The story of Jane The legendary underground feminist abortion service

Laura Kaplan

Book - 1997

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Subjects
Published
Chicago : University of Chicago Press 1997.
Language
English
Main Author
Laura Kaplan (-)
Item Description
Originally published: New York : Pantheon Books, 1995.
Physical Description
xx, 314 p. ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-297) and index.
ISBN
9780226424217
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Spot and Dick play no role in Kaplan's vivid, thoughtful "collective memoir" of the Chicago women who formed Jane (officially, the Abortion Counseling Service of Women's Liberation), which gave 11,000 women access to safe but illegal abortions between 1969 and the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in January 1973. Herself a member of Jane, Kaplan describes stages in the service's brief life--from screening abortionists to referring clients to a particular practitioner to learning how to perform abortions themselves--and the issues of knowledge, power, responsibility, and respect, which had a key impact on interactions among participants as well as on Jane's relationships with clients, the medical establishment, and the criminal justice system. Because Jane kept limited records, Kaplan's reconstruction is based on interviews with some 40 percent of the 100 women who participated at one time or another; some Jane members are not prepared to be publicly identified, so Kaplan uses pseudonyms for all of them, including herself. This is lively, nuanced history that brings to life the hopes, terrors, and disappointments of a movement committed to giving women control over their own bodies. --Mary Carroll

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

From 1969 until January 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, a pioneering group of Chicago feminists who called themselves ``Jane'' provided illegal access to abortions for thousands of women. Kaplan, who is now a lay midwife, joined Jane in 1971 as a counselor. Here she draws on her personal recollections and interviews with Jane members and clients and the doctors who performed the abortions to provide a well-written, detailed history of this radical group. Initially Jane was a referral agency only, but as demand grew, members became involved in counseling and attended clients' abortions, and some eventually trained to perform the abortions. Jane volunteers were convinced that women were entitled to control over their bodies, and they acted on their principles, despite the consequences. Several members were arrested in 1972, but the suit was dropped. Jane disbanded after abortion clinics became legal. A dramatic and important piece of women's history. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

From 1969 until the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling in 1973, a group of Chicago women formed a loose underground organization whose sole purpose was to aid women who needed abortions (then illegal, of course) in getting them as safely and inexpensively as possible. They called their referral service "Jane" and worked out a set of complicated procedures to keep both themselves and their clients out of jail. At first they handled referrals to willing doctors on a very limited basis-only three or four a week-but as word about Jane got around their business increased. Eventually the women were taught by an expert to do the abortions themselves, which enabled them to charge next to nothing to those in financial need. But the operations were not all they did; every one of the 11,000 women who came to Jane also received health education and counseling. As a study of this remarkable but little known phenomenon, this book will be of value to anyone interested in women's health, the women's movement, and women's reproductive health and rights, particularly now that those rights are coming under increasing attack.-Audrey Eaglen, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A firsthand account of an underdocumented moment in the history of abortion and women's liberation. Four years before the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide, a group of Chicago women set up ""Jane,"" an underground abortion referral service. Here Kaplan, a community organizer who was a founding member of Jane, describes the organization's effectiveness: It helped more than 11,000 women obtain abortions, and the group's members provided them with counseling before, during, and after the procedure, explaining each part of the process in detail. Eventually, many members learned to perform abortions themselves. Kaplan also recounts Jane's crises. The group's abortions were unusually safe and well regarded by the medical community, but one woman did die in the hospital after a Jane abortion. Though the medical records suggested that it wasn't their fault, Jane's members were traumatized and many quit the group. The police, usually sympathetic to Jane, busted it once; seven members were jailed, but the case was dismissed after the Roe v. Wade decision. Kaplan interviewed many of the participants, who are candid, thoughtful, and articulate. The author has a keen sense of Jane's place in history, relating the group and its members to the politics of its time--the student movement, women's liberation, and black power. Contemporary activists will also be fascinated by Kaplan's description of Jane's day-to-day logistics and by her account of the power dynamics of a group that professed to be egalitarian but actually had a hierarchy based on who controlled information. At times Kaplan's storytelling falters, though; she frequently reintroduces people, assuming readers will forget them. And a bland epilogue provides summations of members' lives after Jane, with some lackluster quotes that do not sound like the powerful, complex, and often difficult women who appeared earlier in the narrative. Although Kaplan's prose flags at points, her powerful story will be invaluable to organizers, feminist historians, and anyone concerned about contemporary threats to personal liberty. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Since the publication of The Story of Jane more than twenty years ago, I have often been asked to speak to students. After hearing the story of what we did and how we did it, the students sometimes ask me what kind of activism to pursue. These young people want to know: Should they work to elect sympathetic representatives to state and federal government? Should they organize and get involved in mass protests, like the Women's Marches? Should they raise money for organizations they support or lobby their legislature? Or, like those of us in Jane, should they figure out ways to provide the services that those in power have denied to women? My response is always the same: it's not an either/or situation. All methods of confronting injustice are important. The trick is to figure out which ones resonate with the situation we face and match our strengths. Above all, we need to be open to opportunities that present themselves: to say yes. That was how I, a young woman in my early twenties, found my way to Jane. It was sheer luck and openness. The challenge for each of us is to find the path that engages us, that makes us feel alive, and then dive in. My primary motivation for writing The Story of Jane was that the Abortion Counseling Service, a.k.a. Jane, was an important piece of the history of the women's movement that was not well known. At the time I started researching the book, there had been little written about Jane. Most of us who were in the group rarely, if ever, talked about it. More than fifteen years had passed since Jane folded and already it was questionable what details any of us still remembered. The more time that passed, the more difficult it would be to reconstruct our history. It was time to tell this story. I felt that it was critical that someone who was a member of the service, which is how we internally referred to the group, write our story. My fear was that an outsider would paint us as superheroes or Amazon warriors, as extraordinary. This is the opposite of the truth and certainly the wrong message to send to a younger generation. We were ordinary women, housewives, students and young radicals. I hoped, and I continue to hope, that everyone who reads this history will see herself in us and think: that could be me. And there was another reason I wanted to write this history. Since our story is about how a group of diverse women, many with little or no political experience, and none with any medical skills, came together and pooled their talents to do something extraordinary-- a political adventure story-- I thought that Jane's history could serve as an exciting vehicle to explore what community organizing is and how it functions as a tool for change. Those of us who were in the service learned many important lessons. But perhaps the most important was this: if we believe that something needs to be done, working together, we can find solutions and maybe, in the process, wind up doing things we never dreamed of. This I believe is the metalesson of Jane and one I wanted to share. This lesson applies to any social problem-- it's not specific to abortion. I wanted young people to view our story as a concrete example of what they, too, might accomplish. It was for these reasons I decided to write the book. I wasn't thinking that I was offering a road map for abortion activism or offering Jane as a model to be replicated. It is my contention that laws change when large portions of the society violate those laws. This was certainly the case before Roe v. Wade. Prominent people were speaking out. Fifty- three well- known women signed an open letter to Ms. magazine titled "We Have Had Abortions." The clergy also played a critical role. Not only were the networks of Clergy Consultation Services on Abortion vocal in their support of abortion reform, but they publicly proclaimed that they were helping women obtain illegal abortions. No society can continue to maintain the rule of law when so many of its members are publicly violating it. When Roe v. Wade was decided, we in the service breathed a sigh of relief. But we also suspected that it was not going to be the panacea we hoped for. While I was working on the book, the abortion landscape shifted dramatically. With the Supreme Court decisions in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services in 1989 and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, the Court made clear its intention to limit Roe. Of course, the shift had started in 1976 when Congress first passed the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal Medicaid dollars from funding poor women's abortions. Before Roe, all women were in the same boat: no matter her circumstances, abortion was illegal. The passage of the Hyde Amendment was and continues to be a wedge driven between women. Now, if you are urban and have financial means, abortion is a possibility, but if you are poor or rural, it's as if Roe never happened. Grassroots abortion funds organized to help people find and pay for abortions. These funds now exist all over the country. But the funds do much more than that. They provide those seeking abortions with information, support and validation for their decisions. They let people know that they are not alone. Some abortion funds arrange transportation to an abortion provider, a place to stay, help with childcare and help securing hard- to- get second- trimester abortions. In addition, some funds do policy work to fight funding limitations, including Hyde. The National Network of Abortion Funds (one of my favorite organizations) is a membership home for funds around the country. When Jane began in 1969, long before we had any idea that we would actually be performing abortions ourselves, we raised money for abortions, provided information and described the procedure with as much detail as we could, since none of us had seen one yet. We sussed out illegal providers so we could refer women to the most competent, reliable practitioners. We started out doing, in fact, exactly what present- day abortion funds do. So it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me when, a few years after my book came out, I met two staff women with the California Access Project, and they told me they had named their computers Big Jane and Little Jane. Big Jane and Little Jane were the names we had given to our two administrative positions: Big Jane scheduled our work days, and Little Jane called back the hundred or more people who contacted us each week seeking abortions. These California women understood the lineage we shared. In the decades since Roe, the abortion landscape in the United States has continued to harden. Some states have passed draconian measures with ridiculous justifications, whose intent is to make abortions inaccessible to most people who need them and, with the requirements of waiting periods, transvaginal ultrasounds and funerals for aborted fetuses, to punish women who seek abortions. But something else changed in recent decades as well. With the introduction of medical abortions, the technology for performing an abortion is now noninvasive and can be in the hands of women around the world who need it. About ten years ago I was contacted by a South American woman. Not only had she read my book, but she was part of a national network in her home country, where abortion was illegal (it was legalized there in 2020), that obtained mi soprostol, the drug used for self- abortions, counseled people seeking abortions and provided support. They gave detailed information on how and when to take the pills, what to expect, what to watch out for and when to seek medical help. When I later sat on a conference panel with another woman from this group, she cited Jane as an inspiration. In 2015, I was fortunate to meet the two women who started the Doula Project here in the United States, which has grown into a national network of full- spectrum doulas who provide services for the range of reproductive possibilities, including abortion. We presented a workshop together at the annual Reproductive Freedom Conference of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program (now renamed Collective Power for Reproductive Justice) at Hampshire College. What they related to most from Jane's story is not so much what we did but how we did it. Because none of us were medical professionals, we weren't limited by the medical model. We based our practice on how we wanted to be treated, what worked for the women we saw and what they needed. We didn't separate ourselves from the women who came through the service, and as a result, quite a few women who had abortions with Jane later joined the group. What they needed and what we wanted was to be fully informed, to be respected and supported in our decisions. And, most importantly, we treated those thousands of women as actors, as partners in their own care, not passive recipients. More than fifty years after the service, a.k.a. Jane, folded, its echoes continue to reverberate. In 2010, the Sunday New York Times Magazine ran an article about young abortion providers. One doctor, when asked by the article's author why she decided to become an abortion provider, said that a medical school professor had given her a copy of The Story of Jane. Certainly, this was not an influence that we in Jane ever thought we would have. To inspire a young doctor who then goes on to affect the lives of countless women-- no one could ask for more. Jane is not an anomaly. It is part of a rich radical tradition-- one none of us knew about at the time-- that posits that individuals, working together, can create the means of their own liberation. By that I mean that it is possible, in some circumstances, to envision a world we wish existed and, by our actions, bring that world to life. When we see ourselves as actors, rather than reactors, all kinds of possibilities are open to us. Instead of vainly banging on the doors of existing power, individuals empower themselves to, as it were, make their own doors, which is essentially what Jane did. Like so many other women's liberation groups around the country, we began as a referral and counseling service. We didn't start out thinking we'd learn to do abortions ourselves; we grew into it as, what seemed to us at the time, the only viable solution. And it was this leap forward that made us truly transgressive. This preface was originally written in 2018. In the intervening years, three Catholic countries--Ireland, Argentina, and Mexico--have legalized abortion. But here in the United States, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Regardless of the cruel restrictions some states choose to impose, one thing is certain: we will not go back. All over the country people are acting to ensure that everyone is able to make their own decisions about their pregnancies, organizing boldly and sometimes quietly, just as we did pre-Roe. Jane serves as a touchstone for what ordinary people, working together, can accomplish. As we turn our outrage into action, the important thing is to say yes, to start with what you can do right now, and to let people's needs guide you. Excerpted from The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.