Jane: The underground abortion network
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2021
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A group of feminists working under the name “Jane” carried out underground abortions in 1960s Chicago – when abortions were still illegal in most of the US.
Initially they gave abortion counselling and put women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies in touch with doctors who would perform the procedure. But when they discovered that one doctor they had been working with was not medically qualified, the women started to perform the abortions themselves.
Martha Scott was a member of the group – she received an abortion through the service, learned to perform abortions, and was one of the Janes arrested when they were busted by the police. She tells Lucy Burns about her experiences.
This programme is a rebroadcast.
Photo courtesy of Martha Scott
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. Hello you're listening to the BBC World Service and now witness history with me Lucy Burns. |
| 0:46.0 | Today I'm taking you to Chicago in 1969 where abortion was illegal but a group of feminist activists |
| 0:53.7 | started to run an underground abortion network, |
| 0:56.9 | even performing the operations themselves. |
| 1:00.1 | The group called themselves Jane. |
| 1:05.0 | If you can't be careful, try to be good. If you'd found yourself unexpectedly pregnant in Chicago at the end of the 1960s, |
| 1:11.0 | you might have seen a small ad in a newspaper or maybe a business card pinned to a notice board which said |
| 1:16.8 | pregnant don't want to be called Jane 643 3844. If you'd call the 9 months of blues. |
| 1:25.0 | If you'd called the number, |
| 1:30.0 | the phone would have rung in a private house or a dorm room at the University of Chicago |
| 1:34.5 | and you'd have been in the hands of the abortion counseling service known as Jane. |
| 1:46.6 | In 1969, Martha Scott was a 27-year-old mother of four, living in a Chicago suburb, when another mother at the playground asked her if she'd be interested in volunteering as an abortion |
| 1:51.2 | counselor. |
| 1:52.2 | Now abortion is not something I spent a lot of time thinking about but it felt kind of social |
| 1:56.4 | working to me but that seemed appropriate and it also seemed illegal. |
| 2:01.6 | They had a certain appeal. At that point, abortion was illegal in |
| 2:06.2 | the state of Illinois unless the pregnancy endangered the life of the |
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