Part One: The Jane Collective: Direct Action Abortion Access Works

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, Margaret, here with Samantha today's guest, recording a new
introduction to this episode because a lot has happened since
we recorded it only a couple of weeks ago. Normally,
this is a history podcast in the way that our
subjects tying to current events is left up to the
listeners imagination. But this is kind of an exceptional moment
because when we recorded this episode, which is about abortion

(00:22):
access and direct action abortion access, specifically the Jain collective. Well,
I guess you all saw that when you saw the
title of the episode when you download it. The we
we kind of joke about, I think during the course
of recording about not joke what we say, Well, the
overturning of Roe v. Wade is a potential threat. Um,
And since then we've obviously all seen that there's a
leaked document that says, well, it's not a potential threat,

(00:44):
is a and almost certainty that is happening. The Supreme
Court intends to overthrow Roe v. Wade. Um, Samantha, do
you have a better overview than that? So here is
what we have been able to read and what we
know the end this late document, they have already voted
to overturn roe v. Wade, and they did it through

(01:07):
the Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization,
which is based out of Mississippi, which also is a
trigger state. And if you don't know what trigger state is,
it means they are ready to go the minute Roe v.
Wade is overturned, that there will be an immediate ban
on abortion the second it happens. So they are called
the trigger states. And there are several will mention that

(01:29):
in a minute um and Mississippi is one of those.
So in this brief that we read from Judge Alito,
who is the one that has written this up, it
is ninety eight pages long, with like forty something pages
of an appendix to talk about his argument about why
Roe v. Wade should be overturned. And he begins his statement,

(01:50):
and I think it's something that we need to talk
about because the language in itself is going to be
repeated throughout. I'm not gonna read it, I swear to God,
I'm not. I cried. I screamed at the computer when
I was reading this and dissecting it, and I want
to vomit as we are talking about it. But in it,
he writes, uh, Yeah. He begins the statement with talking
about how divisive this issue is and as a profound

(02:13):
moral issue. So he is allowing this conversation to take
into a whole load of feelings and automatically place what
he feels his morality and his own morality onto this.
So that's how it begins. Um. And then he talks
about the fact that the Constitution and we hold that
Row and Casey, which is the Casey versus Planned Parenthood

(02:34):
which happened in the nineties that helped keep up with
the pro v wade um that it must be overruled.
The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such
right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the
one on which the defenders of Row and Casey now
chiefly rely, the due process clause of the fourteenth Amendment.

(02:54):
So in that clause, just for people. I have a
feeling that so many people, the people listening to this
are so smart to me, like, would you shut up
and move on? But just in case, just in case,
is that privacy, the right to privacy which is not
necessarily mentioned, but it is based in this And they
took that language and said, yes, this is about privacy.
So that's very important, as we know, because it goes

(03:14):
to a flew of other unconstitutional constitutional things. So he
talks about that, and that he continues on that provision
has been held to guarantee some rights that are not
mentioned in the Constitution, but many such must be quote
deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition and implicitly

(03:35):
in the concept of ordered liberty. So ordered liberty as
well as nation's history is going to be all throughout
this brief. His whole stance is that because it was
never mentioned in the Constitution, that it was never ever
a constitutional thing and should not be allowed as a
constitutional thing, and that it wasn't even mentioned to be

(03:57):
a right until nineteen seventy three. And because of that,
this is not a constitutional issue. And the other part
to this is that ordered liberty. So when we talk
about ordered liberty, this is when he is saying that
he and a certain amount of people have the right
to tell you what your liberties are, and they get
to tell you what is orderly. So this is why

(04:19):
we're talking about how this is going to overturn it
because he's able to make this a state's right thing,
in which he said that's how it's always been, that's
how it's always should be. Roe v. Wade overstepped because
they took something out of context from an eighteen sixty
idea of this constitutional conversation. So where we are today, Yes,

(04:43):
there's back and forth right now about it's not that
big of a deal because the states can govern. It's
not an outright ban technically, Um, what we we're talking
about earlier, what I was talking about earlier with the
trigger state, the states are Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi,

(05:08):
North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. Um. And even though
in my state of Georgia, they don't necessarily have a
trigger law, yet, what they have done is come at
the abortion clinics and abortion facilities, um, telling them go
ahead and get ready. And so a lot of the
clinics have stopped taking appointments and canceled appointments at this

(05:28):
point in time. So it's very very dangerous. And where
we are, even though it's not necessarily a trigger state,
those who are sitting in most likely more liberal left
leaning are quote unquote okay, Um, it is those who
are what would be the red states that are could
be heavily heavily affected. Yeah, and what people I think

(05:49):
often forget when they're like sitting comfortably in their blue
states or whatever, is that, you know, the margins that
we're talking about. The difference between the red state and
blue state is actually not incredibly dramatic. It's not like
the red state are all like you people who want
to get rid of this or something like that it
might be or even well, I guess actually abortion itself,
what is it like, Americans? You want to keep it?

(06:12):
And in the state of Georgia as well. So even
though people think of us as just like the you know,
silly red state, that we proved them wrong in the
last few elections. And I know this. I am with
with everyone when I say this government is bullshit and
there's some things to be so many things changed, and
I am frustrated to the core because nothing like some

(06:33):
things are better and this is better than it was.
But at the same time, what happened in really really
fucked up everything else, and what we are seeing is
the detriment of that. However, it's not a fixal I
understand this, but what we're saying is in the state
of Georgia, the majority of the voters, who are typically

(06:53):
women of color and people of color, are all about
our current senators and those who are pushing to that point.
But jerry mandering has made it almost impossible, as well
as voter suppression UM to get to move and push
it to the right direction. Nearly, I do say nearly,
And it's frustrating because yes, we are going to be affective,
even though Georgia is not a trigger state as we

(07:15):
were talking about earlier. Obviously he's already had he being governor,
Kemp has already put in the sixth week ban and
just kind of sitting in a court right now and
if the things change is over yeah, well, and honestly,
the I mean, besides the fact that we have an
unelected shadow council that makes all the decisions about what
happens with our bodies. Really the point of this episode

(07:38):
that you all are about to listen to UM is
about direct action abortion access and how even when the
law is not on your side, this is still going
to happen, and how can we make it happen as
well as possible, as safely as possible. There's also, unfortunately,
other effects that could happen beyond just this. I was
talking to my my lawyer, the amazing Moira Meltzer Cohen,

(08:00):
who said that we need to be prepared for all
of the pannumbra cases, which are cases that put forth
the idea that um that constitutional due process implies the
right to privacy. This was called the pannumbra basically during
Griswold versus Connecticut, which is the case that legalized birth control,
and so basically saying that they had a pannumbra, a

(08:21):
sort of shadow that implied rights to privacy, and lawyers
on both sides have been arguing that this is a
terrible and flimsy legal standing for a very long time.
But other things that rely on that include, as I mentioned,
birth control, but also gay sex or really any sex
that isn't for procreation could theoretically be criminalized once again.

(08:46):
And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna link
to a lot of resources in the show notes encourage
people to to look into things, look into ways to contribute,
look into ways to if if you have your own needs, um,
how you can meet those directly if you or how
help other people meet their needs directly through lots of
different ways. And for those who are in the point,
I know people are filling a time crunch because there

(09:07):
is a time crunch. Abortion is still legal and accessible. Uh.
The home abortion pill is FDA proved to be sent
by mail, So if you need to do that, do that.
That is still accessible and it's still around. And we
do see organizations that are coming through kind of like
the jan Collective did UM on a better, bigger level,

(09:28):
which I love every bit of that. That's kind of
that silver lining. And again, yeah, things that we'd see
such as birth control, we are seeing things in play.
Missouri and Louisiana has decided to put in a clause
in their trigger loss that includes i u d s
being illegal, So that means someone who has an i
U D which has become very effective, uh maybe prosecuted um.

(09:52):
As well as the fact that those who are going
through things like topic pregnancy, which is when again I
think we talked about it later, it gets uh, the
egg is the fertilized egg is stuck in your Phillipian
two first and kills a person can kill, a person
damaged severrely. This will be if you try to extract
that that will be considered abortion as well. So this
is why these laws are so important that we pay

(10:12):
tidgion to it. Again, that privacy clause. That's what they're
coming after, and that includes gay marriage, that includes consensual
adults sex, that includes so much more um. And that's
why this is so damn scary. Yeah, and we'll leave
it to the listeners imagination about the methods that might

(10:33):
be necessary when the democratic process has failed. But one
thing also will say is that I love this episode
that you're all about to hear, but don't listen to
it to determine how to self manage abortions. Look elsewhere
for information about how to self manage abortions. Medicated abortions
are readily available, at least at the moment, and are

(10:54):
substantially better than what is available and what was available
to the heroes of today's episode. So what can people do?
Like if people have if people want to donate, what
would you be? What would you suggest? So I don't
want to give you specific organizations because it affects different
people different in different places. But one of the things

(11:14):
I would say is planned parenthood is not necessarily where
you should donate, Maybe start looking at specific clinics and
funds that you are appreciative of or think that they
can do a good job. Research who you're donating to. Also,
if you're in a safe state, as we said, and
I'm going to call the safe states, I don't know
if that's what they're called, We're just gonna quote it,
like in one of the states where the government is

(11:35):
allowing and talking about, Yeah, abortion, it should be part
of health care. Then maybe look to the trigger states
that we mentioned earlier and helped donate to those states
because they are in deep danger as I said before,
about losing everything very quickly, very fast. Yeah, And the
people I've been talking to and asking for advice about
where to put people put your energy in terms of

(11:56):
organizations to support, have also suggested that abortion funds are
specifically the place to go. And then also one other
one that again my my lawyer friend recommended, is called
the repro Legal Defense Fund, which is a fund that
supports people who are investigated, arrested, or prosecuted for self
managed abortion or for helping end their own or someone
else's pregnancy. And so that is a thing that legal

(12:19):
defense is going to have to become part of all
of this as well, unfortunately. Absolute um. And if you
kind of want to know what is impacted and how
you can impact better, you can also go to the
National Network of Abortion Funds and they kind of have
a list of who is in need of services and
what type of services are being used for what funds,
and that could give you a kind of at least
an audited sheet of who you're giving to what they're doing.

(12:41):
And here's the episode. Hello and welcome to Cool People
Who Did Cool Stuff, the podcast that needs no introduction. No, no, Margaret,
it needs an introduction. Okay, Welcome to Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff, the podcast that apparently needs an introduction.
Every week I'm going to bring you a new story

(13:02):
of cool people who did cool stuff, thus the title.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. And this week I have
on Samantha McVeigh, who is the host of the also
stuff related podcast stuff Mom Never told you. Samantha, How
are you doing good? Thank you for having me on
the show. And ya, welcome to the fam and all
the things. So excited to have you as a part
of our network family. Yeah, I'm really excited. Okay, So um,

(13:28):
I've also Sophie on the call. Sophie is the producer.
How are you doing Superheroes? Sophie over here doing doing,
I'm doing Okay. That is that is the that is
the theme of whatever year it is we're doing. It's
not real. It does not exist, especially since what we're

(13:52):
recording will make no sense to people who are listening
to it twenty five years from now. Gosh, yeah, I
hope so, but so Meantha, I'm wondering, how do you
feel about reproductive rights? Would you say that overall your
pro or anti you deciding what happens with your body?
You know, as someone who does have a uterus and
feels the fact that I am a pretty smart and

(14:14):
capable woman, um that I should be allowed to have
my choices, and that being dictated by sis white men
telling me that they need control over my body because
they're afraid of the vagina in general and uterus and
the power of the uterus. I'm muna say I'm pro
everything about it, and let's go ahead and say, Nabra
get out of it. Well, not a long winded answer, no, no,

(14:39):
this is great. It would be a very different in
short podcast if your answer was wildly different from that.
I have really sure non because I was like Margaret,
I have this really great person that I want to
have on for this specific topic comes on and it's like, oh, yes,
you know how I feel. I used to. Can I

(15:00):
tell you this. I grew up in a very conservative
For the listeners who are familiar with me, I grew
up in a very conservative uh town. My parents are white.
I'm adopted, and they're very conservative people who um have
always voted on moralities, including anti choice a lifestyle. And

(15:24):
for the longest time I was told because I was adopted,
I should be anti choice or I wouldn't have existed.
This whole like guilt trip onto me about that, making
it seem like I was in the wrong for say,
but wait, the biggest conversation is you're telling me that
you really feel like you can't trust me as a
as an adult, as a person, as an individual to

(15:44):
make my own choices in life, um and that it
needed to be dictated by a government. But nothing else does. Okay,
But it took me a long time to get out
of that headspin. Because you know, you want to acclimate
and be a be a part of whatever your society
or can unity you're in doing me a while to
figure out, Oh god, that's growth, what is happening, you know,

(16:04):
and what kind of control had it on there? So honestly,
if you'd asked me that twenty years ago, we would
have had a different conversation. Okay, that I mean, that's
fair and like it. You know, there's a lot of
indoctrination that we all feel. I'm almost sort of lucky
and that like I was always just like such one
of the bad kids that I was pretty young when

(16:25):
like my friends started having abortions. Um, and I'm so
grateful that they had that opportunity because a lot of
them were able to like get out of the situations
they were in, you know, um, because they had that access.
But well, today's heroes have come to similar conclusions that
we have about being pro people deciding what to do

(16:47):
with their own bodies and uh, because okay, people were
gonn talk about fucking cool And I'm gonna be talking
about direct action abortion access and in particular, we're going
to focus on one crew of women out of Chicago,
the Notorious Jane Collective. Oh this is one of my favorites.
Come on, I'm ready, let's go and so I think

(17:11):
actually the podcast that you're on, I don't think you're
the host of this particular episode, but the podcast you
you run actually didn't interview with the founder of Jane
Heather Booth. Um, I just want to acknowledge that. And
so it was it was freaking cool. And I listened
to that while I was getting ready for this one
and before I start getting too deep into it. So
I'm going to talk about abortion, right and so I'm
going to be talking about how it is and isn't

(17:31):
a woman's issue in the modern context. Um, I want
to acknowledge upfront that abortion is not just a woman's issue.
A plenty of people who are not women can get pregnant.
It might not want to be whether that's some trans men,
some non binary people, and some intersex people who can
all get pregnant. Uh, And I will I will say
that one day it's as likely as not that some
trans woman is going to get pregnant. And there's this

(17:52):
meme floating around that I really like, is that what
will really drive the right wing into a rage is
and when the first Trands woman gets pregnant. It's when
the first Trands woman chooses to have an abortion. But
but I also will say that, um, so it's not
just a women's issue, but it is also a women's
issue as well, and I don't want to cut that
out of the conversation either. And I spent a while

(18:12):
trying to figure out to phrase all this right because
it's a kind of a moving target to understand how
we talk about this stuff. The So I would say
that the history of the limitation of abortion access is
entirely entangled with the history of misogyny and with controlling
women's bodies and denying us agency. And there's there's plenty
of women who can't get pregnant, whether it's because of age, surgeries,
hormone shifts, the way we were born. But something doesn't

(18:35):
need to affect like every single woman to be a
woman's issue, to be something that affects all of us,
because patriarchal society wanting to control women's bodies doesn't stop
with the women who can get pregnant, right, Um, they
want to control everybody. So I guess what I want
to say to to anyone's listening, um, And just to
kind of provide the context that I'm coming from, is

(18:57):
that when I'm talking about abortion access. I'm sure I
talk about it from both of these angles at once.
U two sort of intersecting axes of oppression is people
with the ability to give birth and people who are women,
and which is very often a intersection, right, but not always.
And then of course we're talking about ship that happened
like fifty years ago, right, And so a lot of
the existing language about the people that we're going to

(19:19):
be talking about will be referring to people as women
and will be approaching it primarily from this lens of
a women's issue. And I'm trying to well, I'm going
to try and be more directly inclusive throughout. I'm not
trying to cast judgment on these people who framed it
in the ways that they understood it is the best
way to frame it. Um. So that's my disclaimer. It's

(19:40):
been more time on than like the rest of the
that's not true. You have to do though, Yeah, okay,
So abortion and legality, right, Abortion has been a contentious
issue since forever, and and sometimes it's about morality, like
like on an individual level, a lot of people against
abortion because of what they consider morality, and some religious

(20:00):
groups teach that life begins at conception or at the quickening,
which is when a pregnant person can first feel the
baby moving um, which is usually about halfway through the pregnancy.
It happens I guess a couple of weeks earlier in pregnancies,
after the first pregnancy that a person has. Other people
claim that life begins at viability, which is when the
fetus would be able to survive outside the womb, which
is usually around seven months, and then other religions and

(20:22):
other concepts and faiths teach that life begins at birth,
and it isn't as like simple as like this religion
believes this. This religion believes that there's not like one
answer about like how Christianity believes or whatever. Right, It's
all different and changing at different times. I also, frankly
don't care on some level like um, like whether or
not I am or I'm not a religious person, Like

(20:43):
I have no interest in letting religion dictate the laws
of society. So there's this case that a lot of
people make that the restriction of abortion has nothing to
do with morality or religion, but instead about the control
of bodies, right of women's bodies and and women's bodies.
And then like by extension all of the people who
are in the periphery of womanhood and I don't know,

(21:07):
it's like and sometimes they're really even open about this
desire where it's like literally just about controlling reproduction. A
lot of countries they say that motherhood is like patriotic, right,
because really, at the end of the day, it's about this, like, well,
we want more babies to throw into the you know,
gristmill of labor and war and ship. If you're looking

(21:28):
at the Q and on level of U of the
mom groups is an interesting fight they have and a
part of the solution, and part of that fight is
to birth their own babies, meaning like typically white children,
and making sure that that theny, it continues in this
big all fight in the Q and on war, the

(21:50):
whole rabbit hole in itself. I wish I didn't know that.
Thanks for telling me this terrible thing that's happening. Oh
my god, it's like it doesn't surprise me at don't no,
it doesn't surprise me at all. But I'm like, great,
of course they're doing that. God damn it. Yeah, I'm
so sorry. No, no, no, no, I know it's there.
I will tell you. I probably shouldn't given you that
heads up is on our show on stuff, Mom've never

(22:13):
told you I am the pessimist. Okay, okay, post that
brings out the unfun facts, so apologies and advanced No, no, no,
that's perfect because I'm trying to do this, Like I mean,
it's ironic. I picked this name kill Joy and then
I like dedicate my life to try and spread revolutionary hope.
But I love that. I love that. I love that
we have this balance today. It's perfect. Unfun facts with

(22:36):
Samantha mcveay show Welcome. You should have a show. I
want you should be Samanthe. You need to start this up.
You're the creator of all shows. Let's do this. I'm in,
I'm in. Okay. So, the first European government to to
legalize abortion was Revolutionary Russia as far as I can research,

(22:59):
and in October nine they legalized abortion. And some people
will talk about how they did from a feminist point
of view. A lot of other stuff will say they
did it because, um, they were all starving and so
they just were like it's okay to not have babies
for this moment, right, Um. And I think there's a
lot of a strong case to be made for that
that they didn't actually some of them cared, some of

(23:19):
them didn't care. I don't know. Because they also got
rid of abortion again various points. And then they had
like huge pro natal PR campaigns, and then of course
Stalin made it illegal again because he's Stalin and he
only does bad things. Um and okay, the the law
that he passed on June six is the most Soviet

(23:40):
name I've ever heard, which is the Decree on the
Prohibition of Abortions, the improvement of Material Aid to women
in childbirth, the establishment of state assistants to parents of
large families, and the extension of lying in homes, nursery schools,
and kindergartens, the tight you know of criminal punishments and
the nonpayment of alimony, and on certain modifications on levorce
legislation that rolls right off a tongue. That was amazing.

(24:01):
It was so beautiful. Good jobs on certain modifications in
divorce legislation, all right. I was just making sure I
got cool cool obviously. And then one of the other
times that abortion was legalized in Europe, I actually think

(24:21):
was really cool and not like, oh, maybe why are
they doing this? But U during the Spanish Civil War
and I guess probably nine or so, I didn't I
don't remember the actual year. And an anarchist became the
first man, the first woman minister of health and like
one of the first women ministers in government in Europe.
This is anarchist woman. Federica Montsani became the Minister of

(24:44):
Health of the Second Spanish Republic and she legalized abortion
because it was the right thing to do. And then
Franco uh successfully invaded the special Second Spanish Republic and
it was a whole war thing that happened, and it
didn't really go very well. Um, and Spain got fascism
instead of legalized abortion. So close to getting it right, no, um,

(25:08):
almost like I don't don't know where to stick this.
But one of the things that I think about a
lot when I'm talking about how like why are they
making abortion illegal? Is it morality or is it social control?
And I think that as soon as you start throwing
birth control into it too, it becomes so obvious that
it's not about moralities, about social control because all of
the same stuff that's illegalizing abortion is like, you know,
I'm going to do a whole episode about the birth

(25:29):
control fight at some point. But um, it's just this
whole parallel thing where basically they're like, right, you shouldn't
have sex, that doesn't make babies, that's wrong. It's because
they just which is by the way, a new headline
that I've seen all of a sudden coming back around
from the right wing. Um conversation is the same narrative
of you shouldn't have sex, it's from making children, you

(25:51):
can't handle having children, you shouldn't be having sex like
this new I've seen it trending and I was like,
what is happening? Are we bringing that back again? Is
this really the nine eight, eight, the seventies sixties however,
which by the way, abortion didn't happen until like the
nineteen sixties in the US, Like why are we? Why
are we back here? But yeah, it's I agree with you,
this whole level of like when we really look at it, obviously,

(26:13):
that's the conversation we've had about is it really your
pro life? Are you just anti choice? Like that's the conversation. Totally, No,
totally yeah, because yeah, you're literally anti people choosing to
have like you know, saying consensual whatever the phrasing is.
The safe sex that's consentual and happy and all that ship.
But then, okay, so when I'm I'm doing all this

(26:33):
like preface stuff, I'm gonna get to Jane soon. Um,
a lot of feminists, including today's heroes, they weren't necessarily
even just fighting for the legalization of abortion. One of
the cases that I want to make, because it kept
coming up as I was researching these people and a
lot of the other abortionists at the time, is especially
the feminist and the women involved, was that they were
fighting for the de medicalization of reproductive health. Basically, they

(26:53):
were fighting to take reproductive health like birth control, abortion, pregnancy,
and birth out of the page riarchical field of western medicine,
and to have direct control over their own bodies, which
doesn't necessarily mean like d I Y at home abortions,
but it means abortions performed by like competent practitioners, whether
they're in the medical field or not. And there's this

(27:15):
this argument that my friends have made very convincingly to
me that I tend to believe that the a lot
of the ship that's going on in the witch hunts
in Europe in medieval Europe were basically a lot of
it was about, like, here these people who are health
practitioners who are not tied into the sort of male
and academic field of health that we're trying to build,

(27:36):
and so we should murder them all, um, because we
want to be the ones controlling everyone's bodies instead of
like all of these women. And uh and actually a
lot of I think gay men and other people involved
in sort of like swept up in them whatever periphery
of women. I don't know how to describe this. And
so it's just it's hard to control population people's bodies
if there's all these like wild and free practitioners running

(27:58):
around helping people control their own bodies. Um. And one
of the things that that's so interesting about this argument
is that it basically means that the medicalization of reproductive
health was a violent process that required mass murder. Um.
You just killed all the practitioners, as you probably guessed.
Anyone listening to this. I'm not here to convince you
to be pro choice, because I'm assuming that you are

(28:19):
anyone who's listening to this, and if you're not, you should.
Maybe you'll get something out of this episode. Maybe listening
to it would be good for you. Maybe you'll just
hate me. That's fine. Um. And because I'm not really
here to like balance the moral weight of abortion today,
I just want to like celebrate heroic at us women
who refuse to go along with a society that told
them they couldn't control their own reproductive health. And so

(28:42):
I want to celebrate the Jain collective. Man, I'm proud.
Sometime around there's a lot of arguments about exactly what
year had happened. I'm actually the person who does know
is alive, but lots of people writing lots of different
things on the Internet and in books because everything doesn't
match up with the anyway. In is a white Jewish

(29:03):
socialist student in Chicago named Heather Booth who got a
call from her friend and her friend was despondent. His
sister was pregnant and she didn't know what to do.
Abortion was illegal in every state in the US at
that point, with a few medical exceptions here, and they're
different in different places, and Heather hadn't given much thought

(29:23):
to abortion access until that moment, but she was like,
all right, I'll see what I can do, And basically,
just with that willingness to step up when someone needed help,
she started one of the most radical and interesting abortion
access groups in history, which is a lesson to everyone
that sometimes you just step up when the call to
adventure happens. This isn't part of my script. I'me Griffin badly.

(29:47):
I don't like that. UM, but yeah, I agree like
that we're seeing we're seeing it happen. Unfortunately, as there
has become evident that we're back into this fight again,
we've almost like started over and it feels like we're
star over into this point, and funds are being created
to make sure that if it does happen, if it's
outright band and I know we're gonna talk about this

(30:09):
probably a bit, that we will have an underground network
essentially to continue to help the people who need this access.
And I know it happened in Chile too, UM and
Poland to where the neighboring countries have set up these
funds as Poland has passed one of the strictest abortion
restrictions that they're now making an underground essentially UH network

(30:32):
for them to get access when they need it by
giving as many people UH traveled UH reimbursement as well
as places to stay UM to get in that plan
be all of those things. So yeah, I think unfortunately,
I'm so excited about talking about this story, and I'm
so glad you're bringing this up because we are repeating
history and we may have to look at this as

(30:54):
an example of all right, y'all, let's get let let's
get it together. We've got to do something and become
radical essentially. Yeah, No, I I what are you talking about?
This is a history podcast. History doesn't have lessons for
the present, right, we don't have to learn history. Yeah,
it's just random that I picked this topic. No, I
really like and please continue with the how it ties

(31:16):
into everything, because like, oh, you're speaking to my soul.
So good. Okay. So Heather Booth was already a radical
right uh. In nineteen sixty four, she joined Freedom Summer,
which is when activists flooded to Mississippi to defy the
KKK and register black voters and set up schools and libraries,

(31:37):
which didn't go smoothly. At least seven people were murdered
by right wing forces, including black residents and both white
and black civil rights activists from from outside the area,
and something like seventy black homes, churches, and businesses were
bombed or burned, eighty activists were beaten, and more than

(31:58):
a thousand activists ended up arrested, including Heather Booth. During
all of this, it also wasn't like it's like, it
wasn't perfect and Rosie either. I mean, I just described
all the horrible stuff that happened, but um, it also
led to some resentment, at least according to some of
the sources I read. I suspect that people had a
lot of different opinions about what happened. Some local black
residents felt that those kind of a paternalistic white northern

(32:19):
savior thing that had just happened, and they weren't necessarily
excited about it. But I believe that that is, you know,
people have very different opinions about things, and it's it's
sort of a critical, if complicated chapter of the civil
rights movement, and and how their Booth was was part
of it. And I think this is also important because
we it's always important to talk about how all of
the people fighting for all these things always come from
intersections or believe in intersectionality, even if that term didn't

(32:42):
exist yet. You know, like I did another episode once
on on abolitionists and realized that all the abolitionists were feminists,
and all the feminist re abolitionists, not universally, but the
ones who were cool enough to make it into my podcast.
And so anyway, so it's not coming out of nowhere this,
you know. So she's back in Chicago after that summer,
and she was helping form feminist groups where the where

(33:04):
women talked about the issues facing them, a process that
a few years later got more widespread and be called
consciousness raising groups. Was a big part of feminist movement
in the United States in the sixties and seventies. Um.
And this is probably how she ended up being the
person her friend thought to call. But that's that's just conjecture.
I don't know why a friend called her. So she
gets the call, and she asks around the medical community

(33:26):
within the civil rights movement, basically being like, you know,
who can perform an abortion on my friend? You know
who wants to commit a felony really quick? And the
doctor she eventually reached, as best as I can tell,
was a surgeon named TRM. Howard, who gets left out
of this history sometimes and not always, which a shame
because he's a really fucking interesting guy. He was more
famous as a civil rights leader than he was as

(33:48):
a doctor. He was one of the most prominent non
socialist voices in the movement. Most of the civil rights
movement was substantially further left than than this guy. But
you know his black man fighting for civil rights? Uh,
I don't know. So. So during the Emmett Till case,
which again I'm gonna wander to tell you about cool
people have to say about all these horrible things that happened. Um,
Emmetti was a fourteen year old black kid who was

(34:10):
really murdered by a white mob in Mississippi in and
during that case, Howard helped run the search for evidence,
and I believe that's where he became more prominent within
the civil rights movement. And during that trial, discriminatory gun
laws wouldn't let him own weapons, but he he did anyway,
And he kept a pistol in a secret compartment in
his car, and he slept with a Thompson machine gun
at the foot of his bed. Um. And there's this

(34:30):
whole history that I also will want hopefully one day cover,
uh about hitting Within the civil rights movement, there was
actually a huge move Even if the political action was
largely non violent, people weren't people were fine with self defense,
and a lot of that movement was armed. Um, so
he was very politically engaged. He runs for Republican. He

(34:52):
runs as a Republican for Congress in nineteen fifty eight.
He doesn't win. But he also fought against the criminalization
of sex work, which rules. And he was a surgeon
and a legal abortionist, which he considered part of his
civil rights work, which also just rules. And he was
arrested in nineteen nineteen sixty five for providing abortions in Chicago,
although he was never convicted. So Heather Booth reaches out

(35:12):
to him and he's like, yeah, bring your friend's sister
to my office. So word gets around quickly that Heather
Booth has the hook up with safe abortionists because obviously,
regardless of law, people are still getting abortions in the
United States at this point. Um yeah, um, I'm shocked,
but it's weird. It's almost like anyway, right, just because

(35:35):
it's outlawed. Yeah, we thought we got rid of that.
It definitely stopped everything for sure. I didn't make everything
else dangerous for the low socioeconomic status and easy access
for the rich people who still kept getting abortions. What wait,
did you read my script? Did I share it? We're

(35:55):
just in tune. We're not saying as we're best friends. Yeah,
me to remind people I'm their best friend when they
don't know. That's the name of your podcast should be, Uh,
your best friend tells you boutad Obviously that's the perfect title. Yeah, yeah, totally. Um,

(36:19):
we're professional. I love. I have to say that every
few hours, just to remind myself and others around me.
Speaking of being a professional, Margaret, do you know what
time it is? Is it time to tell you about
how great it is to eat potatoes and other healthy
food direct from gardens instead of and how everyone should

(36:40):
grow their own food, and how this podcast is sponsored
by the concept of self reliance and inter reliance among
healthy communities and no other sponsors at all, except for
a few that might slip in after I stopped talking. Yes,
here's some ads, and we're back. I hope you enjoyed

(37:03):
those ads. I hope all of them were for really
positive things and none of them were for bad things,
which is definitely the way that advertising works. I was
gonna say, if they're not, it's Robert Evans fault. I
can say that that's true. Everything is Robert. Anything you
don't like is Robert's fault. That's how I lived my life.
Robert is in charge of making all the decisions about

(37:24):
advertising for them now or again. If you have problems
with it, you should hit him up on Twitter twe
Director of Tweets, and your emails to him las him,
not me. Thank you. All right. So it's hard to
keep stats on a legal ship. For some weird reason,
people don't like necessarily always telling the government when they

(37:45):
do a legal ship UM. But one five study estimated
that anywhere between two hundred thousand and a one million
two hundred thousand abortions were happening every year in the
United States in ninety five. Around nineteen seventy the UM,
which is still three years before Roe v. Wade, the
claimed number is more like one to two million. But

(38:07):
who knows abortions are happening. Rich women get the hook
up from their private doctors, or they fly to the UK,
where abortion law is generally more lenient UM, and for
less privileged folks it's a lot less rosy. The underground
abortion scene was like a mixed match of like sketchy
grifters and then well, meaning incompetent doctors, but you didn't
necessarily have a way to determine which one you're going

(38:29):
to get. And almost all of them are men, and
a lot of them are also connected to organized crime,
including some of the good ones. I think some of
the good ones were just like outright criminals attached to
organized crime. Yeah, it was really interesting to see that layer,
as when you start like finding out these backgrounds, you're
like wow, wow, okay, okay, Yeah, they're gonna come up

(38:55):
a couple of times in this story intrigue, although not
as much as they could because some of the people
involved in this are all still alive, right, and so
I'm not trying to make conjectures about certain things. Let's
not in danger anybody today. Yeah, Okay. So, as an
interesting note, Chicago actually had one of the only women

(39:16):
doctors that I found when I was looking at women abortionists,
but pre Chine. I'm sure there were more, but um
Dr Josephine Gabbler performed more than eighteen thousand abortions throughout
the nineteen thirties, and her patients were referred to or
from almost two hundred different medical facilities, and basically she
would pay a kickback to all the like medical facilities
that would send her patients. Um, they would get a

(39:37):
quarter of the abortion fee because everything is sketchy in
crime Land. But she was also a I believe, a
safe and competent abortionist. And then in nineteen forties she
sold her practice to her receptionist, Adam Martin, and she
takes over the practice, but she actually hires outside practitioners
to perform the actual abortions because she was a receptionist,
not a surgeon or whatever. Um. But in the nineteen

(39:59):
forties and fifties, abort and laws started being enforced more strenuously.
It was always illegal, but it was like kind of
a lot of times a lot of places, I was like, well,
you don't kill anyone. We aren't necessarily going to do anything.
But then fifties, unfortunately, right when this receptionist takes over,
abortion law gets enforced more strenuously, and which of course

(40:22):
shutters the safest abortion clinics in the country and does
nothing to stop women from meeting abortions. So Heather Booth
is compiling all the names of the reasonable providers that
she can run across, basically keeping track of who could
be trusted to be safe, both like kind of legally safe,
like I mean not it's illegal, but you know, to
be careful, also to be medically safe, and also to

(40:43):
be sexually safe, because there's a whole problem with abortion
providers creeping on the patients in their care, which obviously
legalization didn't stop. But um, you know, that's why even
when things are legal, we still need people to advocate
for us. And so more and more people start coming

(41:05):
to her for referrals, but she starts getting busier. In
nineteen sixty seven, she marries Paul Booth, who's an activist
She met at a sit in demonstration against the draft
in the Vietnam War. Because again, everything is intersectional. He
went on to help found Students for Democratic Society in
nineteen sixty nine. By nineteen sixty nine, they had two kids,
and she had a job, and she was in grad
school and she couldn't handle running like underground crime ring

(41:26):
all by herself. Um, so she called up a bunch
of other activists women and got them in on her
underground crime ring. And that's how Jane started. And Jane
wasn't called Jane. It was the not quite as bad
as a Soviet name, but it was the Abortion Council
in Service of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union a little shorter, yeah,
and they were like, you know, just let's just call
it Jane. They mostly called it the Service within their

(41:49):
own ranks apparently, um, but they picked Jane to be
like kind of like the every woman name, right, like
you know, we're all Jane or whatever, like Jane Doe.
And history remembers that as the Jain Collective, which is
a better name than the Abortion Council Service in the
Chicago Women's Libration Union. It's a cooler name. It's definitely
like rings, like, oh, this is a good mystery novel.

(42:10):
Let's go oh good point. Yeah, no, totally yeah. And
then they get the sense of intrigue in your life.
And if you're going to go do a crime, right,
you should get some intrigue in your life out of
it. It It shouldn't be like the cold like Bureau of
Crime where you like go in and they're like, please
fill out a form for the crime you would like
to commit, and you're like and they're like we need

(42:31):
it and triplicate. No, it should be fucking like exciting
the collective. I mean, come on, is the Jain Collective.
So obviously they're badass espionage parts of to this somehow
in like secret coded languages and all that kind of stuff.
Come on, you gotta be good. I can't wait till
we can talk about more of the underground parts of

(42:51):
the history. But I am not wishing. I wouldn't wish
them all along happy lives. So okay, So they spend
months planning out the whole thing before they launch. They're
trying to be really careful with their crime ring they
and also it's not just because it's crime. They actually
they're doing this because they care, right, And so they're like,
all right, what are we going to do if one

(43:12):
of our patients has a medical emergency? What are we
going to do if someone dies? What are we going
to do? If one of us is arrested? What are
we going to do if one of our doctors is arrested?
They like mapped all this out for months. They mapped
it all very carefully, and then they opened and they
decided to keep minimal records and have different volunteers handle
patient contact and doctor contact because again crime. And they

(43:32):
also got an answering machine, which is like a weird
it's only notable to me because it's like a nice
visual detail because I think at the time it's like
a huge real to real machine. And so then and
then they put up ads in all the student and
underground newspapers in Chicago and they say pregnant don't want
to be called Jane. It's so snazzy, like I know,
I know, like it was a whole system. Yeah, I

(43:55):
love it. It's kind of like they're trying to if
you do know, doing war times, I guess they were
doing the messages, his telegrams are trying to decode things.
It was this level and it was phenomenal. Yeah, and
we will hopefully never need it again. But it's an
interesting anecdote about history. Um, it'll make me cry, come on, yeah, okay. So,

(44:18):
so when they first started, they worked with a bunch
of different abortionists, and slowly they started using one guy
more and more. And some accounts call him Nick and
some accounts call him Mike, and all of the accounts
put his name in in like quotes. I gonna say
they put in air quotes. But that's what I'm doing,
is the air quotes. You often see it because Nick
Mike is a crime guy, like that's his thing, through

(44:40):
and through. Like one account just refers to him as
like a con man over and over again, but it's
a very positive account about like their con man, right.
And some accounts say he was a mafia abortionist, and
some accounts say he was independent and on the run
from both cops and the mafia. I straight up don't
know what to believe. If you've heard one way or
the other, I'd be curious. But yeah, I did hear
a to the mafia at one point in time. But again,

(45:02):
like that's kind of like, doesn't make me make it
more intriguing that this is what's happened, or doesn't make
it more sinister, right, Well, what's going to make it
both more intriguing and sinister is that at least one
account wants you to know that Nick Mike is the
sexiest man alive. Okay, wait, I missed that. As much
research as I've done and trying to get this stuff

(45:23):
that I did not see. So now like, well I
gotta have a picture, come on, but mark photo. No,
I don't think there's pictures of quote. I don't know.
We don't actually have an identity for him because he
wasn't around but they wanted to know that he is
a babe, Like I need to know who said this.
So it wasn't collective something. It was one of the

(45:45):
Jane collective. I can't remember at the top of my head.
It wasn't Jody because it was someone who would go
and meet with him. Um. And it's in one of
her accounts. It's from an interview. I think it's in
the There's a zine that came out in like two
thousand three or four called Jane and that has a
lot of the interviews and ship and that was where
I pulled the Sexiest Man Alive part from and that
that stays in my memory. You know that is amazing. Yeah,

(46:06):
I'm always looking for the subtext, you know, like like
who's who's sucking who? And um, like this has become
a drug, Like not only has it become like an
espionage things, it's kind of becoming a soap opera or
something alone. Those lies for someone have to put that
narrative in, like he's one of the sexiest men. I'm like,
how sexy I have I have a feeling because it

(46:27):
was the sexties seventies he had the mustache. I know
he did he had to have the mustache, right, totally. Yeah,
probably in long hair, you know, like but not like
full hippie long hair, just like kind of a yeah.
I was describing this to one of my friends and
they were like, oh, he probably had like a leather
jacket and said, chow a lot, you know, um, And

(46:47):
I'm not convinced by the chow part. I'm not convinced.
I think my friend, I've been watching a lot of
is any Wizard That's amazing and that's turned out. I
really wish I don't want like any like real because
I don't want to focus on him because he and
himself was whatever. But the fact that this was like
a narrative around him is phenomenal. Yeah, totally. And when

(47:08):
they would go beat him, at least for a while,
I don't know if he stayed this way all the time.
He would only meet one Jane at a time because
theoretically he wanted to avoid conspiracy charges, and if you
have three or more people talking about a crime, then
you can get conspiracy charges. And I'm not trying to
say that this is the way you successfully avoid conspiracy
charges is you never let more than one other person
in the room at the same time, but theoretically that

(47:31):
was what his his whole thing was. And so they
liked their new con man and they started working more
or less exclusively with with him, and they would, I
guess pick him up the airport driving motel and they
would bring him work. He wanted slightly less pay than
most the other abortionists, but he was still wasn't cheap
and he was in it for the money. Um. Most
abortions at the time rant six hundred dollars to a
thousand dollars, which is four to seven thousand dollars into

(47:55):
Jane was able to offer them for five hundred at
the start, which is and then after about five or
six full price abortion Nick Mike would do a couple
for cheaper um. And one of the founders, Jody Howard,
was Nick Mike is still such a funny thing to me,
and that the only thing we know about them is
that they were hot. Yeah, totally, that's all you need

(48:15):
to know. Come on, ck Mike, Nick Mike, It's so funny.
Wanted to be his first and middle name name. Yeah, yeah,
he was. He never actually lied about anything. He just
his name was Nick, last name Mike. And the man
with two first names. Okay, the whole guide there to

(48:39):
the round this one mysterious man anyway, going on? Okay, So,
so one of the founders, Jody Howard, was particularly close
with Nick Mike and there's some kind of like subtext
and what I read. But again, I'm not trying to
make assumptions because people might still be alive. But but
Jody decided, and this actually makes a lot of sense, right,
She was like, there needs to be a woman in
the room as you're performing these abortions, and so she

(49:01):
started insisting and then started insisting that he apprenticed her
and her own uh. Jody Howard's own entry into the
movement was kind of interesting. She had two kids in
lymphatic cancer and she was pregnant for a third time,
and she knew that childbirth would as likely as not
killer uh, and doctors still wouldn't let her get an abortion. Theoretically,
the law at the time was if childbirth would kill,

(49:21):
you can get an abortion. So the only way she
felt like she could take matters into her own hands
about this is she basically like, give me an abortion
or I'll kill myself and um, and they were like, okay,
you can have an abortion now, and which is just
a like how cruel is a law that the only
way that you can control your own body is by
like threatening to end your own life. Um, So she

(49:45):
became an abortion access crusader, imagine that. And she figured out,
she was the first one to figure out, apparently kind
of quickly, that handsome man crime doc Nick Mike wasn't
a doctor. Um. He had a lot of things going
for him, but a medical license was not one of
the things he had going for him. And and she
knew that. So once again, the only thing that's actually

(50:06):
accurate about Nick Mike is hot. Possibly that was by
one person's it is it is in Stone thinks you're sexy.
You're sexy? You know? Okay, God, anyway, keep going, all right.

(50:26):
So she decides not to tell anyone at first, because
she's like, everyone's going to freak the funk out. And
she's like, also like, but if if he can learn it,
and he's not a doctor, so can I. I'm not
a doctor. And so he made him teacher. And and
at first Nick Mike is working out of motels, but
then one day an angry husband comes and like is
banging on the motel room door, and they realized they
had to step up their security. So in order to

(50:48):
make it all more mystery novel crime novel, they start
renting apartments all over the city and they need to
at any given time. First they have the front where
all the patients come for counseling and consultation. It's where
it's also where they show up on the day of
the abortion, and they're encouraged to bring loved ones for support.
And of course most people who can who get abortions

(51:09):
already have children, and so they provided childcare at the
front as well. And working at the front was therefore
this like really demanding job. You were a counselor, you
were a babysitter, and you're also like an entertainer. You
were passing out like snacks and tea and soda and
shipped like anxious boyfriends and probably girlfriends and siblings and
all that ship, you know. And then you had the
place that was the front night of the place. Very

(51:33):
it's still better than the Soviet names. Actually is also
kind of sound like anyway whatever um it looks sounds
very coded and wonderfully yeah, totally. And so the places,
the apartment where the abortion is actually performed on a
bed with like plastic and cloth sheets down, and um.
They worked hard to make the whole experiences like un
medical as possible. They worked to be relaxing and inviting

(51:55):
and communicate with people about what's going on. Some of
the reports I was reading and said, this isn't always work.
Sometimes they're like, hey, I'm like, I'm your new best friend,
you know, and they're like trying to be really nice,
and then um, and sometimes they're like, no, this is
the worst day in my life. Let's get this fucking
over with, you know. And other times they were like,
you know, friendly and stuff. Then there are the drivers
who took people from one place to the other. They

(52:17):
rather they took people from the front to the place
and from the place to the front. And these were
in somewhat short supply, apparently because most of the James
were students at the University of Chicago and so um,
and a lot of them come from New York City
where people just didn't have driver's licenses, so the few
drivers with driver's licenses were basically it's like all of
the jobs that any of the James were doing were

(52:39):
incredibly important, not just the abortionists, you know, and they
performed over eleven thousand abortions and like barely three year span.
It's like ninety nineteen seventy three. A later obstetrician looking
at their records suggested it was as safe as any
above ground legal clinic. Um. They never had a patient die, uh,

(52:59):
at least not one that they performed an abortion on.
They did have one time where a woman came in
in bad shape. She tried and failed to enter pregnancy
on her own a few different ways, because making things
illegal is really fucked up, UM, and she had a
really severe infection. Jane determined it wasn't safe to operate
on her, and so they insisted she go to the hospital,
and she didn't. She went home instead. And I kind

(53:23):
of assume, I mean, I feel like we've all been
there or we've been like someone's like you really see
a doctor and you're like, doctor, we look like a millionaire,
you know. I mean. And also again the stigma and
the judgments and if she was trying, if this person
was trying to do a self abortion, that in itself
told tells you how a dire of a situation they

(53:44):
felt they were in and felt like they had to
do something whatever they could and it killed them, which
is what that situation leads to. When you really feel
whatever circumstanced, whether it's trying to not be disapproved by
the parents or the family or idy or whatever, having
this level of being alone and trying to do whatever
you can no matter the cost, and then not realizing

(54:08):
there is another option until it's too late. That's that's
that whole level in itself that just breaks your heart
in this whole situation. But I love to set up
about the front and the place as you were talking about,
because as I was reading about these things, the idea
that going to a gynecologist, going to get your yearly
check up, it's frightening. Going to a doctor in general

(54:29):
is frightening as hell to me. It's probably one of
those anxiety moments of like, oh my God, why do
I have to be here, and to know that you're
going to do something that seems that you've been told
is wrong a B. So you have all of this
guilt on top of that. Whatever it may be, whatever
the situation is, and we don't know the outlying situation,
whether it is you did have considual sex and you

(54:50):
didn't have protection, or because you didn't understand the way
anatomy works. You didn't have full understanding what was happening
with you. We already know was like there's sexual trauma
within even normal situations that could be sexual trauma. And
I want to say normal, I mean consensual situations or
what it was consensual? Uh, like having understanding, would these

(55:12):
Jay's coming in and be like, let me counsel you
and let's have a deep conversation, but also we're going
to set this whole place up like a home so
that you feel comfortable and like not instead of in
a theile, scary back haul like what people would search
for at that point in time trying to get those
illegal abortions. Really feel like these are professionals, Like that's wow,

(55:33):
Like that's above and beyond. I love that. Yeah, I
know that, and thinking about like I mean, you know,
not in anywhere the same level of scale of what
some other people have to deal with. I remember, um
the first time, just so now that listeners no way
too much about my sexual history and health. I went
to go an sci screening the first time after I

(55:53):
came out as trends and was willing to, you know,
put down my actual gender on on forms and things
like that, and I went to go again a t
I screening and like, you know, and was in this
stupid room with a stupid health practitioner who touched me
inappropriately and like came onto me while you know, um
touching my genitals and like yeah, and I'm like and

(56:15):
then and then I it took me a long ast
time before I went got st I screened again, you know,
and like I'm not proud of that, and I'm sorry everyone,
you know, but like but it's like and just thinking
about what it must be like, yeah, like you're talking
about being in this situation where you're like, fuck it,
I'm giving myself an abortion, you know. Like so I'm
like really not trying to shame this person who like

(56:36):
chose not to go to the hospital until it's too late.
You know. This is about, first and foremost, I'm so
sorry that you went through that bullshit on every level
and it was wrong and that person should be arrested
and they are assholes, first and foremost. Yeah, I've had
enough of my day with just people being bad people

(56:57):
and what happened to you, Oh my god, I'm speechless
in that. I hate that now I'm beginning to know
you that whatever anyone would ever have to go through
anything like that to a person that they should be
able to trust. Professionals are someone that we should be
able to trust. And you were kind of talking about
that with the James being like Heathery being like, you

(57:17):
know what, I think there needs to be a woman
present so we can watch and make sure they don't
feel traumatized. That in itself, Oh god, I am so
sorry and that should not have happened to you and
that was wrong in every fucking level. Thank you. Yeah,
it's it's it's funny to like, you know, like, oh,
I've like barely told people this and now I've told
however many people of this um but like I don't

(57:40):
have any I don't feel any like guilt or shame
around it. I'm just angry, you know, and like right,
and I'm angry that, like, you know, I was like
so excited you like whatever, if I talked about this
too much, I'll start crying. But like I was so
excited that I could like fill out the form and
actually write down that I'm like, you know, transwoman and
ship like that, and it's like, oh, I'm gonna have
gender firming care. I've never had gender firming care. And
I'm like, oh, actually, be it being seen as a

(58:00):
woman sucks everything. Um yeah, that's definitely just a whole
different level of like this moment that you should be
celebrating to be free, Oh my god, free here I am.
I get to be here and be who I am,
and then have this dick coming through and just ruining

(58:20):
that moment and then honestly portraying their portraying their professionalism,
betraying their profession, um and showing off as like oh, yeah,
you are evil in general and therefore you shouldn't they
should not be a part of this profession whatever what not.
But on top of that, yeah, that you had the

(58:41):
audacity to take someone's hope. Yeah, in safety and I
hate that. I am so sorry. And again yeah uh
and I love yeah you being angry. Yeah you're better
than I because I think I would like rage everywhere.
But you know, that's a whole different conversation with me.

(59:03):
J Now, I I am I am totally fine with
rage and anger as a way of dealing with certain
issues in society and in my personal life when when
people are doing things um yeah, and yeah, coming back
to I love that the Jain collective really kind of
understood that level. And yeah, I hate that that someone
died and that's not someone that they I know, like

(59:24):
they were traumatized them, which is why we've got they
Their whole attitude was like, we gotta do better. That's
why we as women. Even though they were not doctors
of medical professionals, it is concerning. I will say what
I first read that, I was like, oh, that's a
good idea. But understanding that they really cared about these
people that were coming in and was all about giving

(59:46):
them safety and understanding what they had to do is
what they had to do because the doctors were no
longer coming through because they were getting like the ro
Versus way, it was really coming through about who was
getting penalized and who was really getting targeted. Um, and
so they had less and less options and why not
if they can truly do a good job. And and

(01:00:07):
the big thing was getting the right equipment, getting sterilized equipment.
I know that was a big factor in it as well. Yeah, um,
but you know who will sell you sterile medical equipment
they can use? Tell me the products can we get?
Can we get? Can we get sponsored by by at

(01:00:28):
home Abortion Care. You know, one of our sponsors was
playing b hell yeah yeah, so there you go. Okay,
well and then we're sponsored by that and whatever. This
other stuff is back from the break. That was a

(01:00:49):
long one. Let's go. And you know who else kept
going was was the Jain Collective because as as you
were pointing out, like the this brush with death like
shook them up because they I mean, it wasn't their fault, right,
they didn't do anything wrong, but they care. Yeah. That
was the whole point of them starting is because they
wanted to prevent uh people from dying from this type

(01:01:13):
of process and this type of access. And so even
though it had nothing to do with them, it was
still a death because of something. So yeah, and I
was trying to make a joke about how they are
actually just in it to make a quick book, but
it wouldn't even work because it's so obviously untrue. Um.
And so they keep going. Over a hundred women work

(01:01:34):
as Jane. So the course of the project though generally
is like twenty thirty at any given time, um, which
is kind of interesting to have this like high turnover rate,
Like oh, like is this casual thing. You go join
this like very above ground, underground organization that's like committing felonies,
which is cool. One Jane named Jeannie gallatzer Levy and
she'll come up more later. She described her first meeting

(01:01:56):
that she showed up to for orientation. There were like
thirty women crammed into the dining. Each new volunteer was
paired with a big sister who would get them on
boarded like a mentor. And at each meeting, they would
pass around index cards with all of the cases that
needed to be handled, and everyone would take the cards
of the cases that they wanted to handle, And of
course that meant they like everyone took the easy cards first,

(01:02:16):
you know, and then like the big complicated ones. Everyone's like,
but you know, we've all been there. And so Jody
Howard finally tells the rest of the group that sexy
nick Man was not a quote unquote real doctor. Um
and did we change did we change his name to
Nick Man? No? Nick Mike? Sorry? I? Um, yeah, no

(01:02:37):
nick Man, sexy man. I don't know, Yeah, it wrong.
Everyone's listening an amazing, amazing by to sexy nick Man,
sexy sexy sexy guy. Uh it's okay. So people take

(01:02:57):
the news really hard, right, um. And the reactions fall
into two camps, and half of them were like, we're
no better than the back alley providers, and the other
half were like, well, if crime guy can do it,
so can we. And um. In general, the former camp
left and the latter camp stayed, and many of the
people who stayed. You know, I've I've read some said

(01:03:19):
that half of the Jain's left, and I've read other
things that said that's an exaggeration. I don't know, um, right,
but a lot of the ones who stayed learned how
to provide abortions, and abortion was kind of having a
bit of a renaissance around this time in the late
six season early seventies in terms of how it was done. Um,
a lot of the abortionists, Yeah, we're sketchy Backelley providers,

(01:03:40):
but um, but the Jain Collective wasn't the only ones
who are taking it seriously and and caring. Other people
were working their asses off to help people get abortions
safely and effectively despite state repression. And we're gonna talk
a little bit later, I think in part two about
some of the things that the methods that people pioneered
and which ones are still applicable to the name, which
ones are not. Um, so so Nick Mike, he makes

(01:04:01):
himself obsolete. Um he was a crime guy at the
end of the day, and he's in it for the money,
but he's willing to make himself obsolete. So he teaches
a lot of Jane's how to do this because and
they're like, well, we want to charge a hunter bucks
and he's like, yeah, that's not gonna happen. So he
teaches them how to do it, and then he sucks
off and he's just like gone, his trail goes cold.
Did you ever have you ever heard anything else there's this?

(01:04:23):
So they're like, one of the things that I read
was that that the mafia was after him and that's
why he just disappeared. But that could have been just
someone trying to make a big, bigger story and that's
why we don't have nothing of them. But it could
be as as simple as he didn't want any part
of it. They it got a little hot. A lot
of people were investigating different types of organizations, and because

(01:04:45):
the doctors had pulled out, he pulled out too. And
also he didn't get enough money since they were trying
to downgrade the costs. So he was like, fine, never
see you again. But yeah, I did hear that the
mafia might have come after him. Yeah. I like to
think that he rode away into the sunset on a
mo recycle while smoking and then lived a hundred and seven.
That's that's the version of him. Yeah, sexy Nick Mike

(01:05:06):
has got he's got it to be in the sunset somewhere. Yeah,
for some reason, he is Mike Nick for me. But
I hear what I'm saying, Nick, Mike is Mike Nick
for me. And you know what, that's just a personal preference.
I guess y, Nick Mike, Mike Nick can be whoever
you need him to be, because he's just the sexy
man he rode away, who shows up and teaches you

(01:05:29):
how to provide abortions and then rides off at the sunset.
Apply there you go. Who knew this is what we
needed in our lives. But the greatest part is they
only needed him for a little while, just a little while,
because he made himself obsolete. And then at that point
all of the work was being done entirely by women.
And they also it wasn't just enough that they did

(01:05:51):
it in the cold medical way. They also still wanted
to again sort of demedicalize it, and they wanted to
teach clients what was happening and give them agency. One
of the one of the j Ruth Circle, in an
interview said quote, it was one of the things we
talked about a lot. We were not doing something to
this woman. We were doing something with this woman, and
she was as much a part of it and part

(01:06:12):
of the process as we were. So that we would
talk about how we relied on them. If we got busted,
you know, we would explain that they were not doing
something illegal. We were doing something illegal, but we need
their help, and you know, you don't talk about it
and we have to keep quiet. So I like that.
They like basically they are like, look, because it wasn't
illegal to get an abortion, was legal to give an abortion. Um,

(01:06:34):
so the James were taking all of the legal risk um.
But they basically brought everyone in and we're like, look,
like you rely on us, we need to rely on you.
And I think that's cool. Yeah, And not all of
them performed abortion, some of them. Everyone took tasks that
suited them best. They were callback Jane's who talked to
the patients, and Big Janes, who would handle the coordination.

(01:06:55):
At least one Jane later pointed out that decision making
was kind of fraught within the collective. Um. They tended
to suppress internal conflict and so everyone will like stay
focused on the task and we don't have time to
address the you know, power dynamics and the other issues happening. Um.
And I'm trying to like single them out for this.
Every activist organization I've ever heard of does this, right,

(01:07:16):
It's like something that we just need to be aware of.
And I don't know whether this happens particularly in direct
action groups or if I think that because most of
the organizations I've been involved with more direct action groups.
But it's just a thing that happens where like people
are like, you know, like tree sitters are like, oh,
we can't talk about patriarchy within the movement. They're cutting
the trees down right now, you know, right, And so
I think they had some of that going on, at
least according to at least one of them. Later, it

(01:07:39):
wouldn't be surprising. Uh, And I go, of course, we
don't know all of the jenes that came through, but
it was pretty much ran by white women. Um, and
when we know what happens when it comes to feminism
and white women and where that can lead and who
actually gate keeps what, there's always going to be situations
with that. And then when you have something that is

(01:08:00):
so uh as you said from but like uncertain, anything illegal,
we know it's going to be uncertain, it's going to
have a lot of stress. And I can't imagine what
that looks like within a group, especially when we're also
handled handling medical procedures on your own as well. So
I feel like there's so many things to that. And again,
like talking about who was getting access, a lot of

(01:08:22):
people were getting access, but it's seeming like it was
a lot of like college students at this point in time.
We know that for young women to be in college,
they probably had some money and even though they might
not have as much money as others in society, they
still had a little bit of access and higher economic
status than than most. And again it says a lot
too even though they were trying to be accessible, but

(01:08:43):
the word of mouth went through, who who did it
go to? Typically a middle class uh women so or
middle class people at that point in time. So there's
a lot to be said kind of the same way
that if we wanted to go jump and I don't
want to, because I did this with Robert a long
time ago about playned parenthood and the beginnings of that.
So you know, we know that that there is things

(01:09:05):
that happen within movements and who was leading movements and
what that could have been on the under underbelly of it.
And because you know more than I do, but no, no,
I don't. And like, I mean, it's funny because once
again you're reading my script ahead of me, and not
in a bad way. No, I just I like that
we're on the same page about this, because yeah, that's

(01:09:26):
that's one of the most important things to understand with
a lot of this is like, um, it's mostly white women.
It's almost exclusively white women doing this work. Um. In
n seventy, New York and a few other states Hawaii, Alaska,
and Washington legalized most abortion and suddenly there weren't as
many middle class patients from that point, and because people
could just fly or train out to New York and

(01:09:47):
have a legal abortion stead of going all the way
to the UK, and so they started serving the black
community of Chicago more and more, but it was still
white women doing it. And and yeah, when I when
I first read, like, oh they advertised in the student paper,
and I'm like, okay, it's really cool as students have
access to abortion, but that is not necessarily like the
majority of the people in Chicago or whatever, you know. Um,

(01:10:09):
And I've only run across one, uh black chain, a
woman named Louise, who joined basically to be like, look,
y'all are doing a good thing, but it's like still
kind of fucking weird that you're all white. And and
then again and I read that basically her friends were like,
what are you fucking doing? If these white women get caught,

(01:10:29):
they'll get off, and if you get caught, you're you're
fucked right. And I don't know that that ever had
to be tested. I don't believe it. It It was ever tested.
Uh well, the fact that white women getting arrested ended up, okay,
was tested, but I did I don't believe any I
believe Louise was the only black Jain and certainly the
only one I ran across uma And and just the

(01:10:50):
little research that I did, I didn't see her name
pop up and like or who she was. So yeah, again,
probably being identified is not a thing you want to
be doing an underground totally. Um. But yeah, absolutely that's
dangerous on so many levels. And we understand that, and
in Chicago and itself long ugly history of segregation and such.

(01:11:15):
So now that Nick Mike has gone and they're providing
the abortions themselves, though their prices are able to drop dramatically.
Their abortions were nominally a hundred dollars, but realistically they
took whatever the patient could offer. They averaged about fifty dollars.
The drivers were the ones collecting the money and somewhere
between the front and the place, but they didn't count

(01:11:36):
the money. They just were handed money and took it.
Sometimes they were handed jars of change, and when they could,
were taken out of every you know, and if there's
at least twenty five dollars a far as I understand,
twenty five is taken out and put into a revolving
loan fund where people could come and say, like, I
need a loan to get it, and they would have
no interest loan. That kind of is a like, look,

(01:11:57):
please pay it back, but we're not like sending to
anyone to your house if you don't pay it back,
you know. So it's kind of a like please pay
it back, not up, you must pay system. Yeah, totally,
And it's and it's kind of thing where it's like
natural non system. But like I assume they weren't like,
don't starve yourself to pay us back, right, you know? Um,

(01:12:17):
And you know, they basically were just like, this is
so that the next woman who needs an abortion can
have one if you can, you know. And that's and
that's where we're gonna leave it today with Jane in
their heyday. They're all women collective providing safely legal abortions
and to the people of Chicago, which is it's pretty
freaking cool. Yes, do you have any like final thoughts
for today or or do you want to I'm just

(01:12:39):
so excited that we're talking more about this. I discovering
all these things being on an intersectional filminist show and
coming to like, yes, let's keep talking about it. This
is amazing. I love it. But yeah, but being realistic
about you know, it wasn't glamour and it wasn't as
easy obviously as it should be. And this is the
problem when we have limited access or no access and

(01:13:03):
then when we start criminalizing people were trying to just
live Like that's just But I'm excited that we are
talking about Yeah, and I really want to, like, whenever possible,
I really want to do like a warts and all
version of the show, because like when you hold up
people as heroes and like this person was perfect and
you're like, well, I'm not perfect. I can't be a hero,
you know, and it's like no, like these people like

(01:13:23):
got lots of things wrong and they just did amazing
shit anyway, um right, and and nobody is perfect besides dogs, correct,
besides dogs. And my dog's a dick but I love her.
But yeah, on the top of the back that I'm honest,
We're honest about it. But yeah, she's the best part perfect. Yeah. Sure,

(01:13:48):
So if he gets angrier and angrier at the idea
that the dog might not be perfect, don't you can't
say it. I don't see it. But yeah, like I
think in that's the thing is like, honestly, what comes
down to I love discovering and I know we're gonna
keep talking about it, but about these cool people is
that it wasn't that they wanted to be a hero.
And that they didn't do anything wrong before or don't
have wrong perspectives or may have misspoke. Uh, it's just

(01:14:11):
that they saw a need and they did something about it.
And that's what we get to celebrate totally, and you
can you can celebrate more with us on the part
two of this two part series on Wednesday, when we're
gonna talk in more detail about exactly what services they
offered and how it all went down. Um, and some

(01:14:31):
of the other people who have taken up the torch
in the decades since them. Samantha, anything you want to
plug before we head out? Oh yeah, So if this
interest you and you like to learn more about women
in history and the intersectionality of it all, you should
come listen to Stuff Mom Never Told You, which you
can also find on the I Heart Radio app or
wherever you get your podcast. You can follow us Stuff

(01:14:54):
I've Never Told You on Twitter and on Instagram. You
can also follow me McVeigh sayum, I believe is my
Instagram and then Sam McVeigh on Twitter. Y'all, I'm struggling.
I'm not really active, but sometimes I exist. Um. There's
a very cute dog picture on your Instagram where you're
wearing matching Halloween not fits. So that's that's what I

(01:15:19):
would like to plug at the end. Here is that
photo your pumpkins? Yeah? Anyways, well we'll see, we'll see.
We'll see you all Wednesday. Yeah. Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

(01:15:40):
zone media dot com, or check us out on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.

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Episode Transcript

Host

Margaret Killjoy

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.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: The Jane Collective: Direct Action Abortion Access Works