What It's Like When Abortion Is Forced to Go Underground — From a Woman Who Lived It

PS: What inspired you to get involved with the Jane Collective in Chicago in the early 1970s?

JA: Well, I can't claim "inspiration" so much as need. I thought I was pregnant at a time when it would have been a very bad thing to be, and I got information — as women always did, and still do — from a friend, who said, "Call this number and ask for Jane," and I did. A woman called me back and said her name was Jane, as everybody used that name. And we talked for a real long time, including her advising me, "I think you should get a pregnancy test," which I hadn't. I was just so late, I'd thought, "Oh, I must be pregnant."

As it turned out, to make this long story short, it was indeed a very, very, very late period. I was not pregnant. But when I talked to her again, we just hit it off and started talking politics, about women's lives, about abortion, and about health care in general — childbirth, hospital systems. She let me know the Jane Collective would be taking in some new people to join in the Fall, and I went to this orientation at a church down the block from my apartment. I listened to what they had to say. I asked questions. I listened to the questions the other women who had come were asking, and I thought, "This is a good thing. I'm going to do it."

PS: One fascinating thing you've spoken about is the fact that the Jane Collective didn't face the kind of violent threats and harassment that modern abortion clinic providers do today and that you and the women you helped rarely felt your personal safety was at risk. That's despite the fact that what you were doing at the time was illegal. What changed there?

JA: Since Roe, the antiabortion movement has been a gigantic movement to serve various political purposes. It's clear the leaders of the Republican Party don't really care about women's health, or babies, one way or another. But they found this narrative, and this fight, and they have used it as this monstrous, large socio-cultural concern, and been wildly successful at it.

This is not like, "Oh, people started to change their minds," or, "Students in high school began to learn about biology and changed their minds." No. This is a gigantic, powerful, very well-funded political movement that chose to come after abortion health care because it was so emotional and passionate, as you can see.

PS: What did a typical day working in the Jane Collective look like?

JA: A typical day depended on what you were doing, because not everybody was doing everything all the time. Some days I drove people to get their abortions, and then drove them back. Other times, I might have been doing medical work in one of the apartments where we were doing abortions. Other times, I might have been at home in my own office doing callbacks and looking through all of the information about women who had called and left messages. And then collecting information about their situation, their health, how far along their pregnancy is, and so on. Or, maybe that day I would have a counseling appointment with patients.

Then, the woman would come over to my place and would have a cup of tea, and I would tell you, "OK, given that you are nine weeks, this is the kind of procedure we're going to be using. Here's the situation. Please think about your health and the legal concerns that we're sharing here, that you and I together are breaking the law by having this conversation," and so on. So there were many "jobs" for Janes: counseling, driving, doing the medical work, doing the office work, callbacks, counseling, and bringing issues and concerns to meetings. We met once a week, and that was where people got their assignments of who they were going to counsel.

PS: How did women find you, and what kinds of backgrounds did they come from?

JA: Women came from anywhere and everywhere during the four-year period that the service operated. And I'd say that probably the majority — because it began with a college student — were college students in and around Chicago, and then places in Wisconsin and Indiana as well. But the backgrounds of women we served grew and changed because more and more people learned.

In that Summer of 1970 when I learned about the Jane Collective, I asked a friend who was a medical student about abortion. Now, not everyone has a friend who's a medical student, but lots of people have friends who have friends who have heard something. Lots of people were doing abortions. Lots of people have always been doing abortions and know people who have personally had or been involved in seeking abortion care.

PS: Do the stories of any women seeking abortion while you worked at the Jane Collective stand out in your memory?

JA: I dealt with a few teenagers who were in terrible circumstances. There was one who came through the service, but I discovered that she didn't want the abortion. I said to her, "Well, what are you doing here, then? You should go home. Why are you doing this?" And she burst into sobs, and said, "My mother is making me do this."

She was 15 and said if she didn't have the abortion, as soon as she had the baby, her mom would have it taken away. It was just a terrible, terrible moment of sadness and badness. And she threw her arms around me — I was pregnant at the time — and she said, "I know you'll be a wonderful mother, because you're so good to me." I felt bad about being contrasted with her mother, who she obviously did not think was a good mother, but I did feel this extraordinary rush of connection between us, knowing her story.

PS: As a consultant on the film Ask for Jane, what was really vital to you in terms of the storytelling? What did you want to make sure the movie got right?

JA: It was interesting, new learning for me, because I'm not a movie person — although lately, movies are all over the place about abortion rights, both the ugly ones and the wonderful ones. I was particularly interested, as a writer, in the idea that these people were making a fiction film based, as they say in Hollywood, on a true story.

There are no characters here who are exactly me or any of these other women who really existed then. There are, instead, the characters created by the screenwriter, who was also the director, and being able to be on set with them was incredible, particularly because these were people who were going to make art out of our lives. And that was, of course, an intense kind of consideration for me.