Jane Collective
The Jane Collective or Jane, officially known as the Abortion Counseling Service of Women's Liberation, was an underground service in Chicago, Illinois affiliated with the Chicago Women's Liberation Union that operated from 1969 to 1973, a time when abortion was illegal in most of the United States.
The foundation of the organization was laid when Heather Booth helped her friend's sister obtain a safe abortion in 1965.
The collective sought to address the increasing number of unsafe abortions being performed by untrained providers.
As the attorney hoped, the Court's decision in Roe in 1973 struck down many abortion restrictions in the US, and the charges against the Jane Collective members were dropped.
[1] In the state of Illinois, at the time the Jane Collective formed, abortion was considered felony homicide.
[5] In 1965, University of Chicago student Heather Booth learned that her friend's sister had an unwanted pregnancy that left her distraught and nearly suicidal.
Operating under the pseudonym "Jane",[6] Booth began taking such phone calls at her college dormitory, referring more clients to Howard, who performed the abortions for $500.
[4][9] She sought an abortion due to concerns about the effects of her radiation treatment on the fetus, but was denied by the hospital board.
[11] The Jane Collective had patients referred to them by medical professionals, which annoyed them, as the doctors were almost always unwilling to provide any assistance.
[11] "Jenny", one of the members, eventually began demanding to be in the room with the patients while the procedure was performed to ensure that the women were treated well.
[9] Jenny was highly critical of how her health was managed by men when she was pregnant with cancer, saying "Through that whole experience, there wasn't one woman involved.
[14] This caused emotional duress for some members of the Collective, who insisted that using an abortion provider with fake credentials made them "just like the back-alleys", and that they should shutter the organization.
[11] The Jane Collective learned how to perform pap smears and found a laboratory to read the results for $4.
One black woman, Lois, criticized the group when she came to them for an abortion for their lack of diversity, as they were nearly all white and middle-class.
[13] It was rumored that the police intentionally turned a blind eye to the Collective's illegal activities, possibly because unwanted pregnancies and resulting abortions also occurred in their families.
[16] One of the women who was trained to perform abortions noted, "Neither the Chicago Police nor the Outfit/Mafia had previously bothered us though each knew of our work: we were clean, damn good, and made too little money to interest them.
[15] While in the police van, one woman removed a stack of index cards from her purse that had the contact information of their patients.
[15] Jeanne Galatzer-Levy, one of the women arrested, recalled that she felt that the police treated them, the abortion providers, better than their patients.
One doctor offered the Jane Collective abortionists a job at her office performing abortions, but was then dissuaded by her lawyer.
"[10] The women, who were burned-out with their mission and each other, according to Kaplan, had an "end-of-Jane party" after the first legal abortion clinics opened in the spring of 1973.
[12] Martha Scott was later employed at a woman's health center and remained an activist for women's rights.
[17] There were no reports of abortion-related death as a result of their work, though one member, Martha Scott, recalled that some of their patients ended up having to go to the emergency room afterwards, while others had to undergo hysterectomies.
[11] One obstetrician who provided follow-up visits for the Collective's patients stated that their safety rate was comparable to legally operating clinics in New York.
[19] A volunteer with the Haven Coalition stated, "There’s an effort to sort of preserve the vestiges of what used to be an underground railroad and something that might be again", alluding to the possibility that abortion could become illegal in the US once again.
[6] The Jane Collective has also been cited as inspiration to a loose network of American women who provide illegal abortions.
[19] In 2022, the US Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in the decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
