“The Janes:” An Underground Abortion Network Before Roe

HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Thanks Bianna. Welcome to both our guests, Jeanne Galatzer-Levy and Heather Booth. So Heather Booth, who was Jane? What was Jane? What kind of services did you provide?

HEATHER BOOTH, FOUNDER, JANE: Jane became an underground service to provide caring support for women who wanted to end a pregnancy before Roe, when three people talking about preparing for an abortion was a conspiracy to commit a felony. But the women who were involved in it were involved because we cared about other women. We cared about building a caring community and treating others as we might wanna be treated. And though I’ve never faced the situation myself, people were in such need. Some were suicidal, some took lye or did damage to themselves. Some ended up on these septic abortion wards in hospitals because of the injury that they faced. So we were a response to that problem and that need.

SREENIVASAN: I also wanna add in, I mean, this era here, I mean the birth control pill was not available until what? 1972? You couldn’t sue for sexual harassment until ‘77. You could be fired for being pregnant until 1978. I mean, spousal rape wasn’t even a criminal act in all 50 states till I wanna say 1993. So what were the reasons Jeanne that women were coming to you? Why – what were their options before they called that number?

JEANNE GALATZER-LEVY, MEMBER, JANE: They, they had, they had very few options. Middle class women who had sympathetic doctors and medical reasons could go before a hospital board essentially and beg for an abortion. And occasionally that would be granted and they could have a legal abortion. But by and large, there were, there were no options that were not clandestine really. When I was looking for birth control, somebody slipped me a little piece of paper with the name of – and phone number of a doctor who was willing to give birth control to single women. It was, it was – that – even that was clandestine. There were no options and that was the problem. And I can’t emphasize enough how, how, what a tremendous thing it was for these women, for the women who came through Jane to trust us. They didn’t know us. They had no way to know us. Hopefully they had – some had heard of us from other women who had been through the service, but they were taking a terrible risk. They didn’t know whether they were going to get these mafia associated abortionists somebody who didn’t know what they were doing. And we trusted them back. To be in the position of having three or four children and no money to have another, or in an abusive relationship that you – where you would be tied to someone forever if you had a baby, was terrifying.

SREENIVASAN: I’m gonna set up a clip, if I can, to try to give people in our audience in 2022, some semblance of an idea of what that era was like.

[“SIMPLY A CRIME” CLIP]

SREENIVASAN: Jeanne, tell me a little bit about the, kind of the practical nature of what happened after that phone call.

GALATZER-LEVY: The answering machine would say, this is Jane of women’s liberation. Please leave your name, your phone number and the date of your last period. And then they would be called back and more information would be elicited by the, by one of the women called a call back Jane. And then once we had all that information, we had the index cards, as you say, and we would pass them around and people would take, take the cards of women who live nearby so that it would be easier for them to reach you. And people that you thought you could counsel then you would call them and invite them into your home. And you would explain what the procedure was. You would elicit any other information. We also distributed literature. We distributed the early copies of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” and a book – a little booklet called “The Birth Control Handbook.” So hopefully – so they wouldn’t have to come again. And once they had been counseled, they were scheduled and then they were given an address. They went to that address. Those were usually borrowed apartments where the women would wait. It was often a rowdy environment with little kids running around and we would have snacks cuz that’s we were women <laugh> and we had to feed people. And then from there they would be driven to what we called “The Place.” Those were often borrowed apartments . Though eventually we did rent a place that we could keep set up. Otherwise we would have to go in and we would have to set up a whole place and put it on, put it on new sheets on the bed and sterilize the instruments and all of all kinds of things, but we could keep that apartment ready. And that was where the abortion was performed. We tried to make the atmosphere unmedical because medicine then was so paternalistic, we had bright Mary Meko sheets, and we always had an extra woman in the room who could hold a hand, who could talk people through it. So while the abortionist was busy doing the procedure, someone could explain what was going on, assure them that the discomfort would last only a certain amount of time, let them know what to expect and just be, be there to have your hand squeezed sometimes very hard. And that was, that was the procedure. Then they were driven back to the front. And they were – they went home with their family.

SREENIVASAN: Heather, how was this organization able to get away, so to speak, with something that was underground? I mean, an underground organization still able to perform some 11,000 abortions is pretty stunning.

BOOTH: I think there are at least two reasons that that happened. One is it was underground. We weren’t talking about it. So we just continued with the work. The other is that we always thought the police knew about it. When I was counseling people early on a woman who was married to a policeman, came in with her daughter who was needing an abortion and was so grateful to get this support. And though I didn’t ask, I had every reason to believe that it was her, that it was the policeman who directed his wife about where to go. So we think that it actually was a service that was useful in the society and because it hadn’t been politicized and made a partisan issue and hadn’t been funded for the attack on it.

SREENIVASAN: Who’s Dr. Mike? And who are the people that were training to do these procedures?

GALATZER-LEVY: So we were always looking for other, other people, other doctors, we – that’s the way we thought – who could perform the procedures. And one of the people that we found – and each time we found someone, we talked to the women afterwards, we assessed whether they were good. Sometimes doctors would hit on the women. We came across Mike as one of the people, and then we were very happy with him. He did a good job. The women had a good experience and he was an engaging, valuable person. He would talk to the women and he would reassure them, which was, as I said earlier, not common. So that we were very comfortable working with him. And eventually he became very good friends with some of the women in the service. And at some point he was interested in getting out of the business. He wasn’t, he didn’t wanna do it anymore. And we had discovered that he wasn’t a doctor. He had just learned how to do this. And one of the women in the service who had become close to Mike said, well, if he can do it, I can do it. And persuaded him to teach her. And, you know, learning a procedure like this, it’s a relatively simple procedure. So first one woman learned and then she taught another and then she taught another. And then, you know, and women would, for example, I had gotten to the point where I assisted. So first I learned. I watched a woman put a shot into the cervix to relax it. And then she showed me how to do it. And then I did it. And I learned how to put in a speculum in a way that was comfortable for a woman. Not something that I’d ever done, but, you know, you watch and you learn and then you try it and then you do it. So that’s how it just evolved. And what happened was that because we were doing it ourselves, we then had control. We could set the price, we could set how many we could do, which as Heather mentioned, got to be a lot. I mean, really we were doing almost a hundred a week. We averaged about $40 to $50 per person, which was enough. And that’s what, and that – once we had that control it meant that we could let – we could make abortion accessible to all those people.

SREENIVASAN: I wanna set up a clip here of what happened when New York decided that these procedures could happen in that state. So let’s take a look.

[“NY ABORTION” CLIP]

SREENIVASAN: So Jeanne, tell me a little bit about how things changed after New York legalized abortion. What, what was revealed?

GALATZER-LEVY: After New York women were angry, they weren’t apologetic anymore. They said, if a woman in New York can do it, why can’t I? And they were angry and they stopped justifying themselves, which I thought was wonderful. They realized that they should have this right.

BOOTH: And if the law is overturned, if Roe is overturned, what it will mean is that people with financial means with family supports with communities of support, with education, about the possibilities of what’s available to them. It’s quite likely, they’ll find a way to end an unwanted pregnancy, but for the women who are poor, who are more isolated, who are less connected to the resources that would be needed, financial and otherwise. So poor women, women of color women in areas away from city centers, they will be the ones into forced pregnancies into harder lives and their lives and the lives of their families are likely to be diminished.

SREENIVASAN: Heather, I wanna ask you here we are today, decades later after the work that you started, and there’s a fairly decent chance that Roe V Wade is either significantly weakened, if not overturned outright. And I wonder what goes through your mind? Are there going to be other Jane-like operations, if that happens?

BOOTH: There already are operations like this. Many things have changed since those early days. And just as there are 26 states that are ready to push back against reproductive freedom if Roe is overturned in whole or in part, there are also states that will become sanctuary states. New York, Illinois, California, and others. And there are people setting up above ground as well as underground transportation, medical care. A lot of the care is also now done by medication. Probably over half the abortions provided now are medically provided. And the biggest thing that’s changed though, is that we have all changed. Right now over 80% of this country believes that a politician should not become – come between a woman and her physician on making this most intimate decision of our lives. This is overwhelmingly has popular support. A large majority of the country really doesn’t think that Roe should be overturned. And people realize that this is a story of what can happen to their sister, their cousin, their friend can happen to them. So there will be protest. There will be organization. There will be new services provided. And we also need to come together and drive this issue into the elections to say that the politicians and the courts need to represent the popular will and build a more caring society for the future.

SREENIVASAN: The film is called “The Janes.” It is available now on HBO and HBOMax. Thank you both to Heather Booth and Jeanne Galatzer-Levy. Thanks so much for joining us.

BOOTH: Thank you so much.

GALATZER-LEVY: Thank you for having us.