JANE
The flyers on bus stops and billboards all over Chicago read, “Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Call Jane.” And thousands of women did. What began as one phone call from a friend asking for help with an abortion became the underground, and illegal, abortion service that would deliver healthcare to thousands of women in need, known as Jane.
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In 1965, Heather Booth, a student at the University of Chicago, got a phone call. Her friend’s sister was pregnant and frightened and desperately trying to obtain an abortion. But in 1965, abortion was illegal in the United States. Booth, a staunch advocate for social justice, was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and had just returned from Mississippi and the Freedom Summer Project where she registered voters, trained and taught at the Freedom Schools and engaged in non-violent civil disobedience. Here, she saw first-hand the value of working for a goal larger than herself. She believed fiercely in standing up for justice and helping those in need. “There were some laws that were unjust and needed to be confronted and resisted, “ she contends (Kirtz and Lundy).
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Wanting to help, but having no idea where to start, she began to make calls and contacts. Ultimately, through the Medical Committee for Human Rights, the medical arm of the civil rights movement, Booth found a physician who was willing to perform an abortion in secret. She referred her friend to T.R.M. Howard, a civil rights leader and surgeon who performed the abortion in Chicago. “I was told she was nearly suicidal. I viewed it not as breaking the law but as acting on the Golden Rule. Someone was in anguish, and I tried to help her,” remembers Booth (Haberman). Booth was born into a family who believed in treating people with dignity and respect and, at the time, there were no women’s groups or organizations that supported women and women’s healthcare did not exist. Booth recalls a visit to campus healthcare after a friend was raped at knifepoint in her bed in off-campus housing. During a gynecological exam, campus health said, “...student health didn’t cover gynecological exams…and lectured her on her ‘promiscuity’” (Stern). Booth likes to explain to people that “chauvinism” was a national sentiment then (“Heather Booth: Living the Movement Life”). The “movement” at the time was a “male movement” so abortion was not important because it was a female issue, remembers one Jane member (Kirtz and Lundy).
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Booth thought she had helped solve the issue and had moved on. But word spread and several months later another person contacted her for help. Then another and another. Women were desperate and scared and dying from unregulated, botched and forced abortions. Booth realized there was a genuine need in the community for healthcare to support women physically and emotionally. She decided to set up a system for talking with women who were trying to figure out what to do. It was at this moment she set up what became known as the “Service” or Jane.
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In the beginning, every call went directly to Booth in her dormitory. “Abortions were illegal, and women seeking them were often subject to unsafe conditions and financial exploitation, not to mention shaming” (Belkin). So, to remain anonymous and avoid punishment, Booth told people to ask for “Jane”. She became a one-woman referral service, following up with the women after the procedure to check on both the woman and the person she had referred them to. If there were any negative comments, providers were dropped from the list. By 1968, Booth could no longer handle the volume of calls coming through the counseling service. So, at her regular women’s meetings, Booth recruited other women’s liberation activists to help her with the abortion counseling service.
What began at the University of Chicago spread through other Chicago college networks and other campuses across the Midwest. People came from all over the Midwest for a referral to a doctor who would help them obtain an abortion. In 1969, Jane was formally known as the Abortion Counseling Service of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union. The Union advertised healthcare and abortion services in underground publications and school newspapers, but most women heard about the abortion services through word of mouth. The women had no idea the “Service” was going to develop into what it did.
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When a woman called the Union seeking help for an abortion, they were given a local phone number and told to ask for Jane. By 1970, even doctors and medical students who would not touch an abortion were sending people to Jane. After leaving a message, a woman would receive a call back from a Jane representative, called “Little Jane,” who would ask what she could do for the caller, take the woman’s medical history and then arrange for her to meet with an abortion counselor, or “Big Jane,” who would give her more information. The caller had to ask specifically for an abortion. Jane’s purpose was not to encourage abortion, but to help women who wanted to get one safely. “One of the reasons we set up a counseling service in addition to finding a physician was to let the women know this is what they can expect medically, this is what they can expect emotionally and then to provide some emotional and human support for them” explained Booth (Kirtz and Lundy). Many women had no idea how their bodies even worked, there were no counseling services and women’s healthcare and concerns were both dismissed and at the mercy of men. The “revolutions'' of the 1960s were supposed to change the world but women were being left behind.
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Initially the women were dropped off by Jane, picked up by someone working with the doctor, blindfolded and taken to a building where the abortion took place. They would then be dropped back off. Opportunistic doctors started hiking up prices for their services, refusing to perform abortions for less than $500 - $1000 (Kirtz and Lundy). The Janes felt this was unbelievably exploitative and made it impossible for a lot of women who needed an abortion to get one. So, when it became clear it was not an especially difficult procedure to perform, the doctor taught the women how to perform the procedure on their own. Prices came down, blindfolds came off and they were able to help more women. They also moved to a more appealing, and permanent, location. When a woman arrived for her abortion, she was instructed to meet at the “Front”, the waiting room area of the two apartments Jane operated. From here, a woman was taken by a Jane member in a car to an apartment at a different location for her abortion. On the way, they would pull onto a side road to collect money. The Janes provided a sliding payment scale where women would pay whatever they could, “whether it be $1, $50 or $300” (Mehrtens). Jane always asked the woman in the car to please pay whatever they can afford keeping in mind there is somebody who has less than you. Women gladly gave whatever they could to be passed on to the next woman. When abortion was legalized in New York in 1970, it became easier for women who could afford to travel to get an abortion. But, this left the poorest women out in the cold so Jane lowered their prices so poor women could come. If a woman couldn’t afford a procedure, she was never denied Jane’s services. In 1969, the Janes were counseling about ten women a week and the doctors the Janes worked with charged an average of $600 per appointment (Mehrtens ). By 1972, the Janes were performing 15 – 25 abortions a day, 4 days a week for approximately $100 per procedure (Kirtz and Lundy).
On May 2, 1972, the Jane Collective was raided and seven of the “Janes” were arrested by Chicago homicide detectives because abortion was considered homicide. The arrests were disruptive, but once they made bail Jane was back in business. They had 250 women waiting to have abortions and they would not let them down (Kirtz and Lundy). “No one was going to tell us what to do with our lives and what we can or can’t do and we went back to work,” maintained one Jane member (Kirtz and Lundy). The Janes’s lawyer delayed court proceedings long enough for the Supreme Court to pass Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973, legalizing abortion. With no women willing to testify against the Janes and abortion now legal, all charges were dropped. Jane disbanded figuring “When we were illegal, we had a reason for being. When it was legal, we really were illegal” (Kirtz and Lundy).
From 1969 to 1973, Jane helped women of all ages, races and social classes obtain safe, affordable abortions without judgment or explanations. Jane was a success story and, according to Booth, a movement “about ordinary people doing extraordinary things because they decided to act” (Kirtz and Lundy). In its four years of operation, the approximately 125 women in the Jane Collective provided reproductive healthcare and counseling to thousands of women and abortion services to nearly 12,000 women in Chicago (Kirtz and Lundy).
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