secretly, of course -- whether she knew any abortion doctors. Heather Booth found one, and she also found that other women started coming to her for references.
As one woman in the film put it, in those days, women who sought abortions were all "hysterical and desperate and scared": if you needed an abortion, you knew you would have to come up with some fabulous amount of money and take a life-threatening risk. Some women committed suicide when they got pregnant instead. Information about abortion was at a premium.
So Heather Booth began looking for abortion doctors, and better than that, she started vetting them. After finding the doctors, she sought testimonials about those doctors. Common problems with abortion doctors ranged from being rude to actually assaulting their patients; some doctors, who already charged sky-high prices, would demand more money at the last minute. Booth kept a list of abortion doctors who didn't do those things. Pretty soon, there were other women who had her list too, and they were vetting doctors and spreading the word as well. The group also provided counseling before and after the procedure, letting the patients know what they could expect -- physically and emotionally. They called themselves "Jane": a woman who called them and asked for "Jane" was seeking an abortion.
After some time, the women of Jane figured out that abortion isn't a complex procedure, and they convinced a doctor to teach them how to do it safely. And then they taught each other. So then they didn't have to refer patients to doctors: they did all the abortions themselves, and they did them for whatever the patient could spare rather than charging prices that were out of reach for many women. Jane members continued to provide emotional support, as well: in the documentary, one member reminisces about how she would have patients over to dinner with her kids and talk to them for a while before performing the procedure. It got to the point where doctors and medical students sent women to Jane, rather than getting referrals from Jane.
That is positive activism. That is building the world we want to see.
When abortion was legalized in 1973, the group quietly disbanded. Some members of Jane went on to be involved in other parts of the feminist movement or to found respected women's health organizations.
It's not that Jane had no problems; the organization was not transparent, for example, and it sounds like there was a fair amount of gossip and internal difficulties. These are typical issues within small groups, and the stigma and anxiety of what they were doing can't possibly have helped, but still, it's important to work against those problematic patterns from the beginning. It's worth it, I think; I'm increasingly convinced that the most positive direct change can be traced to small, grassroots, community groups. Which means that making sure your small, grassroots community group is egalitarian but well- organized can have ripple effects all down the line.
Another example of such a group might be Chicago's Rape Victim Advocates. RVA was established in 1974 by doctors and nurses who were appalled by how badly rape survivors were treated in the emergency room. Back then, there was no public understanding of how traumatic rape could be, and little understanding of survivors’
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