call to adventure happens. This isn't
Speaker 2: part of my script. I'm griffing badly.
Speaker 4: I like that, but yeah, I agree like that. We
Speaker 4: see we're seeing it happen. Unfortunately, as it has become
Speaker 4: evident that we're back into this fight again, we've almost
Speaker 4: like started over, and it feels like we're starting over
Speaker 4: into this point, and funds are being created to make
Speaker 4: sure that if it does happen, if it's outright ban
Speaker 4: and I know we're going to talk about this probably
Speaker 4: in a bit, that we will have an underground network
Speaker 4: essentially to continue to help the people who need this access.
Speaker 4: And I know it happened in Chile too and Poland too,
Speaker 4: where the neighboring countries have set up these funds. As
Speaker 4: Poland has passed one of the strictest abortion restrictions, that
Speaker 4: they're now making an underground essentially a network for them
Speaker 4: to get access when they need it by giving as
Speaker 4: many people uh travel reimbursement as well as places to
Speaker 4: stay to get in that plan, be all of those things.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think unfortunately, I'm so excited about talking
Speaker 4: about this story, and I'm so glad you're bringing this
Speaker 4: up because we are repeating history and we may have
Speaker 4: to look at this as an example of all right, y'all,
Speaker 4: let's get it, let's get it together. We've got to
Speaker 4: do something and become radical essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I what are you talking about? This is
Speaker 2: a history podcast. History doesn't have lessons for the present.
Speaker 4: Right, we don't have to learn history.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just random that I picked this topic. No,
Speaker 2: I really like and please continue with the how it
Speaker 2: ties into everything because it's like.
Speaker 4: Lovely, Oh, you're speaking to my soul. We're gonna be
Speaker 4: the friends what I need.
Speaker 2: So good? Okay. So Heather Booth was already a radical
Speaker 2: right in nineteen sixty four, she joined Freedom Summer, which
Speaker 2: is when activists flooded to Mississippi to defy the KKK
Speaker 2: and register black voters and set up schools and libraries,
Speaker 2: which didn't go smoothly. At least seven people were murdered
Speaker 2: by right wing forces, including black residents and both white
Speaker 2: and black civil rights activists from outside the area, and
Speaker 2: something like seventy black homes, churches, and businesses were bombed
Speaker 2: or burned, eighty activists were beaten, and more than a
Speaker 2: thousand activists ended up arrested, including Heather Booth. During all
Speaker 2: of this, it also wasn't like it's like, it wasn't
Speaker 2: perfect and rosy either. I mean, I just described all
Speaker 2: the horrible stuff that happened, but it also led to
Speaker 2: some resentment, at least according to some of the sources
Speaker 2: I read. I suspect that people had a lot of
Speaker 2: different opinions about what happened. Some local black residents felt
Speaker 2: that there was a kind of a paternalistic, white northern
Speaker 2: savior thing that had just happened, and they weren't necessarily
Speaker 2: excited about it. But I believe that that is, you know,
Speaker 2: people have very different opinions about things, and it's sort
Speaker 2: of a critical, if complicated chapter the civil rights movement,
Speaker 2: and Heather Booth was part of it. And I think
Speaker 2: this is also important because it's always important to talk
Speaker 2: about how all of the people fighting for all these
Speaker 2: things always come from intersections or believe in intersectionality, even
Speaker 2: if that term didn't exist yet, you know, Like I
Speaker 2: did another episode once on abolitionists and realized that all
Speaker 2: the abolitionists were feminists, and all the feminist were abolitionists,
Speaker 2: not universally, but the ones who were cool enough to
Speaker 2: make it into my podcast. And so anyway, so it's
Speaker 2: not coming out of nowhere this, you know. So she's
Speaker 2: back in Chicago after that summer, and she was helping
Speaker 2: form feminist groups where women talked about the issues facing them,
Speaker 2: a process that a few years later got more widespread
Speaker 2: and be called consciousness raising groups. It was a big
Speaker 2: part of feminist movement in the United States in the
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies. And this is probably how she ended
Speaker 2: up being the person her friend thought to call. But
Speaker 2: that's just conjecture. I don't know why a friend called her.
Speaker 2: So she gets the call and she asks around the
Speaker 2: medical community within the civil rights movement, basically being like,
Speaker 2: you know, who can perform an abortion on my friend?
Speaker 2: You know who wants to commit a felony really quick?
Speaker 2: And the doctor she eventually reached, as best as I
Speaker 2: can tell, was a surge named TRM. Howard, who gets
Speaker 2: left out of this history sometimes and not always, which
Speaker 2: is a shame, because he's a really fucking interesting guy.
Speaker 2: He was more famous as a civil rights leader than
Speaker 2: he was as a doctor. He was one of the
Speaker 2: most prominent non socialist voices in the movement. Most of
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement was substantially further left than this guy.
Speaker 2: But you know, he's black man fighting for civil rights.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: So during the Emmett Till case, which again I'm I'm
Speaker 2: going to tell you about cool people, I say about
Speaker 2: all these horrible things that happened. Emmett Till is a
Speaker 2: fourteen year old black kid who was brutally murdered by
Speaker 2: a white mob in Mississippi in nineteen fifty five. And
Speaker 2: during that case, Howard helped run the search for evidence,
Speaker 2: and I believe that's where he became more prominent within
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement. And during that trial, discriminatory gun
Speaker 2: laws wouldn't let HI own weapons, but he did anyway,
Speaker 2: and he kept a pistol and a secret compartment in
Speaker 2: his car, and he slept with a Thompson machine gun
Speaker 2: at the foot of his bed. And there's this whole
Speaker 2: history that I also will want hopefully one day cover
Speaker 2: about hidden within the civil rights movement. There was actually
Speaker 2: a huge move Even if the pulical action was largely
Speaker 2: non violent, people weren't people were fine with self defense,
Speaker 2: and a lot of that's movement was armed. So he
Speaker 2: was very politically engaged. He runs for Republican. He runs
Speaker 2: as a Republican for Congress in nineteen fifty eight. He
Speaker 2: doesn't win. But he also fought against the criminalization of
Speaker 2: sex work, which rules. And he was a surgeon and
Speaker 2: a legal abortionist, which he considered part of his civil
Speaker 2: rights work, which also just rules. And he was arrested
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty four and nineteen sixty five for providing
Speaker 2: abortions in Chicago, although he was never convicted. So Heather
Speaker 2: Booth reaches out to him and he's like, yeah, bring
Speaker 2: your friend's sister to my office. So Ward gets around
Speaker 2: quickly that Heather Booth has the hookup with safe abortionists
Speaker 2: because obviously, regardless of law, people are still getting abortions
Speaker 2: in the United States at this point. Right, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: shocked because it's weird. It's almost like it anyway.
Speaker 4: Right, just because it's outlawed.
Speaker 2: What, Yeah, we thought we got rid of that.
Speaker 4: We made a law and it definitely stopped everything. For sure,
Speaker 4: it didn't make everything else dangerous for the low socioeconomic
Speaker 4: status and easy access for the rich people who still
Speaker 4: kept getting abortions.
Speaker 2: What wait, did you read my script? Did I share it?
Speaker 4: We're just in tune. What I'm saying is we're best
Speaker 4: friends to remind people I'm their best friend when they
Speaker 4: don't know. It's not a tactic.
Speaker 2: That's the name of your podcast. Should be your best
Speaker 2: friend tells you bad things.
Speaker 4: I'm your best friend. Obviously that's the perfect title.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally, we're professional.
Speaker 3: I love.
Speaker 4: I have to say that every few hours, just to
Speaker 4: remind myself and others around me love.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of being a professional, Margaret's you know what
Speaker 3: time it is?
Speaker 2: Is it time to tell you about how great it
Speaker 2: is to eat potatoes and other healthy food direct from
Speaker 2: gardens instead of and how everyone should grow their own food,
Speaker 2: and how this podcast is sponsored by the concept of
Speaker 2: self reliance and inter reliance among healthy communities and no
Speaker 2: other sponsors at all, except for a few that might
Speaker 2: slip in after I stopped talking. Yes, here's some ads
Speaker 2: and we're back. I hope you enjoyed those ads. I
Speaker 2: hope all of them were for really positive things, and
Speaker 2: none of them were for bad things, which is definitely
Speaker 2: the way that advertising works.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, if they're not, it's Robert Evans's fault.
Speaker 2: I can say that, Yes, that's true.
Speaker 3: Everything is Robert. Anything you don't like is Robert's fault.
Speaker 3: That's how I live my life.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 2: Robert is in charge of making all the decisions about
Speaker 2: advertising for the network, and if you have problems with it,
Speaker 2: you should hit him up on Twitter.
Speaker 4: Director of Tweets, and your emails to him please thank
Speaker 4: you very much, him, not me, thank you.
Speaker 2: All right. So it's hard to keep stats on illegal shit.
Speaker 2: For some weird reason, people don't like necessarily always telling
Speaker 2: the government when they do illegal shit. But one nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty five study estimated that anywhere between two hundred thousand
Speaker 2: and a one million two hundred thousand abortions were happening
Speaker 2: every year in the United States in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 2: Around nineteen seventy, which is still three years before Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 2: the claimed number is more like one to two million,
Speaker 2: But who knows abortions are happening. Rich women get the
Speaker 2: hookup from their private doctors, or they fly to the UK,
Speaker 2: where abortion law is generally more lenient and for less
Speaker 2: privileged folks, it's a lot less rosy. The underground abortion
Speaker 2: scene was like a mixed match of like sketchy grifters
Speaker 2: and then well meaning and competent doctors, but you didn't
Speaker 2: necessarily have a way to determine which one you're going
Speaker 2: to get. And almost all of them are men, and
Speaker 2: a lot of them are also connected to organized crime,
Speaker 2: including some of the good ones. I think some of
Speaker 2: the good ones were just like outright criminals attached to
Speaker 2: organized crime.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was really interesting to see that layer, as
Speaker 4: when you start like finding out these backgrounds, you're like, wow, wow, okay, okay,
Speaker 4: mafia Okay, Yeah, they're going to come up a couple
Speaker 4: of times in this story, woo intrigue.
Speaker 2: Although not as much as they could because some of
Speaker 2: the people involved in this are all still alive, right,
Speaker 2: and so I'm not trying to make conjectures about certain things.
Speaker 4: Let's not endanger anybody today.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, okay. So, as an interesting note, Chicago actually
Speaker 2: had one of the only women doctors that I found
Speaker 2: when I was looking at women abortionists pre chain. I'm
Speaker 2: sure there were more, but doctor Josephine Gabler performed more
Speaker 2: than eighteen thousand abortions throughout the nineteen thirties, and her
Speaker 2: patients were referred to her from almost two hundred different
Speaker 2: medical facilities, and basically she would pay a kickback to
Speaker 2: all the medical facilities that would send her patients. They
Speaker 2: would get a quarter of the abortion fee because everything
Speaker 2: is sketchy in crime Land. But she was also a
Speaker 2: I believe, a safe and competent abortionist. And then in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty she sold her practice to her receptionist, Adam Martin,
Speaker 2: and she takes over the practice, but she actually hires
Speaker 2: outside practitioners to perform the actual abortions because she's a receptionist,
Speaker 2: not a surgeon or whatever. But in the nineteen forties
Speaker 2: and fifties, abortion law started being enforced more strenuously. It
Speaker 2: was always illegal, but it was like kind of a
Speaker 2: lot of times in a lot of places. I was like, well,
Speaker 2: if you don't kill anyone, we aren't necessarily going to
Speaker 2: do anything. But then in nineteen forties, nineteen fifties, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: right when this receptionist takes over, abortion law gets enforced
Speaker 2: more strenuously, which of course shudders the safest abortion clinics
Speaker 2: in the country and does nothing to stop women from
Speaker 2: meeting abortions. So Heather Booth is compiling all the names
Speaker 2: of the reasonable providers that she can run across, basically
Speaker 2: keeping track of who could be trusted to be safe,
Speaker 2: both like kind of legally safe, like I mean not
Speaker 2: it's illegal, but you know, to be careful, also to
Speaker 2: be medically safe, and also to be sexually safe, because
Speaker 2: there was a whole problem with abortion providers creeping on
Speaker 2: the patients in their care, which obviously legalization didn't stop.
Speaker 2: But you know, that's why, even when things are legal,
Speaker 2: we still need people to advocate for us. And so
Speaker 2: more and more people start coming to her for referrals,
Speaker 2: but she starts getting busier. In nineteen sixty seven, she
Speaker 2: marries Paul Booth, who's an activist she met at a
Speaker 2: sit in demonstration against the draft in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: Because again, everything's intersectional, he went on to help found
Speaker 2: Students for Democratic Society. By nineteen sixty nine, they had
Speaker 2: two kids, and she had a job, and she was
Speaker 2: in grad school and she couldn't handle running like underground
Speaker 2: crime ring all by herself, so she called up a
Speaker 2: bunch of other activists women and got them in on
Speaker 2: her underground crime ring. And that's how Jane started. And
Speaker 2: Jane wasn't called Jane. It was the not quite as
Speaker 2: bad as a Soviet name, but it was the Abortion
Speaker 2: Counciling Service of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union a little
Speaker 2: bit shorter, yeah, And they were like, you know, just
Speaker 2: let's just call it. They mostly called it the Service
Speaker 2: within their own ranks, apparently, but they picked Jane to
Speaker 2: be like kind of like the every woman name, right,
Speaker 2: like you know, we're all Jane or whatever, like Jane Doe.
Speaker 2: And history remembers that it's the Jain Collective, which is
Speaker 2: a better name than the Abortion Council the Service of
Speaker 2: the Chicago Women's Liberation Union.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's a cooler name. It definitely like rings like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is a good mystery novel.
Speaker 2: Let's go oh good point yeah, no, totally yeah. And
Speaker 2: then they get like the sense of intrigue in your life.
Speaker 2: And if you're going to go do a crime, right,
Speaker 2: you should get some intrigue in your life out of
Speaker 2: it. It shouldn't be like the cold like Bureau of Crime
Speaker 2: where you like go in and they're like, please fill
Speaker 2: out a form for the crime you would like to commit,
Speaker 2: and you're like, uh huh. They're like, we need it
Speaker 2: in triplicate. No, it should be fucking like exciting the collective.
Speaker 4: I mean, come on, as the Jaine Collective, so obviously
Speaker 4: they're badass espionage parts to this somehow, in like secret
Speaker 4: coded languages and all that kind of stuff. Come on,
Speaker 4: you gotta be good.
Speaker 2: I can't wait till we can talk about more of
Speaker 2: the underground parts of the history. But I am not wishing.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't wish them all along happy lives. Okay, So
Speaker 2: they spend months planning out the whole thing before they launch.
Speaker 2: They're trying to be really careful with their crime ring
Speaker 2: they and also it's not just because it's crime. They
Speaker 2: actually they're doing this because they care, right, And so
Speaker 2: they're like, all right, what are we going to do
Speaker 2: if one of our patients has a medical emergency? What
Speaker 2: are we going to do if someone dies? What are
Speaker 2: we going to do if one of us is arrested?
Speaker 2: What are we going to do if one of our
Speaker 2: doctors is arrested? They like mapped all this out for months.
Speaker 2: They mapped it all very carefully. And then they opened
Speaker 2: and they decided to keep minimal records and have different
Speaker 2: volunteers handle patient contact and doctor contact because again crime.
Speaker 2: And they also got an answering machine, which is like
Speaker 2: a weird it's only notable to me because it's like
Speaker 2: a nice visual detail because I think at the time
Speaker 2: it's like a huge reel to reel machine. And then
Speaker 2: and then they put up ads in all the student
Speaker 2: and underground newspapers in Chicago and they say pregnant don't
Speaker 2: want to be called Jane.
Speaker 4: It's so snazzy. I like it, I know, I know,
Speaker 4: like it was a whole system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like they're trying to if you do
Speaker 4: know during war times, I guess they were doing the
Speaker 4: messages telegrams and trying to decode things. It was this level.
Speaker 4: It is phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we will hopefully never need it again. But
Speaker 2: it's an interesting anecdote about history.
Speaker 4: Don't make me cry, come on, Okay.
Speaker 2: So when they first started, they worked with a bunch
Speaker 2: of different abortionists, and slowly they started using one guy
Speaker 2: more and more, and some accounts call him Nick, and
Speaker 2: some accounts call him Mike, and all of the accounts
Speaker 2: put his name in like quotes, as gonna say, they
Speaker 2: put in air quotes. But that's what I'm doing, is
Speaker 2: the air quotes. You also see it because Nick Mike
Speaker 2: is a crime guy, Like that's his thing, through and through.
Speaker 2: Like one account just refers to him as like a
Speaker 2: con man over and over again. But it's a very
Speaker 2: positive account about like their con man, right. And some
Speaker 2: accounts say he was a mafia abortionist, and some accounts
Speaker 2: say he was independent and on the run from both
Speaker 2: cops and the mafia. I straight up don't not to
Speaker 2: believe if you've heard one way or the other, I'd
Speaker 2: be curious.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I did hear a link to the mafia
Speaker 4: at one point in time. But again, like that's kind
Speaker 4: of like, this doesn't make me make it more intriguing
Speaker 4: that this is what's happened, or doesn't make it more sinister.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, what's going to make it both more intriguing
Speaker 2: and sinister is that at least one account wants you
Speaker 2: to know that Nick Mike is the sexiest man alive.
Speaker 4: Oh wait, wait, I missed that. As much research as
Speaker 4: I've done and trying to get this stuff that I
Speaker 4: did not see so now like, well, I gotta have
Speaker 4: a picture, come on, But I guess we don't have
Speaker 4: a picture Margaret photo.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think there's pictures of quote Nick Mike.
Speaker 4: We don't actually have an identity for him. He wasn't around,
Speaker 4: but they want to know that he is a babe.
Speaker 4: Like I need to know who said this, So the
Speaker 4: Jane Collective or something.
Speaker 2: It was one of the Jaine collective. I can't remember
Speaker 2: off the top of my head. It wasn't Jody, because
Speaker 2: it was someone who would go and meet with him,
Speaker 2: and it's in one of her accounts. It's from an interview.
Speaker 2: I think it's in the There's a zine that came
Speaker 2: out in like two thousand and three or four called
Speaker 2: Jane and that has a lot of the interviews and shit,
Speaker 2: and that was where I pulled the Sexiest Man Alive
Speaker 2: part from and that that stays in my memory.
Speaker 4: You know, that is amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always looking for the subtext, you know, and
Speaker 2: like like who's who's fucking who?
Speaker 4: And like and this has become a DRW Like not
Speaker 4: only has it become like an espionage things, it's kind
Speaker 4: of becoming a soap opera or something along those lines
Speaker 4: for someone to have to put that narrative in like
Speaker 4: he's one of the sexiest men. I'm like, how sexy.
Speaker 4: I have a feeling because it was the sexies seventies.
Speaker 4: He had a mustache, I know he did. He had
Speaker 4: to have the mustache, right, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably in long hair, you know, like but not
Speaker 2: like full hippie long hair, just like kind of a yeah.
Speaker 2: I was describing this to one of my friends and
Speaker 2: they were like, oh, he probably had like a leather
Speaker 2: jacket and said, chow a lot, you know, And I'm
Speaker 2: not convinced by the chow part.
Speaker 4: I'm not convinced. I think my friend had been watching
Speaker 4: a lot of is Eddie Izzard. That's amazing And that
Speaker 4: turned out to be I really wish. I don't want
Speaker 4: any like real because I don't want to focus on
Speaker 4: him because he and himself was whatever. But the fact
Speaker 4: that this was like a narrative around him is phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And when they would go meet him, at
Speaker 2: least for a while, I don't know if he stayed
Speaker 2: this way all the time. He would only meet one
Speaker 2: Jane at a time because theoretically he wanted to avoid
Speaker 2: conspiracy charges, and if you have three or more people
Speaker 2: talking about a crime, then he can get conspiracy charges.
Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to say that this is the
Speaker 2: way you successfully avoid conspiracy charges is you never let
Speaker 2: more than one other person in the room at the
Speaker 2: same time. But theoretically that was what his whole thing was.
Speaker 2: And so they liked their new con man, and they
Speaker 2: started working more or less exclusively with him, and they would,
Speaker 2: I guess, pick him up the airport driving motel and
Speaker 2: they would bring him work. He wanted slightly less pay
Speaker 2: than most of the other abortionists, but he was still
Speaker 2: wasn't cheap, and he was in it for the money.
Speaker 2: Most abortions at the time rant six hundred dollars to
Speaker 2: a thought thousand dollars, which is four to seven thousand
Speaker 2: dollars into twenty twenty two. Jane was able to offer
Speaker 2: them for five hundred at the start, which is and
Speaker 2: then after about five or six full price abortions, Nick
Speaker 2: Mike would do a couple for cheaper, and one of
Speaker 2: the founders, Jody Howard, was Mike.
Speaker 3: Nick Mike is still such a funny thing to me,
Speaker 3: and that the only thing we know about them is
Speaker 3: that they were hot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, that's all you need to know. Come on,
Speaker 4: ye Mike, Nick Mike. It's so funny. I want that
Speaker 4: to be his first and middle name. Totally name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah he was. He never actually lied about anything.
Speaker 2: He just his name was Nick. Last name Mike and
Speaker 2: the first names.
Speaker 4: Please. Okay, the whole around this one mysterious man anyway,
Speaker 4: going on?
Speaker 2: Okay, So, so one of the founders, Jody Howard, was
Speaker 2: particularly close with Nick Mike. And there's some kind of
Speaker 2: like subtext in what I read, But again, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure to make assumptions because people might still be alive.
Speaker 2: But Jody decided, and this actually makes a lot of sense, right,
Speaker 2: She was like, there needs to be a woman in
Speaker 2: the room as you're performing these abortions, and so she
Speaker 2: started insisting, and then started insisting that he apprenticed her.
Speaker 2: And Jody Howard's own entry into the movement was kind
Speaker 2: of interesting. She had had two kids in lymphatic cancer
Speaker 2: and she was pregnant for a third time, and she
Speaker 2: knew that childbirth would as likely as not kill her,
Speaker 2: and doctor still wouldn't let her get an abortion. Theoretically,
Speaker 2: the law at the time was if childbirth would kill,
Speaker 2: you can get an abortion. So the only way she
Speaker 2: felt like she could take matters into her own hands
Speaker 2: about this is she basically like, give me an abortion
Speaker 2: or I'll kill myself, and they were like, okay, you
Speaker 2: can have an abortion now, and which is just a
Speaker 2: like how cruel is a law that the only way
Speaker 2: that you can control your own body is by like
Speaker 2: threatening to end your own life. So she became an
Speaker 2: abortion access crusader, imagine that. And she figured out, she
Speaker 2: was the first one to figure out, apparently kind of quickly,
Speaker 2: that handsome man crime doc Nick Mike wasn't a doctor.
Speaker 2: He had a lot of things going for him, but
Speaker 2: a medical license was not one of the things he
Speaker 2: had going for him.
Speaker 4: And she knew that.
Speaker 3: So once again, only thing that's actually accurate about Nick
Speaker 3: Mike is hot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exact possibly that was one Yama it is it is,
Speaker 4: it is now in stone he'll love that.
Speaker 2: Well, if one person thinks you're sexy, you're sexy, you know, Okay.
Speaker 4: Oh god, anyway, keep going, all right, So she decides
Speaker 4: not to tell anyone at first because she's like, everyone's
Speaker 4: going to freak the fuck out.
Speaker 2: And she's like, also, like, but if he can learn it,
Speaker 2: and he's not a doctor, so can I. I'm not
Speaker 2: a doctor, And so he made him teach her. And
Speaker 2: at first Nick Mike is working out of motels, but
Speaker 2: then one day an angry husband comes and like is
Speaker 2: banging on the motel room door, and they realized they
Speaker 2: had to step up their security. So in order to
Speaker 2: make it all more mystery novel crime novel, they start
Speaker 2: renting apartments all over the city and they need to
Speaker 2: at any given time. First, they have the front where
Speaker 2: all the patients come for counseling and consultation. It's where
Speaker 2: it's also where they show up on the day of
Speaker 2: the abortion, and they're encouraged to bring loved ones for support.
Speaker 2: And of course most people who get abortions already have children,
Speaker 2: and so they provided childcare at the front as well.
Speaker 2: And working at the front was therefore this like really
Speaker 2: demanding job. You were a counselor, you were a babysitter,
Speaker 2: and you were also like an entertainer. You were passing
Speaker 2: out like snacks and tea and soda and shit like
Speaker 2: anxious boyfriends and probably girlfriends and siblings and all that shit,
Speaker 2: you know. And then you had the place that was
Speaker 2: the front, nay of the place. It's still better than
Speaker 2: the Soviet names. Actually there's also kind of sound like anyway,
Speaker 2: whatever it.
Speaker 4: Looks sounds very coded and wonderfully espionage.
Speaker 2: E Yeah, totally. And so the place is the apartment
Speaker 2: where the abortion is actually performed on a bed with
Speaker 2: like plastic and cloth sheets down. And they worked hard
Speaker 2: to make the whole experiences like on medical as possible.
Speaker 2: They work to be relaxing and inviting and communicy with
Speaker 2: people about what's going on. Some of the reports I
Speaker 2: was reading and say, this doesn't always work. Sometimes they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm your new best friend, you know, and
Speaker 2: they're like trying to be really nice. And then and
Speaker 2: sometimes they're like, no, this is the worst day in
Speaker 2: my life. Let's get this fucking over with me, you know.
Speaker 2: And other times they were like, you know, friendly and stuff.
Speaker 2: Then there are the drivers who took people from one
Speaker 2: place to the other. They or rather they took people
Speaker 2: from the front to the place and from the place
Speaker 2: to the front. And these were in somewhat short supply,
Speaker 2: apparently because most of the Janes were students at the
Speaker 2: University of Chicago, and a lot of them come from
Speaker 2: New York City where people just didn't have driver's licenses,
Speaker 2: so the few drivers with driver's licenses were basically it's
Speaker 2: like all of the jobs that any of the Janes
Speaker 2: were doing were incredibly important, not just the abortionists, you know.
Speaker 2: And they performed over eleven thousand abortions and like a
Speaker 2: barely three year span, it was like nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 2: to nineteen seventy three. A later obsistrician looking at their
Speaker 2: record suggested it was as safe as any above ground
Speaker 2: legal clinic. They never had a patient die, at least
Speaker 2: not one that they performed an abortion on. They did
Speaker 2: have one time where a woman came in in bad shape.
Speaker 2: She tried and failed to enter pregnancy on her own
Speaker 2: a few different ways because making things illegals really fucked up, right,
Speaker 2: and she had a really severe infection. Jane determined it
Speaker 2: wasn't safe to operate on her, and so they insisted
Speaker 2: she'd go to the hospital, and she didn't. She went
Speaker 2: home instead. And I kind of assume, I mean, I
Speaker 2: feel like we've all been there or we've been like
Speaker 2: someone's like you really didn't see a doctor, and you're like, doctor,
Speaker 2: well look like a millionaire.
Speaker 4: You know right, I mean, And also again the stigma
Speaker 4: and the judgments and if she was trying, if this
Speaker 4: person was trying to do a self abortion, that in
Speaker 4: itself tells you how a dire of a situation they
Speaker 4: felt they were in and felt like they had to
Speaker 4: do something whatever they could, and it killed them, which
Speaker 4: is what that situation leads to. When you really feel
Speaker 4: whatever circumstance, whether it's trying to not be disapproved by
Speaker 4: the parents or the family, or or society or whatever,
Speaker 4: having this level of being alone and trying to do
Speaker 4: whatever you can no matter the cost, and then not
Speaker 4: realizing there is another option until it's too late. That's
Speaker 4: that whole level in itself that just breaks your heart
Speaker 4: in this whole situation. But I love the setup about
Speaker 4: the front and the place as you were talking about,
Speaker 4: because as I was reading about these things, the idea
Speaker 4: that going to a guidecologist going to get your yearly
Speaker 4: check up is frightening, going to a doctor in general
Speaker 4: is frightening as hell to me. It's probably one of
Speaker 4: those anxiety moments of like, oh my God, why do
Speaker 4: I have to be here? And to know that you're
Speaker 4: going to do something that seems that you've been told
Speaker 4: is wrong a B. So you have all of this
Speaker 4: guilt on top of that. Whatever it may be, whatever
Speaker 4: the situation is, and we don't know the outlying situation,
Speaker 4: whether it is you did have consensual sex and you
Speaker 4: didn't have protection, or because you didn't understand the way
Speaker 4: anatomy works, didn't have full understanding what was happening with you.
Speaker 4: We already know like there's sexual trauma within even normal
Speaker 4: situations that could be sexual trauma. And when I say normal,
Speaker 4: I mean consensual situations or what was consensual? Uh, like
Speaker 4: having understanding? Would these jays coming in and be like,
Speaker 4: let me counsel you and let's have a deep conversation,
Speaker 4: but also we're going to set this whole place up
Speaker 4: like a home so that you feel comfortable and like
Speaker 4: not instead of being a sterile, scary back hall like
Speaker 4: what people would search for at that point in time
Speaker 4: trying to get those illegal abortions, really feeling like these
Speaker 4: are professionals, Like that's wow, Like that's above and beyond.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that and thinking about like I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: not in anywhere the same level of scale of what
Speaker 2: some other people had to deal with. I remember the
Speaker 2: first time, just so now that listeners know way too
Speaker 2: much about my sexual history and health. I went to
Speaker 2: go at SCI screening the first time after I came
Speaker 2: out as trends and was like willing to you know,
Speaker 2: put down my actual gender on forms and things like that.
Speaker 2: And I went to go get ice screening and like
Speaker 2: you know, and was in this stupid room with a
Speaker 2: stupid health practitioner who touched me in appropriately and like
Speaker 2: came on to me while you know, touching my genitals
Speaker 2: and like holy yeah, and I'm like and then and
Speaker 2: then I it took me a long ass time before
Speaker 2: I went and got STI screened again. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: not proud of that, and I'm sorry everyone, you know,
Speaker 2: but like but it's like and just thinking about what
Speaker 2: it must be like, yeah, like you're talking about being
Speaker 2: in this situation where you're like, fuck it, I'm giving
Speaker 2: myself an abortion, you know. So I'm like really not
Speaker 2: trying to shame this person who like chose not to
Speaker 2: go to the hospital until it's too late.
Speaker 4: You know, this is a bad first and foremost, I'm
Speaker 4: so sorry that you went through that. That is bullshit
Speaker 4: on every level and it was wrong and that person
Speaker 4: should be arrested and they are assholes first and foremost. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I've had enough of my day with just people being
Speaker 4: bad people and what happened to you, Oh my god,
Speaker 4: I'm speechless in that. I hate that. Now I'm beginning
Speaker 4: to know you that whatever anyone would ever have to
Speaker 4: go through anything like that to a person that they
Speaker 4: should be able to trust. Professionals are someone that we
Speaker 4: should be able to trust. And you were kind of
Speaker 4: talking about that with the Jane's being like ugh, Heather
Speaker 4: being like, you know what, I think there needs to
Speaker 4: be a woman present so you can watch and make
Speaker 4: sure they don't feel traumatized that in itself. Oh god,
Speaker 4: I am so sorry and that should not have happened
Speaker 4: to you and that was wrong in every fucking level.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Yeah, it's funny to like, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 2: I've like barely told people this and now I've told
Speaker 2: however many people of this, but like I don't have
Speaker 2: any I don't feel any like guilt or shame around it.
Speaker 2: I'm just angry, you know, and like right, and I'm
Speaker 2: angry that, like you know, I was like so excited
Speaker 2: like it to whatever if I talk about this too much,
Speaker 2: I'll start crying. But like, I was so excited that
Speaker 2: I could like fill out the form and actually write
Speaker 2: down that I'm like trans woman and shit like that,
Speaker 2: and it's like, oh, I'm gonna have gender firming care.
Speaker 2: I've never had gender firming care. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: actually be seen as a woman sucks. Sucks.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's definitely just a whole different level of like,
Speaker 4: there's moments that you should be celebrating to be free.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I'm free here, I am I get
Speaker 4: to be here and be who I am, and then
Speaker 4: have this dick coming through and just ruining that moment
Speaker 4: and then honestly portraying their betraying their professionalism, betraying their profession,
Speaker 4: and showing off as like oh yeah you are evil
Speaker 4: in general and therefore you should they should not be
Speaker 4: a part of this profession. I yeah, whatever, whatnot. But
Speaker 4: on top of that, yeah, that you had the audacity
Speaker 4: to take someone's hope, yeah and safety, and I hate that.
Speaker 4: I am so sorry. And again yeah, and I love
Speaker 4: yeah you being angry. Yeah you're better than I because
Speaker 4: I think I would like rage everywhere. But you, now,
Speaker 4: that's a whole different conversation with me.
Speaker 2: Now I am I am totally fine with rage and
Speaker 2: anger as a way of dealing with certain issues in
Speaker 2: society and in my personal life when when people are
Speaker 2: doing things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then yeah, coming back to I love that
Speaker 4: the Jaine collective really kind of understood that level. And yeah,
Speaker 4: I hate that that someone died and that's not someone
Speaker 4: that they I know, like they were traumatized them, which
Speaker 4: is why we've got Their whole attitude was like we
Speaker 4: got to do better. That's why we as women. Even
Speaker 4: though they were not doctors and medical professionals, it is concerning.
Speaker 4: I will say when I first read that, I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: it was a good idea, but understanding that they really
Speaker 4: cared about these people that were coming in and was
Speaker 4: all about giving them safety and understanding what they had
Speaker 4: to do is what they had to do because the
Speaker 4: doctors were no longer coming through because they were getting
Speaker 4: like the row versus way was really coming through about
Speaker 4: who was getting penalized and who was really being targeted,
Speaker 4: and so they had less and less options and why
Speaker 4: not if they can truly do a good job. And
Speaker 4: and big thing was getting the right equipment and getting
Speaker 4: sterilized equipment. I know that was a big factor in
Speaker 4: it as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know who will sell you sterile medical
Speaker 2: equipment that you can use? Tell me the products? Can
Speaker 2: we get can we get a can we get sponsored
Speaker 2: by by at home abortion Care?
Speaker 4: You know one of our sponsors was playing b.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah fuck yeah.
Speaker 4: So there you go.
Speaker 2: Okay, well and then we're sponsored by that and whatever.
Speaker 2: This other stuff is.
Speaker 4: Back from the break. That was a long one. Let's go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know who else kept going was was
Speaker 2: the Jain Collective because as as you were pointing out
Speaker 2: like this brush with death like shook them up because
Speaker 2: they I mean, it wasn't their fault, right, they didn't
Speaker 2: do anything wrong, but they care. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was the whole point of them starting is
Speaker 4: because they wanted to prevent people from dying from this
Speaker 4: type of process and this type of access. And so
Speaker 4: even though it had nothing to do with them, it
Speaker 4: was still a death because of something so preventable.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I was trying to make a joke about
Speaker 2: how they are actually just in it to make a
Speaker 2: quick buck, but it wouldn't even work because it's so
Speaker 2: obviously untrue. And so they keep going over one hundred
Speaker 2: women work as Jane. So the course of the project, though,
Speaker 2: generally is like twenty to thirty at any given time,
Speaker 2: which is kind of interesting to have this high turnover rate, Like, oh,
Speaker 2: like it's this casual thing. You go join this like
Speaker 2: very above ground, underground organization that's like committing felonies, which
Speaker 2: is fucking cool. One Jane named Jeanie Gallaser Levey, and
Speaker 2: she'll come up more later. She described her first meeting
Speaker 2: that she showed up to for orientation. There were like
Speaker 2: thirty women crammed into the tiny room. Each new volunteer
Speaker 2: was paired with a big sister who would get them
Speaker 2: onboarded like a mentor. And at each meeting, they would
Speaker 2: pass around index cards with all of the cases that
Speaker 2: needed to be handled, and everyone would take the cards
Speaker 2: of the cases that they wanted to handle, And of
Speaker 2: course that meant they like everyone took the easy cards first,
Speaker 2: you know, and then like the big complicated ones. Everyone's like,
Speaker 2: but you know, we've all been there. And so in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, Jody Howard finally tells the rest of
Speaker 2: the group that Sexy nick Man was not a quote
Speaker 2: unquote real doctor, and.
Speaker 4: Did we change did we change his name to Nick Man?
Speaker 2: No, Nick Mike. Sorry, I yeah, no, Nick Man, sexy man,
Speaker 2: Nick Mike.
Speaker 4: I like that better. I've mistarted. I'm mistarted, but I'm like, if.
Speaker 2: We no, no, I don't know. I probably said it wrong.
Speaker 2: Everyone who's listening knows the right answer, but we don't.
Speaker 3: If we did, that's even better, amazing, amazing.
Speaker 4: By the sexy Nick Many, sexy, sexy, sexy guy.
Speaker 2: Uh, it's okay. So people take the news really hard, right,
Speaker 2: and the reactions fall into two camps, and half of
Speaker 2: them were like, we're no better than the back alley providers,
Speaker 2: and the other half were like, well, if crime guy
Speaker 2: can do it, so can we. And in general, the
Speaker 2: former camp left and the latter camp stayed, and many
Speaker 2: of the people who stayed. You know, I've read some
Speaker 2: said that half of the Jains left, and I've read
Speaker 2: other things that said that's an exaggeration. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but a lot of the ones who stayed learned how
Speaker 2: to provide abortions, and abortion was kind of having a
Speaker 2: bit of a renaissance around this time, in the late
Speaker 2: sixties and early seventies in terms of how it was done.
Speaker 2: A lot of the abortionists. Yeah, we're sketchy back alley providers,
Speaker 2: but the Jain Collective wasn't the only ones who are
Speaker 2: taking it seriously and caring. Other people were working their
Speaker 2: asses off to help people get abortions safely and effectively
Speaker 2: despite state repression. And we're going to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit later, I think in part two about some of
Speaker 2: the things that the methods that people pioneered and which
Speaker 2: ones are still applicable to name which ones are not.
Speaker 2: So Nick Mike, he makes himself obsolete. He was a
Speaker 2: crime guy at the end of the day, and he's
Speaker 2: in it for the money, but he's willing to make
Speaker 2: himself obsolete. So he teaches a lot of Jane's how
Speaker 2: to do this because and they're like, well, we want
Speaker 2: to charge on a hundred bucks and he's like, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: not going to happen. So he teaches them how to
Speaker 2: do it, and then he fucks off and he's just
Speaker 2: like gone. His trail goes cold. Did you ever have
Speaker 2: you ever heard anything else there is this?
Speaker 4: So like one of the things I read was that
Speaker 4: that the mafia was after him and that's why he
Speaker 4: just disappeared, But that could have been just someone trying
Speaker 4: to make it a bigger story, and that's why we
Speaker 4: don't have nothing of them. But it could be as
Speaker 4: simple as he didn't want any part of it. They
Speaker 4: it got a little hot. A lot of people were
Speaker 4: investigating different types of organizations, and because the doctors had
Speaker 4: pulled out, he pulled out too. And also he didn't
Speaker 4: get enough money since they were trying to downgrade the cost.
Speaker 4: So he was like, fine, never see you again. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I did hear that the mafia might have come after him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like to think that he rode away into
Speaker 2: the sunset on a motorcycle while smoking and then lived
Speaker 2: to one hundred and seven. That's that's the version of him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sexy Nick Mike has got he's got it to
Speaker 4: be in the sunset somewhere. Yeah, for some reason, he
Speaker 4: is Mike Nick for me.
Speaker 3: But I hear him saying Nick Mike, but he is
Speaker 3: Mike Nick for me, And you know what, that's just
Speaker 3: a personal preference.
Speaker 4: I guess Mike Mike Nick can be whoever you need
Speaker 4: him to be, because he's just the sexy man that
Speaker 4: rode away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really is. Apparently shows up and teaches you
Speaker 2: how to provide abortions and then rides off at the sunset.
Speaker 4: Apparently there you go, who knew this is what we
Speaker 4: needed in our lives?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the greatest part is they only needed him
Speaker 2: for a little.
Speaker 4: While, just a little while about right.
Speaker 2: Because he made himself obsolete. And then at that point
Speaker 2: all of the work was being done entirely by women.
Speaker 2: And they also it wasn't just enough that they like
Speaker 2: did it in the cold medical way. They also still
Speaker 2: wanted to again sort of de medicalize it, and they
Speaker 2: wanted to teach clients what was happening and give them agency.
Speaker 2: One of the Janes Ruth Circle, in an interview said quote,
Speaker 2: it was one of the things we talked about a lot.
Speaker 2: We were not doing something to this woman. We were
Speaker 2: doing something with this woman, and she was as much
Speaker 2: a part of it and part of the process as
Speaker 2: we were. So that we would talk about how we
Speaker 2: relied on them. If we got busted, you know, we
Speaker 2: would explain that they were not doing something illegal. We
Speaker 2: were doing something illegal, but we need their help, and
Speaker 2: you know, you don't talk about it and we have
Speaker 2: to keep quiet. So I like that. They like basically
Speaker 2: they are like, look, because it wasn't illegal to get
Speaker 2: an abortion, was illegal to give an abortion, so the
Speaker 2: Janes were taking all of the legal risk. But they
Speaker 2: basically brought everyone in and were like, look like you
Speaker 2: rely on us, we need to rely on you, And
Speaker 2: I think that's cool, right, Yeah, And not all of
Speaker 2: them performed abortion, some of them. Everyone took tasks that
Speaker 2: suited them best. They were callback Jane's who talked to
Speaker 2: the patients, and big Janes, who would handle the coordination.
Speaker 2: At least one Jane later pointed out that decision making
Speaker 2: was kind of fraught within the collective. They tended to
Speaker 2: suppress internal conflict and so everyone will like stay focused
Speaker 2: on the task and we don't have time to address
Speaker 2: the you know, power dynamics and the other issues happening.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna try to like single them out for this.
Speaker 2: Every activist organization I've ever heard of does this, right,
Speaker 2: It's like something that we just need to be aware of.
Speaker 2: And I don't know whether this happens particularly in direct
Speaker 2: action groups or if I think that because most of
Speaker 2: the organizations I've been involved with rem or direct action groups.
Speaker 2: But it's just a thing that happens where like people
Speaker 2: are like, you know, like tree sitters are like, oh,
Speaker 2: we can't talk about patriarchy within the movement. They're cutting
Speaker 2: the trees down right now, you know, right, And so
Speaker 2: I think they had some of that going on, at
Speaker 2: least according to to least one of them.
Speaker 4: Later, it wouldn't be surprising. And I go, of course,
Speaker 4: we don't know all of the jenes that came through,
Speaker 4: but it was pretty much ran by white women. And
Speaker 4: when we know what happens when it comes to feminism
Speaker 4: and white women and where that can lead and who
Speaker 4: actually gate keys what, there's always going to be situations
Speaker 4: with that. And then when you have something that is
Speaker 4: so as you said, fraud but like uncertain anything illegal
Speaker 4: we know is going to be uncertain, is going to
Speaker 4: have a lot of stress. And I can't imagine what
Speaker 4: that looks like within a group, especially when we're also
Speaker 4: handling medical procedures on your own as well. So I like,
Speaker 4: there's so many things to that. And again, like talking
Speaker 4: about who was getting access, a lot of people were
Speaker 4: getting access, but it seeming like it was a lot
Speaker 4: of like college students at this point in time. We
Speaker 4: know that for young women to be in college, they
Speaker 4: probably had some money. And even though they might not
Speaker 4: have as much money as others in society, they still
Speaker 4: had a little bit of access and higher economic status
Speaker 4: than most. And again it says a lot too even
Speaker 4: though they were trying to be accessible, but the word
Speaker 4: of mouth went through who didn't go to typically middle
Speaker 4: class women so or middle class people at that point
Speaker 4: in time. So there's a lot to be said kind
Speaker 4: of the same way that if we wanted to go
Speaker 4: jump and I don't want to because I did this
Speaker 4: with Robert a long time ago about play in parenthood
Speaker 4: and the beginnings of that. So you know, we know
Speaker 4: that there is things that happen within movements and who
Speaker 4: was leading movements and what them could have been on
Speaker 4: the underbelly of it. Totally you know more than I do.
Speaker 2: But no, no, no, I don't. And like, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: funny because once again you're reading my script ahead of me,
Speaker 2: and I not in a bad way, no, I just
Speaker 2: I like that we're on the same page about this,
Speaker 2: because yeah, that's one of the most important things to
Speaker 2: understand with a lot of this is like it's mostly
Speaker 2: white women. It's almost exclusively white women doing this work.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy New York and a few other states, Hawaii, Alaska,
Speaker 2: and Washington legalized most abortion, and suddenly there weren't as
Speaker 2: many middle class patients from that point because people could
Speaker 2: just fly or train out to New York and have
Speaker 2: a legal abortion instead of going all the way to
Speaker 2: the UK. And so they started serving the black community
Speaker 2: of Chicago more and more, but it was still white
Speaker 2: women doing it. And yeah, when I first read like,
Speaker 2: oh they advertised in the student page, person, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's really cool that students have access to abortion, but
Speaker 2: that is not necessarily like the majority of the people
Speaker 2: in Chicago or whatever, you know, right, And I've only
Speaker 2: run across one black chain, a woman named Louise, who
Speaker 2: joined basically to be like, look, y'all are doing a
Speaker 2: good thing, but it's like still kind of fucking weird
Speaker 2: that you're all white. And then again and I read
Speaker 2: that basically her friends were like, what are you fucking doing?
Speaker 2: If these white women get caught, they'll get off, and
Speaker 2: if you get caught, you're fucked right, And I don't
Speaker 2: know that that ever had to be tested. I don't
Speaker 2: believe it was ever tested. Well, the fact that white
Speaker 2: women getting arrested ended up okay was tested, but I
Speaker 2: don't believe any I believe Louise was the only black
Speaker 2: Jain and it's certainly the only one I ran across.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and just the little research that I did,
Speaker 4: I didn't see her name pop up like or who
Speaker 4: she was. Also, Yeah, again, probably being identified is not
Speaker 4: a thing you want to be. Yeah, doing an underground
Speaker 4: the toe but yeah, absolutely that's dangerous on so many levels,
Speaker 4: and we understand that. And in Chicago in itself long
Speaker 4: ugly history of segregation and such.
Speaker 2: Yep. So now that Nick Mike is gone and they're
Speaker 2: providing the abortions themselves, though their prices are able to
Speaker 2: drop dramatically. Their abortions were nominally one hundred dollars, but
Speaker 2: realistically they took whatever the patient could offer. They averaged
Speaker 2: about fifty dollars. The drivers were the ones collecting the
Speaker 2: money and somewhere between the front and the place, but
Speaker 2: they didn't count the money. They just were handed money
Speaker 2: and took it. Sometimes they were handed jars of change,
Speaker 2: and when they could, twenty five dollars were taken out
Speaker 2: of every you know, and if those at least twenty
Speaker 2: five dollars, As far as I understand, twenty five dollars
Speaker 2: was taken out and put into a revolving loan fund
Speaker 2: where people could come and say, like I need a
Speaker 2: loan to get it, and they would have a no
Speaker 2: interest loan that kind of is a like, look, please
Speaker 2: pay it back, but we're not like sending anyone to
Speaker 2: your house if you don't pay it back, you know,
Speaker 2: of a like right, please pay it back, not a
Speaker 2: you must pay.
Speaker 4: It an honor system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And it's and it's kind of the thing
Speaker 2: where it's like not just non our system, but like
Speaker 2: I assume they weren't like, don't starve yourself to pay
Speaker 2: us back, right, you know. Yeah, And you know, they
Speaker 2: basically were just like, this is so that the next
Speaker 2: woman who needs an abortion can have one if you can,
Speaker 2: you know. And that's and that's where we're going to
Speaker 2: leave it today with Jane in their heyday. They're an
Speaker 2: all women collective providing safe for legal abortions and to
Speaker 2: the people of Chicago, which is it's pretty fucking cool. Yes,
Speaker 2: do you have any like final thoughts for today or
Speaker 2: do you want to know?
Speaker 4: I'm just so excited that we're talking more about this,
Speaker 4: like discovering all these things being on an intersectional feminist
Speaker 4: show and coming to like, yes, let's keep talking about it.
Speaker 4: This is amazing. I love it. But yeah, but being
Speaker 4: realistic about you know, it wasn't glamour and it wasn't
Speaker 4: as easy obviously as it should be. And this is
Speaker 4: the problem when we have limited access or no access,
Speaker 4: and then when we criminalizing people for trying to just live.
Speaker 4: Like that's just totally but I'm excited that we are
Speaker 4: talking about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I really want to, like, whenever possible,
Speaker 2: I really want to do like a warts and all
Speaker 2: version of the show, because like when you hold up
Speaker 2: people as heroes and they're like this person was perfect, right,
Speaker 2: and you're like, well, I'm not perfect. I can't be
Speaker 2: a hero, you know, and it's like no, like these
Speaker 2: people like got lots of things wrong and they just
Speaker 2: did amazing shit anyway, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and nobody's perfect besides dogs.
Speaker 4: Correct, besides dogs. And my dog's a dick, but I
Speaker 4: love her, but yeah, on top of the fact that
Speaker 4: I'm honest, We're honest about it, but she's also perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sure, So he gets angrier and angrier at the idea
Speaker 2: that the dog might not be perfect.
Speaker 4: I'm like dog perfect. I don't say it, but yeah,
Speaker 4: like I think in that's the thing is like, honestly,
Speaker 4: what comes down to what I love discovering And I
Speaker 4: know we're going to keep talking about it, but about
Speaker 4: these cool people is that it wasn't that they wanted
Speaker 4: to be a hero and that they didn't do anything
Speaker 4: wrong before or don't have ron perspectives or may have misspoke.
Speaker 4: It's just that they saw a need and they did
Speaker 4: something about it poorly. And that's what we get to
Speaker 4: celebrate totally.
Speaker 2: And you can celebrate more with us on the part
Speaker 2: two of this two part series on Wednesday, when we're
Speaker 2: going to talk in more detail about exactly what services
Speaker 2: they offered and how it all went down and some
Speaker 2: of the other people who've taken up the torch in
Speaker 2: the decades since them.
Speaker 3: Samantha, anything you want to plug before we head out?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah. So if this interest you and you like
Speaker 4: to learn more about women in history and the intersectionality
Speaker 4: of it all, you should come listen to Stuff Mom
Speaker 4: Never Told You, which you can also find on the
Speaker 4: iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can
Speaker 4: follow us Stuff mom never told you. On Twitter and
Speaker 4: on Instagram, you could also follow me McVeigh Sam I
Speaker 4: believe it is my Instagram and then Sam McVeigh on Twitter.
Speaker 4: I'm struggling. I'm not really active, but sometimes I exist.
Speaker 3: There's a very cute dog picture on your Instagram where
Speaker 3: you're wearing matching Halloween outfits.
Speaker 4: So that's that's what I would like.
Speaker 3: To plug at the end.
Speaker 4: Here is that photo your pumpkins? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Anyways, we'll see, we'll see, We'll see all Wednesday.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
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