Before Roe v. Wade: The Radical Underground Abortion Network

Journalist Clara Bingham and film director Rachel Carey discuss the dangers of today’s new abortion restrictions—and how history might be on the brink of repeating itself. Bingham speaks about her recent Vanity Fair exposé on the secret underground abortion network, code-named “Jane,” that was operated by renegade feminists in Chicago before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. Carey is the director of the 2019 film Ask for Jane, the first narrative feature telling the intimate story of how a network of women students at the University of Chicago provided abortion assistance to 11,000 women from 1969 to 1973. Elizabeth Sackler introduces the program.

This event took place at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art on June 23, 2019. Video courtesy Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation.

[Just.a.person]

Woman taking care of each other to help themselves.

[rhorizon]

Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended and about four in ten unintended pregnancies are aborted, often with the request coming from the husband or male partner.

The vast majority of abortions occur before nine weeks of pregnancy, before any fetus is involved. Nearly 80 percent of such abortions occur before 10 weeks, and nearly 90 percent do so by the end of the first trimester, making clear that anti-choice assertions about high rates of late abortion are false.

In fact, anti-choice laws and policies ranging from banning early, safe medication abortion, to mandated waiting periods and unnecessary ultrasounds all serve to push early abortions later than they otherwise would be, belying anti-choice concerns about, say, second trimester abortions, because they are in fact responsible for a large share of such abortions.

Further, most people having abortions already have children. Contraception is not always effective. They already know the true cost of having children. When considering an abortion, families weigh the responsiblities and finances they have, particularly in a society with extremely expensive healthcare and a very limited safety net.

Preventing conception or having an abortion isn’t just about getting through the “inconvenience” of a pregnancy, as the far-right often asserts. In many situations pregnancy does in fact pose substantial risks to the health and lives of women.

It is about whether or not a family is able to make a lifelong emotional, financial, and physical commitment - often at substantial cost - to the person who will exist if a pregnancy is viable, healthy and successfully brought to term.

In the case of a wanted pregnancy, this can be a joyous, hoped-for, and much anticipated event. Under other circumstances, and without recourse to safe abortion care, an unintended pregnancy is a forced pregnancy and a forced birth, and amounts to reproductive slavery.

[donnaflynn]

Why does the woman have against Betty Friedan, she spoke for the women who were like her, just like other women spoke for the women who were like them.