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Criminal

The Procedure

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.738.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1967, a very unlikely group of individuals gathered to quietly break the law and help facilitate abortions. They established a phone number. When you called it, a recording of a woman's voice would tell you what to do next. Who was behind this number? The Clergy Consultation Service, an underground network of ministers and rabbis who wanted to help people access safe abortions in a time before it was legal. We first aired our conversations with some of them in 2017. And after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year, we decided to call some of them back. Take our survey: vox.com/podsurvey Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Support for this show comes from Krakan.

0:03.0

Krypto is like the financial system, but different.

0:07.0

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,

0:11.0

or your outrageous food delivery habits.

0:13.7

crypto is finance for everyone everywhere all the time.

0:18.4

Krakhan, see what crypto can be.

0:21.3

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.

0:25.0

This is a high-risk investment, and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. I'm Finley Shefe, a retired Methodist minister, it's Reverend.

0:39.8

I practiced in four churches in New York City for 40 years and a woman that I didn't

0:51.0

know and was not a member of my church came to see me in my office.

0:55.3

I can still see her sitting there.

0:58.1

And she told me that her husband raped their daughter, a teenage girl, and the daughter became pregnant.

1:09.4

And did I know where she could, her daughter could get an abortion and I didn't. I did not know what to do or

1:19.0

what to say. I didn't know I couldn't help her and she left.

1:27.0

Before the 1970s it was very hard to get a legal abortion in this country.

1:33.0

Different states, even different hospitals, had different rules,

1:37.0

rules that kept shifting over time.

1:39.0

But for the most part, you could not get an abortion unless you were going to die.

1:44.8

Connecticut was the first state to criminalize the procedure in 1821, and state by state,

1:50.8

the rest of the country followed suit.

1:53.6

In 1902, the Journal of the American Medical Association

1:57.5

endorsed a popular practice among doctors.

...

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