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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Bridget and you're listening the stuff mom

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Speaker 1: ever told you. And today we're continuing our series all

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Speaker 1: about Abortion, britting you stories about abortion that you might

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Speaker 1: not know about. And today's story is the Jain Collective.

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Speaker 1: Now I want you to imagine it's you're pregnant and

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Speaker 1: you need not to be but row of you aid

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Speaker 1: is a few years away. An abortion is still illegal now.

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Speaker 1: Before this landmark nineteen seventy three Supreme Court decision, terminating

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Speaker 1: a pregnancy meant taking a gamble on a back alley

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Speaker 1: abortion provider. Maybe they'd be competent, maybe they wouldn't be.

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Speaker 1: But when you're pregnant and desperate, you don't really have

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Speaker 1: a lot of options. For women living in the sixties

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Speaker 1: and seventies, this was a reality. And then on Chicago

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Speaker 1: South Side women began organizing an under our network to

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Speaker 1: do something about it. In nineteen sixty, Heather Booth was

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Speaker 1: a nineteen year old college student at the University of Chicago.

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Speaker 1: Her friend's sister was pregnant and needed an abortion. Now.

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Speaker 1: Booth had been active in the civil rights movement and

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Speaker 1: connected her friend's sister to a doctor willing to perform

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Speaker 1: an legal abortion. After that, she started getting more and

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Speaker 1: more calls from women, housewives, students, and the siblings of

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Speaker 1: police officers. That's when Booth knew she needed to start

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Speaker 1: a network, known officially as the Abortion Counseling Service of

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Speaker 1: Women's Liberation. Heather Booth started an underground network to connect

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Speaker 1: women to abortions, using the code name Jane. As it

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Speaker 1: was still a crime. I remember this ad that said

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Speaker 1: pregnant need help, called Jane, So I called Jane. Jane

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Speaker 1: ultimately served over ten thousand women before a Row of

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Speaker 1: View Wade made abortion legal in nineteen In the beginning,

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Speaker 1: the network connected pregnant women with doctors, but eventually they

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Speaker 1: realized that many of the people providing abortions weren't doctors

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Speaker 1: at all. That's when the women and Jane started performing

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Speaker 1: abortions themselves. The women were not doctors, but according to

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Speaker 1: the Chicago Tribune, their skills were attested to by a

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Speaker 1: doctor who risked his license by doing post operative checkups

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Speaker 1: on clients. At this point, the Jane Collective was providing

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Speaker 1: abortions for as many as sixty women a week. Jane's

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Speaker 1: facilities were raided by the police. During the raid, police

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Speaker 1: asked all the women identified the doctor who was performing

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Speaker 1: the abortions, obviously expecting to find a man, but there

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Speaker 1: was no man. The group was arrested and the media

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Speaker 1: called them the Jane Seven. After being indicted by a

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Speaker 1: grand jury, their case was only dismissed thanks to the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Courts legalization of abortion in nineteen. After this quick break,

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Speaker 1: we'll hear from Heather Booth about how Jane got started today.

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Speaker 1: I am so so humbled and thrilled to be joined

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Speaker 1: by the legendary Heather Booth. Heather, thank you so much

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Speaker 1: for being well you are, you're you're a led in Well.

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Speaker 1: I'm so glad to be talking with the amazing bridget

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Speaker 1: Todd And what a service you're doing for the public

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Speaker 1: providing this information out about some of the stories that

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Speaker 1: are not as well known exactly. That's really what we

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Speaker 1: want to do with this series. Everybody feels like they

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Speaker 1: know a lot about abortion and about you know, reproductive health,

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Speaker 1: but there are so many stories about abortion in choice

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Speaker 1: that people might not know. You know, the Jaine network

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Speaker 1: was such a critical thing for these women who were living,

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Speaker 1: you know, while before reviewade was enacted, and you know,

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Speaker 1: people don't even really know about it. Glad to describe

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Speaker 1: how it came about and and Uh, I appreciate your

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Speaker 1: spreading the word to let people know that if we organize,

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Speaker 1: we can change the world. We have changed the world,

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Speaker 1: and we need to change the world. And the story

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Speaker 1: of organizing the Jaine Network is one important example of that.

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Speaker 1: So let's talk about Jane. So when you started Jane,

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Speaker 1: you were just a nineteen year old student at the

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Speaker 1: University of Chicago. So what was your life like before

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Speaker 1: you started Jane? Okay, a little bit about my life

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Speaker 1: and also a little bit about what women's lives were

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Speaker 1: like in general. Ah. For me, I was brought up

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Speaker 1: in a family UH that was very loving and believed

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Speaker 1: that people should uh follow the Golden rule. We should

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Speaker 1: treat each other as we wanted to be treated, and

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Speaker 1: I carried that with me. I became active in the

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Speaker 1: civil rights movement in nineteen sixty four. I went to

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Speaker 1: Mississippi with the Freedom Summer Project, and some of you

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Speaker 1: may have heard about it because that was the time

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Speaker 1: when the civil rights movement was recruiting northern students to

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Speaker 1: come down to Mississippi because in Mississippi, black lives did

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Speaker 1: not matter. In nineteen sixty four, and they thought that

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Speaker 1: the attention of northern students might bring additional visibility potential

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Speaker 1: power to shine a spotlight on what was going on

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Speaker 1: in Mississippi. And during that summer, the three young men,

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Speaker 1: Andrew Goodman, James Cheney, and Michael Schwerner were killed at

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Speaker 1: the hands of the clans. What people may not know

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Speaker 1: is that while they were looking for the bodies of

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Speaker 1: the three men, they found bodies of other black men

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Speaker 1: whose hands have been bound or feet chopped off, and

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Speaker 1: those murders weren't even investigated once the bodies were found

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Speaker 1: until years later. But because people organized, there was a

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Speaker 1: voting right back within a year, and Mississippi now is

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Speaker 1: more African American elected officials than any other state in

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Speaker 1: the country. And mentioned that because it was formative for

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Speaker 1: some of the ideas that led to Jane, which is

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Speaker 1: that you have to stand up to unjust authority. If

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Speaker 1: you take action, you can make change, and that sometimes

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Speaker 1: there even are risks, but together we can really build

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Speaker 1: a better world. I returned back to my campus and

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Speaker 1: a friend of mine had been raped at nice point

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Speaker 1: in her bed in off campus housing. We went with

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Speaker 1: her to students help to get a gynecological exam for her,

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Speaker 1: but was told that Students Help didn't cover gynecological exam

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Speaker 1: and she was given a lecture on the promiscuity. Now,

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Speaker 1: because we sat with her, they called it to sit in.

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Speaker 1: But over time, because people protested and organized, now Students

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Speaker 1: Health would cover gynecological exams, and people would be given

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Speaker 1: careful comforting counseling, and there also is support and attention

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Speaker 1: about the crisis of rape on campus. Those changes happened

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Speaker 1: because people organized. We still look much further to go.

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Speaker 1: There's still our attacks on Women's Health Plan PARENT that

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Speaker 1: is under attack, but we make progress when we organized.

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Speaker 1: And those were some of the lessons that I learned

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Speaker 1: also from the civil rights movement on the campus. To

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Speaker 1: give a sense of how women retreated broadly UM, I

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Speaker 1: formed a pulled together a group called the Women's Radical

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Speaker 1: Action Program or wrapped w r a B. And we

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Speaker 1: did studies about UM and supported women to promote women's

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Speaker 1: positions on campus. It's probably was the first campus women's

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Speaker 1: organization of the new and emerging women's movement in and

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Speaker 1: we found that professors gave four times as much attention

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Speaker 1: to men's students as to women's students called a significant

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Speaker 1: response how often would a teacher actually engage with the student?

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Speaker 1: And because of that and other things, we found ways

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Speaker 1: to support women on campus. The foundly was discrimination against

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Speaker 1: women faculty members. They mostly were kept as adjunct professors

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Speaker 1: and not allowed on a tenure track, And there were

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Speaker 1: other issues that people need to understand. The emergence of

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Speaker 1: Jane within the context of lessons from an emerging movement

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Speaker 1: in civil rights, context of um changes going on in

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Speaker 1: the society where on the one hand, women were at

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Speaker 1: the universities and entering into into public life, and yet

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Speaker 1: we're not treated equally. So there was this emerging women's

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Speaker 1: movement developing, and also in the context of the values

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Speaker 1: that many of us shared, believing that there should be

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Speaker 1: a country that treated all people equally, gave people equal

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Speaker 1: support and and respect. I love that. So really, one

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Speaker 1: of the big hickaways from what you've done with Jane

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Speaker 1: is that organizing and people power can really change culture

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Speaker 1: and change laws and change lives that you know, oftentimes

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Speaker 1: we feel at least I feel overwhelmed that oh, just

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Speaker 1: little on me, What can I do to change this?

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Speaker 1: This seems so batter up against so many fights but

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Speaker 1: actually if you're if you really work hard and organized,

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Speaker 1: you can change things. Absolutely absolutely. To bring us up

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Speaker 1: to Jane to explain how my involvement with that and

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Speaker 1: how that developed against this backdrop, UM, a friend of

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Speaker 1: mine told me her sister was pregnant and was nearly

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Speaker 1: suicidal because she wasn't ready to have a baby and

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Speaker 1: she wanted an abortion. I had never thought about the

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Speaker 1: issue before that, I recall, and I've never had to

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Speaker 1: face the issue myself, but I said, I tried to

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Speaker 1: do what I could do to help again, sort of

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Speaker 1: as part of the Golden rule, trying to one to others.

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Speaker 1: I went to the network of doctors from the Medical

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Speaker 1: Committee for Human Rights, which was the Civil Rights medical Arms,

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Speaker 1: and I found a doctor, doctor TRM. Howard, who had

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Speaker 1: a clinic on sixty three Street in Chicago, Friendship Clinic. UM.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know its history at the time, but he

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Speaker 1: had been a dynamic civil rights leader in Mississippi and

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Speaker 1: came to Chicago when his name appeared on a clan

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Speaker 1: death list. I called him up. He agreed to do

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Speaker 1: the procedure. Actually I didn't really think much more about it,

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Speaker 1: but word must have bread because short time later someone

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Speaker 1: else called. I thought it was a coincidence, and then

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Speaker 1: where it must have spread and someone else called. At

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Speaker 1: that point I realized they really was the broader problem

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Speaker 1: that needed to be addressed, and being an organizer, I

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Speaker 1: decided to create a system and called it Jane. Over time,

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Speaker 1: the women of Jane themselves performed eleven thousand abortions between

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Speaker 1: nineteen and seventy three. When Roe became the law of

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Speaker 1: the land and the experience of Jane both improved the

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Speaker 1: lives of the women who came through who are looking

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Speaker 1: for a way to decide when or whether they could

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Speaker 1: have a child. It changed the lives of the women

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Speaker 1: who were in Jane, letting them know what they could

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Speaker 1: do to improve the lives of women on a broad scale.

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Speaker 1: And it also provided a basis giving people confidence. I

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Speaker 1: hope now to say we can make change if we organize.

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Speaker 1: So let's say that I'm a woman who called Jane.

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Speaker 1: Can you walk me through the logistics once I call?

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Speaker 1: What happened? Well, first, there were too um and two

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Speaker 1: or three eras of Jane, the era's um. When I

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Speaker 1: first started it, it was a very small service. It

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Speaker 1: just kept growing and growing. When it started someone would

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Speaker 1: call up and ask for Jane, And even before they

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Speaker 1: said they were asking for Jane, I knew immediately there

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Speaker 1: was a sort of hesitant pause on the phone, and

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Speaker 1: I just knew immediately what they were probably calling about. UM.

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Speaker 1: They'd say what they usually said, some version that they

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Speaker 1: were pregnant, UM, and we're looking for an abortion for

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Speaker 1: some women. We do the counseling on the phone. We

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Speaker 1: then trying to arrange a time where they could come

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Speaker 1: in and have a longer conversation and could talk with

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Speaker 1: them and find out what the details were, long they

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Speaker 1: were had been pregnant, what the medical history was a

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Speaker 1: little bit, um, and then we'll just go through the

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Speaker 1: detail of what to expect um. They want to know

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Speaker 1: what how long did it take, would there be pain

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Speaker 1: the other side effects, what do you need to do afterwards,

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Speaker 1: how to take care of yourself if there are any

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Speaker 1: uh medical complications, what they need to do, who they call,

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Speaker 1: We go through how much it cost. Initially Jane cost

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Speaker 1: five dollars um, so we negotiated down the prices the

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Speaker 1: number of people came through and then went for two

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Speaker 1: for the price of one. That we got it down

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Speaker 1: to two d fifty dollars and then even sometimes got

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Speaker 1: three for the price of one. We sometimes I would

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Speaker 1: ask for special arrangement if someone didn't have money, and

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Speaker 1: and then we arranged where people would go, where they

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Speaker 1: would meet, how they would get picked up, UM, that

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Speaker 1: someone should be with them to care of them. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, to be with them as they as they

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Speaker 1: left after the procedure. That was the first stage of

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Speaker 1: Jane where I was doing the counseling and Dr Howard

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Speaker 1: had explained to me in a lot of detail what

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Speaker 1: was involved. Dr Howard died natural causes and I found

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Speaker 1: another person to provide the procedures. His name was Mike,

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Speaker 1: and uh, we've basically had the same process, though he

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Speaker 1: had a suburban effort. And um, the numbers were increasing

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Speaker 1: so much as the numbers of people coming through. I

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Speaker 1: was about to have my first child, and I was

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Speaker 1: very busy and many other things to getting a graduate degree, UM,

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Speaker 1: working on other social change issues, and I realized I

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Speaker 1: couldn't handle it all just myself, and so I decided

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Speaker 1: I needed to recruit other people to be involved with this,

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Speaker 1: and I go to meetings and at the end of

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Speaker 1: the meeting would say, if anyone wants to be involved

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Speaker 1: in abortion counseling please see me, and I recruited a

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Speaker 1: number of people. We did a training and made sure

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Speaker 1: that everyone understood the process and would provide the high

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Speaker 1: quality of care that we wanted to see for all

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Speaker 1: the women who came through UM. And then with that

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Speaker 1: I turned over the effort to another group of women

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Speaker 1: out Jodie Parsons and Ruth Circle with a two league

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Speaker 1: women who helped coordinate it. At that point, as the

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Speaker 1: numbers increased, more hands were needed. One person doing the

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Speaker 1: procedures wasn't going to be enough. And then it also

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Speaker 1: turned out that the women that were helping might do

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Speaker 1: the procedures. And then Mike shared that he actually wasn't

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Speaker 1: a license position, and they thought, well, if he could

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Speaker 1: do it, so could they. Now though this was the

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Speaker 1: women doing the procedures starting to learn how to do

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Speaker 1: the procedures, it was actually probably safer than this medical

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Speaker 1: procedure being done in a hospital or clinic or other settings,

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Speaker 1: partly because it was illegal. UH. Everyone wanted it to

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Speaker 1: be as safe as possible so that no one would

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Speaker 1: be hard, no one would be UM, there wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: a UM an adverse effect. It also was a women's

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Speaker 1: culture who cared about women, and so the priority wasn't

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Speaker 1: the profit making, it was the care for women and

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Speaker 1: for their wishes. They're also um. It was the only

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Speaker 1: thing that they were doing, and so there was a

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Speaker 1: lot of attention on it. It's not like you were

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Speaker 1: getting lost in the show full of oh am I

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Speaker 1: doing an app inductivity or am I UH doing a

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Speaker 1: different procedures um. In fact, at the after row became

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Speaker 1: the law of the land. That was a study done

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Speaker 1: by University of Illinois program called the pre Sectorship, which

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Speaker 1: was about entry into UH positive medical care within Chicago,

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Speaker 1: and they did an analysis of the outcome from Jane

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Speaker 1: and the outcomes from clinic service for abortion and found

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Speaker 1: that the results from Jane were more positive than the

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Speaker 1: results in a clinic setting. Again, I think for the

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Speaker 1: reasons that I just mentioned. So at that point the

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Speaker 1: women started to take on doing procedures themselves, and in

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Speaker 1: the core of that, there was a larger group that

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Speaker 1: was recruited to actually be the service, which is what

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Speaker 1: we called it, what they called it Jane or the service.

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Speaker 1: And as women came in, there was a a front

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Speaker 1: or one apartment someone's apartment that was designed in a

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Speaker 1: very cozy, homely supportive way. Sometimes they were kids there,

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Speaker 1: and a number of way of women who would be

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Speaker 1: waiting for their own procedure would gather there and in

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Speaker 1: a supportive environment, and then they would be taken to

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Speaker 1: the apartment where the procedures would be done, and then

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Speaker 1: they were supported and given care while they were recovering

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Speaker 1: from the procedure, and then would be sent off as

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Speaker 1: full information um about what to do if there are

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Speaker 1: any shoes, if they're often are with any medical procedure,

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Speaker 1: and given health and then UH told numbers to call

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Speaker 1: and people could be in touch with them afterwards to

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Speaker 1: make sure that everything worked out okay. So that was

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Speaker 1: the broad process. There's a book about Jane by Laura

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Speaker 1: Kaplan called Jane. I think it's Jane an abortion Story.

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Speaker 1: There's also a movie about it, and actually I'm now

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Speaker 1: told there's at least two Hollywood made movies that are

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Speaker 1: being made about Jane, as well as a new documentary,

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Speaker 1: and they're more detailed of it captured in the book

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Speaker 1: UH that Laura Kaplan wrote about Jane. So, Heather, now

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Speaker 1: you're a part of this really robust tradition of Jewish activism.

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Speaker 1: I actually read some place that at one point you

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Speaker 1: wanted to be a rabbi, but that you heard that

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Speaker 1: women couldn't be rabbis. Do you feel like your background,

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Speaker 1: as you know, part of the robust legacy of Jewish

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Speaker 1: activism and social change work. Did that also impact your

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Speaker 1: work with Jane? It did. It was part of my

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Speaker 1: moral upbringing. I believed, as it's said in the Bible,

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Speaker 1: Justice Justice Special pursue saying justice twice because it's that important,

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Speaker 1: really believing, uh, that the stories of the prophets should

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Speaker 1: guide us in some ways, that it's the people who

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Speaker 1: should rise, and not just those in wealth and power. Um.

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Speaker 1: There also was a history of struggle of the past

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Speaker 1: over story pans over was coming, and the story of

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Speaker 1: people even going forty years in the desert to us

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Speaker 1: the land of greater promise, UH to to escape oppression.

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Speaker 1: And I believe that that was a tradition that was

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Speaker 1: worth embracing. So that was part of the moral utringing

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Speaker 1: that I had, and had tried to carry that on

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Speaker 1: into the organizing work I've done, and since that time,

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Speaker 1: I've tried to carry it on in so many ways.

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Speaker 1: I started a training center for organizers called Midwest Academy.

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Speaker 1: People encourage your listeners to pursue Midwest Academy because it's

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Speaker 1: a it's a place to learn the skills of organizing UM.

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Speaker 1: Their website is www Midwest Academy dot com. Um. I've

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Speaker 1: also ended up running some large scale organizations for advising them.

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Speaker 1: I was strategic advisor for the immigration reform campaign with

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Speaker 1: the Alliance for Citizenship. I ran a campaign for financial

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Speaker 1: reform that won the Dodge Bank Bill. I with the

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Speaker 1: coordinator around the marriage equality campaign UM. I just was

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Speaker 1: the field director around the campaign to stop these of

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Speaker 1: tax breaks for the millionaires and billionaires. That will mean

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Speaker 1: that there will be an excuse to make cuts in

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Speaker 1: social security, Medicare and Medicaid, and education and other essential

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Speaker 1: human services. So the struggle continues and right now people,

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Speaker 1: I think especially, need to learn this lesson that even

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Speaker 1: when time seemed the most difficult, we can make progress

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Speaker 1: if we organize, and if we organized, we can change

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Speaker 1: the world, and we need to change the world. I

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Speaker 1: could not have put it better myself. These fights are

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Speaker 1: still fights that need to be fought. And we can

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Speaker 1: get complacent and we can get comfortable, but as you said,

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Speaker 1: we need to be organizing. And I so glad that

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Speaker 1: you're in the fight doing this work with us because

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Speaker 1: we need you, Heather, and I'm so glad that we

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Speaker 1: have you well. And I'm so glad that we have you,

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Speaker 1: uh read the words, spread the message. I'm so glad

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Speaker 1: we have those who are listing in. I hope they'll

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Speaker 1: take They probably have been taking action. We need to

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Speaker 1: continue taking action and unify and give people confidence that

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Speaker 1: we can organize and when we organize, even in times

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Speaker 1: that seem the most difficult. We have changed the world

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Speaker 1: in the past and we can change the world for

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Speaker 1: the future. Let's take a quick break. Well, it's been

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Speaker 1: to listeners now. I know abortion can seem like an

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Speaker 1: issue that we no longer have to fight for that

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Speaker 1: we did in the seventies, but that's actually not true.

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Speaker 1: In March, Mississippi's governor signed a law banning abortion at

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Speaker 1: fifteen weeks, the earliest abortion ban in the country. The

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Speaker 1: law was temporarily blocked by a federal judge, and some

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Speaker 1: states only have one clinic left that provides abortions thanks

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Speaker 1: to restrictions specifically aimed at forcing providers to close reproductive

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Speaker 1: freedom is constantly under attack, so let's stay vigilant and

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Speaker 1: get organized to help protect our right to access. What

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Speaker 1: did you think of Heather story Let me know. You

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Speaker 1: can find us on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You,

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Speaker 1: on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, and as always, we

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Speaker 1: love getting your emails at mom stuff at how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com