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: 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.