Speaker 1: And right now people, I think especially need to learn
Speaker 1: this lesson that even when time seemed the most difficult,
Speaker 1: we can make progress if we organized, and if we organized,
Speaker 1: we can change the world. And we need to change
Speaker 1: the world. There are No Girls on the Internet. As
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss Creative, I'm
Speaker 1: Bridget Toad and this is there Are No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet. In the wake of the devastating Supreme Court
Speaker 1: decision over twnting Row versus Wade, the Supreme Court decision
Speaker 1: that legalized abortion in the United States, I've been thinking
Speaker 1: a lot about the Jain Collective and Heather Booths today.
Speaker 1: Heather Booth is seventy six years young, and when she
Speaker 1: was a young student in Chicago, she started the Jain Collective,
Speaker 1: an underground network that provided some eleven thousand abortions from
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy three, at a time
Speaker 1: when abortion was illegal and most of the United States.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Heather back in when I was the
Speaker 1: host of the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You, and
Speaker 1: we're listening to her story this week. I was reminded
Speaker 1: that when she was young, she was organizing to make
Speaker 1: changes that must have seemed super far fetched until they weren't.
Speaker 1: It's a story of hope and promise and I feel
Speaker 1: like we could all use a little of that right now.
Speaker 1: And just f y I I was a much greener
Speaker 1: interviewer and podcast host back in so you know, keep
Speaker 1: that in mind as you're listening. Hey, this is Bridget
Speaker 1: and you're listening to stuff mom ever told you. And
Speaker 1: today we're continuing our series all about abortion, brtting you
Speaker 1: stories about a portion that you might not know about.
Speaker 1: And today's story is the Jain Collective. Now I want
Speaker 1: you to imagine it's nineteen seventy you're pregnant and you
Speaker 1: need not to be but row of you Aide is
Speaker 1: a few years away. An abortion is still illegal now.
Speaker 1: Before this landmark nineteen seventy three Supreme Court decision, terminating
Speaker 1: a pregnancy meant taking a gamble on a back alley
Speaker 1: abortion provider. Maybe they'd be competent, maybe they wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: But when you're pregnant and desperate, you don't really have
Speaker 1: a lot of options. For women living in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies, this was a reality. And then on Chicago
Speaker 1: South Side, women began organizing an underground network to do
Speaker 1: something about it. In nineteen sixty five, Heather Booth was
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old college student at the University of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Her friend's sister was pregnant and needed an abortion. Now,
Speaker 1: Booth had been active in the civil rights movement and
Speaker 1: connected her friend's sister to a doctor willing to perform
Speaker 1: an a legal abortion. After that, she started getting more
Speaker 1: and more calls from women, housewives, students, and the siblings
Speaker 1: of police officers. That's when Booth knew she needed to
Speaker 1: start a network, known officially as the Abortion Counseling Service
Speaker 1: of Women's Liberation. Heather Booth started an underground network to
Speaker 1: connect women to abortions, using the code name Jane. As
Speaker 1: it was still a crime. I remember this ad that
Speaker 1: said pregnant need help, called Jane, So I called Jane.
Speaker 1: Jane ultimately served over ten thousand women before a Row
Speaker 1: of View Wade made abortion legal in nineteen In the beginning,
Speaker 1: the network connected pregnant women with doctors, but eventually they
Speaker 1: realized that many of the people providing abortions weren't doctors
Speaker 1: at all. That's when the women and Jane started performing
Speaker 1: abortions themselves. The women were not doctors, but according to
Speaker 1: the Chicago Tribune, their skills were attested to by a
Speaker 1: doctor who risked his license by doing post operative checkups
Speaker 1: on clients. At this point, the Jane Collective was providing
Speaker 1: abortions for as many as sixty women a week. Jane's
Speaker 1: facilities were rated by the police. During the raid, police
Speaker 1: asked all the women identified the doctor who was performing
Speaker 1: the abortions, obviously expecting to find a man, but there
Speaker 1: was no man. The group was arrested and the media
Speaker 1: called them the Jane Seven. After being indicted by a
Speaker 1: grand jury, their case was only dismissed thanks to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Courts legalization of abortion in nineteen After this quick break,
Speaker 1: we'll hear from Heather Booth about how Jane got started. Today.
Speaker 1: I am so so humbled and thrilled to be joined
Speaker 1: by the legendary Heather Booth. Heather, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being your dying well you are your your a legend. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad to be talking with the amazing bridget
Speaker 1: Todd and what a service you're doing for the public
Speaker 1: providing this information out about some of the stories that
Speaker 1: are not as well known exactly, that's really what we
Speaker 1: want to do with this series. Everybody feels like they
Speaker 1: know a lot about abortion and about you know, reproductive health,
Speaker 1: but there are so many stories about abortion in choice
Speaker 1: that people might not. Oh, you know, the Jane Network
Speaker 1: was such a critical thing for these women who were living,
Speaker 1: you know, while before Reviewade was enacted, and you know,
Speaker 1: people don't even really know about it. Glad to describe
Speaker 1: of how it came about and and Uh, I appreciate
Speaker 1: your spreading the word to let people know that if
Speaker 1: we organize, we can change the world. We have changed
Speaker 1: the world, and we need to change the world and
Speaker 1: the story of organizing the Jane Network is one important
Speaker 1: example of that. So let's talk about Jane. So when
Speaker 1: you started Jane, you were just a nineteen year old
Speaker 1: student at the University of Chicago. So what was your
Speaker 1: life like before you started Jane? Say a little bit
Speaker 1: about my life and also a little bit about what
Speaker 1: women's lives were like in general. H For me, I
Speaker 1: was brought up in a family UH that was very
Speaker 1: loving and believe that people should follow the Golden rule.
Speaker 1: We should treat each other as we wanted to be treated,
Speaker 1: and I carried that with me. I became active in
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement. In nineteen sixty four, I went
Speaker 1: to Mississippi with the Freedom Summer Project, and some of
Speaker 1: you may have heard about it, because that was the
Speaker 1: time when the civil rights movement was recruiting northern students
Speaker 1: to come down to Mississippi because in Mississippi, black lives
Speaker 1: did not matter in nineteen sixty four, and they thought
Speaker 1: that the attention of northern students might bring additional visibility
Speaker 1: and potential power to shine a spotlight on what was
Speaker 1: going on in Mississippi. And during that summer, the three
Speaker 1: young men, Andrew Goodman, James Cheney, and Michael Schwerner were
Speaker 1: killed at the hands of the clan. What people may
Speaker 1: not know is that while they were looking for the
Speaker 1: bodies of the three men, they found bodies of other
Speaker 1: black men whose hands have been bound or feet chopped off,
Speaker 1: and those murders weren't even investigated once the bodies were
Speaker 1: found until years later. But because people organized, there was
Speaker 1: a voting right back within a year, and Mississippi now
Speaker 1: is more African American elected officials than any other state
Speaker 1: in the country. And mentioned that because it was formative
Speaker 1: for some of the ideas that led to Jane, which
Speaker 1: is that you have to stand up to unjust authority.
Speaker 1: If you take action, you can make change, and that
Speaker 1: sometimes there even are risks, but together we can really
Speaker 1: build a better world. I returned back to my campus
Speaker 1: and a friend of mine had been raped at nice
Speaker 1: point in her bed in off campus housing. We went
Speaker 1: with her to Students Help to get a gynecological exam
Speaker 1: for her, but was told that Students Help didn't cover
Speaker 1: gynecological exam and she was given a lecture on the promiscuity. Now,
Speaker 1: because we sat with her, they called it to sit in.
Speaker 1: But over time, because people protested and organized, now student
Speaker 1: health would cover gynecological exams and people would be given
Speaker 1: careful comforting counseling, and there also is UH support and
Speaker 1: attention about the crisis of rape on campus. Those changes
Speaker 1: happen because people organized. We still look much further to go.
Speaker 1: There's still our attacks on women's health plan parents that
Speaker 1: is under attack, but we make progress when we organized.
Speaker 1: And those were some of the lessons that I learned
Speaker 1: also from the civil rights movement on the campus. To
Speaker 1: give a sense of how women retreated broadly, UM, I
Speaker 1: formed a pulled together a group called the Women Radical
Speaker 1: Action Program or wrapped w r a c H, and
Speaker 1: we did studies about UM and supported women to promote
Speaker 1: women's positions on campus. It's probably was the first campus
Speaker 1: women's organization of the new and emerging women's movement in
Speaker 1: nine and we found that professors gave four times as
Speaker 1: much attention to men's students as to women's students, called
Speaker 1: a significant response how often would a teacher actually engage
Speaker 1: with the students? And because of that and other things,
Speaker 1: we found ways to support women on campus. UM. The
Speaker 1: club founding was discrimination against women's faculty members, as they
Speaker 1: mostly were kept as adjunct professors and not allowed on
Speaker 1: a tenure track, and there were other issues that people
Speaker 1: need to understand. The emergence of Jane which in the
Speaker 1: context of lessons from an emerging movement in civil rights,
Speaker 1: context of UM, changes going on in the society where
Speaker 1: on the one hand, women were at the universities and
Speaker 1: entering into public life, and yet we're not treated equally.
Speaker 1: So there was this emerging women's movement developing, and also
Speaker 1: in the context of values that many of us shared,
Speaker 1: believing that there should be a country that treated all
Speaker 1: people equally, gave people equal support, and and respect. I
Speaker 1: love that. So really one of the big hickaways from
Speaker 1: what you've done with change is that organizing and people
Speaker 1: power can really change culture and change laws and change
Speaker 1: lives that you know, oftentimes we feel, at least I
Speaker 1: feel overwhelmed that oh, just little on me. What can
Speaker 1: I do to change this? This seems so batter up
Speaker 1: against so many fights. But actually if you're if you
Speaker 1: really work hard and organized, you can change things. Absolutely
Speaker 1: absolutely to bring us up to Jane to explain how
Speaker 1: my involvement with that and how that developed against this backdrop, um,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine told me if the sister was
Speaker 1: pregnant and was nearly suicidal because she wasn't ready to
Speaker 1: have a baby and she wanted an abortion, I have
Speaker 1: never thought about the issue before that, I recall, and
Speaker 1: I've never had to face the issue myself, but I said,
Speaker 1: I tried to do what I could do to help again,
Speaker 1: sort as part of the golden rule, trying to go
Speaker 1: one to others. I went to the network of doctors
Speaker 1: from the Medical Committee for Human Rights, which was the
Speaker 1: civil rights met go arms, and I found a doctor,
Speaker 1: Dr TRM. Howard, who had a clinic on sixty three
Speaker 1: Street in Chicago Friendship Clinic um. I didn't know its
Speaker 1: history at the time, but he had been a dynamic
Speaker 1: civil rights leader in Mississippi and came to Chicago when
Speaker 1: his name appeared on a clan death list. I called
Speaker 1: him up. He agreed to do the procedure. Actually, I
Speaker 1: didn't really think much more about it, but word must
Speaker 1: have spread because short time later someone else called. It
Speaker 1: was a coincidence, and then where it must have spread
Speaker 1: and someone else called. At that point I realized they
Speaker 1: really was a broader problem that needed to be addressed,
Speaker 1: and being an organizer, I decided to create a system
Speaker 1: and called it Jane. Over time, the women of Jane
Speaker 1: themselves performed eleven thousand abortions between nineteen and seventy three,
Speaker 1: when Roe became the law of the land and the
Speaker 1: experience of Jane both improve the lives of the women
Speaker 1: who came through who are looking for a way to
Speaker 1: decide when or whether they could have a child. It
Speaker 1: changed the lives of the women who were in Jane,
Speaker 1: letting them know what they could do to improve the
Speaker 1: lives of women on a broad scale, and it also
Speaker 1: provided a basis giving people confidence. I hope now to
Speaker 1: say we can make change if we organize. So let's
Speaker 1: say that I'm a woman who calls Jane. Can you
Speaker 1: walk me through the logistics once I call? What happened? Well, first,
Speaker 1: there were too UM kind of two or three eras
Speaker 1: of Jane the Hero's UM. When I first started it,
Speaker 1: it was a very small service. It just kept growing
Speaker 1: and growing. When it started, someone would call up and
Speaker 1: ask for Jane. And even before they said they were
Speaker 1: asking for Jane, I knew immediately there was a sort
Speaker 1: of hesitant pause on the phone, and I just knew
Speaker 1: immediately what they were probably calling about. UM. They'd say
Speaker 1: what that They usually said some version that they were pregnant, UM,
Speaker 1: and we're looking for an abortion for some women. We
Speaker 1: do the counseling on the phone. We then trying to
Speaker 1: arrange a time where they could come in and have
Speaker 1: a longer conversation and could talk with them and find
Speaker 1: out what the details were, long they were had been pregnant,
Speaker 1: what the medical history was a little bit UM, and
Speaker 1: then we'll just go through the detail of what to expect. UM.
Speaker 1: They want to know what how long does it take?
Speaker 1: Would there be pain? There's side effects? What do you
Speaker 1: need to do afterwards, how to take care of yourself
Speaker 1: if there are any uh medical complications, what they need
Speaker 1: to do, who they call. We go through how much
Speaker 1: it cost. Initially Jane costs five dollars um, though we
Speaker 1: negotiated down the price that the number of people came
Speaker 1: through and then went for two for the price of one.
Speaker 1: That we got it down to two fifty dollars. Then
Speaker 1: even sometimes got three for the price of one. We
Speaker 1: sometimes I would ask for special arrangement if someone didn't
Speaker 1: have money and h and then we arranged where people
Speaker 1: would go, where they would meet, how they would get
Speaker 1: picked up, Um, that someone should be with them to
Speaker 1: care of them, um, you know, to be with them
Speaker 1: as they as they left after the procedure. That was
Speaker 1: the first stage of Jane, where I was doing the
Speaker 1: counseling and Dr Howard had explained to me in a
Speaker 1: lot of detail what was involved. Dr Howard died natural
Speaker 1: causes and I found another person to provide the procedures.
Speaker 1: His name was Mike, and we've basically had the same process,
Speaker 1: though he had a suburban effort and m the numbers
Speaker 1: weren't creasing so much as the numbers of people coming through.
Speaker 1: I was about to have my first child, and I
Speaker 1: was very busy and many other things, getting a graduate
Speaker 1: degree UM, working on other social change issues, and I
Speaker 1: realized I couldn't handle it all just myself, and so
Speaker 1: I decided I needed to recruit other people to be
Speaker 1: involved with this, and I go to meetings and at
Speaker 1: the end of the meeting would say, if anyone wants
Speaker 1: to be involved in abortion counseling, please see me. And
Speaker 1: I recruited a number of people. We did a training
Speaker 1: and made sure that everyone understood the process and would
Speaker 1: provide the high quality of care that we wanted to
Speaker 1: see for all the women who came through UM. And
Speaker 1: then with that I turned over the effort to another
Speaker 1: group of women UM Jodie Parsons and Ruth Circle with
Speaker 1: the two leagues women who helped coordinate it. At that point,
Speaker 1: as the numbers increased, more hands were needed. One person
Speaker 1: doing the procedures wasn't going to be enough. And then
Speaker 1: it also turned out that the women that were helping
Speaker 1: might do the procedures. And then Mike shared that he
Speaker 1: actually wasn't a license position, and they thought, well, if
Speaker 1: he could do it, so could they. Now though this
Speaker 1: was the women doing the procedures, starting to learn how
Speaker 1: to do the procedures. It was actually probably safer than
Speaker 1: this medical procedure being done in a hospital or clinic
Speaker 1: or other settings. Partly because it was illegal, UH. Everyone
Speaker 1: wanted it to be as states as possible so that
Speaker 1: no one would be hard, no one would be UH,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be a h an adverse effect. It also
Speaker 1: was a women's culture who cared about women, and so
Speaker 1: the priority wasn't the profit making, it was the care
Speaker 1: for women and for their wishes. They're also UM. It
Speaker 1: was the only thing that they were doing, and so
Speaker 1: there was a lot of attention on it. It's not
Speaker 1: like you were getting lost in the shuffle of oh,
Speaker 1: am I doing an app inductivity or am i UH
Speaker 1: doing a different procedures UM. In fact, at the after
Speaker 1: row became the law of the land. That was a
Speaker 1: study done by University of Illinois program called it Prospectorship,
Speaker 1: which was about entry into UH positive medical care within Chicago,
Speaker 1: and they did an analysis of the outcome from JANE
Speaker 1: and the outcomes from clinic service for abortion and found
Speaker 1: that the results from Jane were more positive than the
Speaker 1: results in a clinic setting. Again I think for the
Speaker 1: reasons that I just mentioned. So at that point the
Speaker 1: women started to take on doing procedures themselves, and in
Speaker 1: the course of that, there was a larger group that
Speaker 1: was recruited to actually be the service, which is what
Speaker 1: we called it, what they called it Jane or the service.
Speaker 1: And as women came in, there was a a front
Speaker 1: or one apartment, someone's apartment that was designed in a
Speaker 1: very cozy, homely support of way. Sometimes they were kids there,
Speaker 1: and a number of weight of women who would be
Speaker 1: waiting for their own procedure would gather there and in
Speaker 1: a supportive environment, and then they would be taken to
Speaker 1: the apartment where the procedures would be done, and then
Speaker 1: they were supported and given care while they were recovering
Speaker 1: from the procedure, and then would be sent off with
Speaker 1: full information um about what to do if there are
Speaker 1: any issues if there often are with any medical procedures,
Speaker 1: and given health and h told numbers to call and
Speaker 1: people could be get in touch with them afterwards to
Speaker 1: make sure that everything worked out okay. So that was
Speaker 1: the broad process. There's a book about Jane by Laura
Speaker 1: Chaplin called Jane because Jane an abortion story there's also
Speaker 1: a movie about it, and actually I'm now told there's
Speaker 1: at least two Hollywood made movies that are being made
Speaker 1: about Jane, as well as a new documentary, and they're
Speaker 1: more details of it captured in the book Uh that
Speaker 1: Laura Kaplan wrote about Jane. So, Heather, No, you're a
Speaker 1: part of this really a robust tradition of Jewish activism.
Speaker 1: I actually read some place that at one point you
Speaker 1: wanted to be a rabbi, but that you heard that
Speaker 1: women couldn't be rabbis. Do you feel like your background,
Speaker 1: as you know, part of the robust legacy of Jewish
Speaker 1: activism and social change work. Did that also impact your
Speaker 1: work with Jane? It did. It was part of my
Speaker 1: moral upbring. I believed, as it's said in the Bible,
Speaker 1: Justice Justice Special, pursue saying justice twice because it's that important,
Speaker 1: really leaving uh, that the stories of the prophets should
Speaker 1: guide us in some ways, that it's the people who
Speaker 1: should rise and not just those in wealth and power. Um.
Speaker 1: There also was a history of struggle of the past
Speaker 1: over story pants overs coming, and the story of people
Speaker 1: even going forty years in the desert to us the
Speaker 1: land of greater promise UH to to escape oppressions, and
Speaker 1: I believe that that was a tradition that was worth embracing.
Speaker 1: So that was part of the moral of ringing that
Speaker 1: I had and have tried to carry that on into
Speaker 1: the organizing work I've done, and since that time, I've
Speaker 1: had to carry it on in so many ways. I
Speaker 1: started a training center for organizers called Midwest Academy. People
Speaker 1: encourage your listeners to pursue mid West Academy because it's
Speaker 1: a it's a place to learn the skills of organizing UM.
Speaker 1: Their website is www. Newwest Academy dot com UM. I've
Speaker 1: also ended up running some large scale organizations for advising them.
Speaker 1: I was strategic advisor for the immigration reform campaign, the
Speaker 1: Alliance for Citizenship, a round the campaign for financial reform
Speaker 1: that won the Dodd Bank film. I was the coordinator
Speaker 1: around the Marriage Equality campaign UM. I just was the
Speaker 1: field director and the campaign to stop these UH tax
Speaker 1: breaks for the millionaires and billionaires. That will mean that
Speaker 1: there will be an excuse to make cuts in social security,
Speaker 1: Medicare and Medicaid, and education and other essential human services.
Speaker 1: So the struggle continues, and right now people I think
Speaker 1: especially need to learn this lesson that even when time
Speaker 1: seemed the most difficult, we can make progress if we organize,
Speaker 1: and if we organized, we can change the world, and
Speaker 1: we need to change the world. I could not have
Speaker 1: put it better myself. These fights are still fights that
Speaker 1: need to be fought. And we can get complacent and
Speaker 1: we can get comfortable, but as you said, we need
Speaker 1: to be organizing. And I'm so glad that you're in
Speaker 1: the fight doing this work with us because we need you, Heather,
Speaker 1: and I'm so glad that we have you well, and
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that we have you. Uh, spread the words,
Speaker 1: spread the message. I'm so glad we have those who
Speaker 1: are listing in. I hope they'll take They probably have
Speaker 1: been taking action. We need to continue taking action and
Speaker 1: unify and give people confidence that we can organize and
Speaker 1: when we organize, even in times that seem the most difficult,
Speaker 1: we have changed the world in the past and we
Speaker 1: can change the world for the future. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. Well, it's been to listeners, so I know
Speaker 1: abortion can seem like an issue that we no longer
Speaker 1: have to fight for that we did in the seventies. Okay, Hi,
Speaker 1: it's two Bridget and wow, how wrong I was so
Speaker 1: right here in the original episode, I started going on
Speaker 1: and on about how even though Roe was the law
Speaker 1: of the land, we still needed to be vigilant because
Speaker 1: of state based attacks on abortion. And now here we
Speaker 1: are in two and as you know, ro versus weight
Speaker 1: has been overturned. And even though it is truly devastating,
Speaker 1: abortion advocates have been preparing for this moment for a
Speaker 1: very long time. There are organized networks of abortion funds
Speaker 1: and bail funds and providers who are ready to assist
Speaker 1: folks looking for abortions. We're not in a place where
Speaker 1: scrappy college kids need to invent underground collectives at a
Speaker 1: whole cloth like Heather did with the Jane Collective back
Speaker 1: on the seventies. There are people who care and who
Speaker 1: want to help, who are prepared for this moment. Go
Speaker 1: to Abortion Funds dot org and support them. And you know,
Speaker 1: in this moment, which I know seems so dark and
Speaker 1: so tough, remember we are the majority. There are more
Speaker 1: of us than there are of them, and we won't
Speaker 1: back down. If you're looking for ways to support the show,
Speaker 1: check out our March store at Tangodi dot com flash Store,
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridgeta. It's
Speaker 1: a production of I Heeart Radio and Unboss Creative edited
Speaker 1: by Joey pat John Van Strictland as our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amatta
Speaker 1: was our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Todd. If
Speaker 1: you want to help us grow, rate and review us
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. For more podcast from iHeart Radio, check
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