What Was the Jane Collective Abortion Network?
What It's Like When Abortion Is Forced to Go Underground — From a Woman Who Lived It
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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.