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The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service

By Laura Kaplan.

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Women's History Month 2023 - March 29

The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service - Laura Kaplan

#women's history month #women's history month 2023 #the story of jane #laura kaplan

The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Story_of_Jane/XxeMEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Before the eventful year of 1973, women’s choice to have an abortion was legalized in the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Roe v Wade. But before then the act of getting an abortion was a secret underground decision that was full of danger at every step, even then only available to wealthy people. Laura Kaplan’s book, The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service, shows the extremely secret Chicago based group that ended up providing secret abortions to women back during those dark days.

Many factors led to the creation of Jane, the secret women group that provided abortions. Kaplan, with her changing the names of everyone involved regardless of their approval of using their real name, shows how various women of different backgrounds came to form Jane. They really are of all backgrounds from Midwest, to school drop outs, wasps, and church figures. People came and drop out of the story and I am sure that if you really wanted to know the women’s real names, some internet searching and detective could give you answers. But the story of Jane is more than the people who worked there.

All the story are told in by Kaplan in third, gathered by her interviewing the former members. Jane has various with gathering members that willing want to work beyond a session, finding trusting and long term sources to do abortions, funding, and avoiding the police. As the groups evolves, so do the problems. But the solutions evolves too, with the women eventually learning to perform abortions themselves and not rely to any man’s help or service all doing so for free. Even as the faithful 1973 court decision is made, the group struggles not just the decision to continue or not but with the law and internal conflict within the group itself. Kaplan does not shy away from showing the group at it’s darkest moments when it numbered fewer than twenty members providing services for the whole northeast of the United States or when members left the group in rage or misunderstandings or due to the white feminism flaw that some women’s rights groups had during the 1970s.

While the story does seem to repeat in the beginning, with members unsure of themselves, getting an abortion, and then joining the group, and surprised to see the small “normal” people there working or the repeating motif of gaining and then losing abortion providers and places, these only service to show how common of a problem abortion was to get and the perceived notion getting one was during the time.

In a strange coincidence, when I was reading this book, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the 1973 Roe v Wade decision confirming a earlier leak of the decision a month ago. Actions have consequences. While many states won’t have any abortion services changed, there are a few states that will suffer in different amounts from providing names of providers to total bans with states like Missouri and Texas threatening to pass legislative measures to jail anyone who goes out of state to get an abortion. I actually personally never heard of Jane before reading this book. And expect for a minor blip in a thing that never was, a small series of arson attacks self credited by an online slogan of Jane’s Revenge, this story of Jane does seem forgotten. But with today’s abortion statues, lessons from Jane will unfortunately have to be learned and relearned.