Transcript & Show Notes for Episode 2
Meet "Jane," the abortion activists who bested Chicago's mob
“Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Call Jane…” In Chicago in the 1960s, abortion was illegal and the Chicago mob was the only option. Until an underground collective, known as Jane, decided to step in. Filmmakers Emma Pildes and Tia Lesson discuss their HBO documentary, 'The Janes,' sharing insights into the bravery and activism of these ordinary people who helped thousands of women.
02:02 Filmmakers Emma Pildes and Tia Lessen
02:21 The Origins of The Janes
02:59 The Context of the 1960s
05:23 Heather Booth: The Organizer
07:18 The Risks and Challenges Faced by The Janes
10:13 The Impact and Legacy of The Janes
20:44 The Current State of Reproductive Rights
23:34 Call to Action: Be the Change
Guests
Emma Pildes
Tia Lessen
Resources
Watch The Janes https://www.max.com/movies/janes/529f1e2e-8b5f-46cc-8963-7280289d50ff or with you library card at Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/12961978
Other films & dramas about the Janes:
https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/ask-jane?vp=wls
https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/jane-abortion-service
https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/13586559
Find Us Online
- Website: https://shows.acast.com/extraordinary-the-fight-for-reproductive-justice
- Substack: https://theextraordinarypodcast.substack.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_extraordinary_podcast
Credits
- Host & Producer: Carolyn Silveira. Website: www.carolynsilveira.com, Instagram: @cmoneycmonster Substack: https://rhymeschemes.substack.com
- Producer: Jennifer Bassett, Big Din Productions Website: www.bigdinproductions.com
- Editor: Carolyn Silveira & Jennifer Bassett
- Mixing: Max Liebman - Theme music: Katrina Zemrak
- Cover art: Mauricio Diaz
About Us
Extra+Ordinary is a despair-free podcast about abortion & reproductive justice that looks to the past – to fuel our fight for the future.
Join host Carolyn Silveira, a writer and social justice advocate, for inspiring stories of the people and moments that changed history, giving women (and all people) more control over our bodies and lives. From an evangelical doctor who became an abortion provider to “nice housewives” who risked jail time to help other women, we’ll learn how ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
Transcript for Episode 2 - The Janes
Auto-Generated
[00:00:00] Carolyn: Welcome to Extraordinary, the fight for reproductive justice. This podcast is all about looking to the past in order to energize our fight for the future. Even in the darkest moments, there are always people doing work, just outside the frame of the news stories we usually see. They are the ordinary people who fought to win us our rights in the first place.
I'm your host, Carolyn Silvera. This week, I'll be joined by my producer, Jennifer Bassett. [00:00:30] Stay connected with the show, get notified when new episodes come out, read text versions of the stories, and see any bonus content we create by subscribing at theextraordinarypodcast. substack. com.
In our first episode, we talked about the life of Estelle Griswold, a woman who became the director of Planned Parenthood in Connecticut in the 1950s and went on to win the famous Supreme Court [00:01:00] case Griswold v. Connecticut. This week we're focusing on the extraordinary story of the Janes. They were an anonymous collective who called themselves the Abortion Counseling Service of Women's Liberation.
These days, they're mostly referred to as Jane, as in the posters they put up around Chicago in the 1960s, which read, Pregnant? Don't want to be? Call Jane at 643 3844. A documentary movie called The Janes is available to stream on HBO Max now, [00:01:30] and tells the story of these incredible women. Many of whom are still living.
We talked to the filmmakers, Emma Pildes and Tia Lesson, about their story, how Emma and Tia came to learn about the Janes, and how these somewhat ordinary women came to do such extraordinary things. But first we'll play you a clip from the Janes, with Judith Arcana, one of the members who is no longer anonymous.
And then we'll get right into our conversation with Tia and Emma.
[00:01:55] HBO: In the state of Illinois, and most of the rest of the nation, [00:02:00] Abortion was illegal. It was not medical practice. It was simply a crime.
We were very aware of the fact that, um, women were suffering in a variety of ways because of abortion being against the law. Women did awful [00:02:30] things out of fear and desperation. We knew that some would be injured, some would die. Many people around them, including children that they already had, would suffer.
So we thought, we can be of use. You need an abortion, we'll help you. Call this number and ask for Jane.
[00:02:53] Carolyn: Hi Emma, hi Tia, nice to meet you. Do you mind telling us a little bit about yourselves?
[00:02:59] Emma: I'm Emma [00:03:00] Pildes. I'm one of the directors and uh, one of the producers of The Janes.
[00:03:05] Tia: Hi, my name is Tia Lesson and I'm a documentary filmmaker and I directed The Janes with Emma.
[00:03:12] Carolyn: Starting with you again, Emma, tell us when you first heard the story of Jane.
[00:03:18] Emma: So I have a family connection to the story. Um, my father is the radical lawyer in the film. The Janes have been sort of ever present for [00:03:30] me. So many people that we, um, talk to and I've seen the film and during Q and A's and whatnot say how, you know, how could I never have heard of the James?
And there is an answer to that, I think, but I just come from a peculiar place having had my father be involved. And his first wife was one of the James, was Judith.
[00:03:50] Carolyn: So the Jane's group formed in Chicago in the late 60s. Can you tell us what that world was like for women?
[00:03:58] Tia: Well, this was a time [00:04:00] when Abortion was a felony crime in most of the states in this country, and in Illinois at that time, in 68 until Roe, it was not only a crime to provide abortion services, it was a crime to advertise abortion services, it was a crime to hold someone's hand during an abortion, it was a crime to take someone to an abortion.
[00:04:23] Emma: You know, these women came out of student movements, and they were relegated to the sidelines. As progressive as those [00:04:30] movements were, and the incredible, um, world changing work that they were doing, there was an element of chauvinism that was still at play there. And, so these were, you know, Brave, intelligent, savvy women that weren't being listened to, their talents weren't being utilized and they were making coffee or whatever it was they were being told to march behind the men.
They were, you know, being talked over at a, at a certain point. I [00:05:00] think it wasn't gratifying, thank God. Because they took that energy and they, they put it into the women's movement and most specifically reproductive justice, which they were clear eyed enough to see as a, as a feminist. Issue as a human issue as this, you know, a civil rights issue as they made that coffee, they were listening, um, and they took all of those things that they learned, all of that organizing [00:05:30] and applied it to what was a highly functional underground abortion service.
The, the idea of context is a really important and, and to us fascinating part of this story. At the beginning of the film, one of our, our subjects says that the men's underestimating of women really worked well for them in this context because they were sort of [00:06:00] invisible in a certain way that allowed them to do this work.
[00:06:04] Tia: You know, they just realized that they needed to take action and no one else was doing it and they stepped up at great personal risk to themselves and their families.
[00:06:14] Carolyn: And can you tell us a little bit about Heather Booth, the University of Chicago student who was sort of at the center of Jane?
[00:06:21] Tia: Heather was an organizer.
She was a civil rights activist on the University of Chicago campus. And [00:06:30] she had a father who was a doctor, and so she had some connections to the medical community. And she understood when someone came to her asking for any contacts she might have to relay to his sister who needed an abortion, she understood it fundamentally as a moral obligation to help.
This person who I guess was suicidal and beside herself because she needed to terminate a pregnancy and she didn't know how and how to do it [00:07:00] safely. And so Heather, as she describes in the film, she made a phone call and thought that was that. And then her phone started ringing off the hook because people, you know, were passing her number around in the University of Chicago campus.
There were so few resources at that time. One of the best. Options was resorting to the Chicago bomb. That's how bad it was. Then. So, you know, Heather was able to find 1 [00:07:30] doctor who'd been a civil rights leader. He had a medical license. He had a clinic in the South side of Chicago and. He was willing to take the risk of seeing women and helping them in their pregnancies.
He was quite skilled and, uh, he offered some discounts and Heather sort of shepherded women there who came to her and made sure that he was doing the right thing, that he was acting. Correctly, because this was also a time when doctors would, [00:08:00] would, uh, demand sexual favors and assault and harass women who came to them looking for this illegal service.
And there was nothing a woman could do about it. So, unfortunately, this doctor, uh, T. R. M. Howard, was arrested by the Chicago police, not once, not twice, but, you know, three times. And he just became less available. And so, you know, she was able to bring other doctors. that other doctors, it just became too much for her to handle.
The demand was [00:08:30] so great. And, you know, she was just one person who was graduate degree. She was doing movement organizing and she was pregnant herself with a wanted pregnancy. And so she decided that she needed to create an organization that would pick up the slack, you know, the organized that would be fortified to deal with the medical issues, the legal issues, and create and give compassionate and safe care.
So she recruited women [00:09:00] from the movements that she was a part of, and she trained them. At a certain point they were ready to take it on, and over the course of four or five years they served about 11, 000 women. At first they started by counseling. At a certain point they were able to learn the procedure and offer it themselves, which enabled them to.
offer the procedure for free. They were volunteering their time. They gave women of Chicago another option [00:09:30] and it spread far beyond Chicago. There were women all over the Midwest who were coming to the Janes, calling them and getting appointments and having their problem solved.[00:09:41]
Carolyn: Was that mostly a word of
mouth?
Because I know they advertise locally a lot with their posters, is what I'm most familiar with. But how, yeah, how did word get out beyond the reach of their posters?
[00:09:49] Tia: That's a really good question. I think that, uh, there were enough people that were in college and university and they were mobile and they did spread the word.
I think it was [00:10:00] totally word of mouth.[00:10:03]
Emma: The audacity to put up posters
really delighted us, um, pretty, a pretty great, uh, detail, but I think there was a tremendous amount of word of mouth, you know, as there was at that time for the, um, bad actors, whether the mob. As well, I would imagine, particularly among college students, that, that it was people telling people [00:10:30] their own experiences and saying this was safe and understanding what they felt they weren't receiving, um, in, in a medical setting.
Nevermind. an abortion setting, that they weren't as women being listened to, that there wasn't follow up care, that there wasn't all of these things. My guess is that that was communicated among people and that they had a pretty remarkable reputation in what is an otherwise sort [00:11:00] of terrifying landscape of illegal abortions.
[00:11:04] ?: So can you tell us how many Jane members there were and how many you were able to interview for the documentary?
[00:11:12] Emma: I don't really have an exact answer because even if you ask the women themselves, they all have different answers. They weren't clocking in with their time cards every day. So there isn't a tremendous amount of record keeping as far as, as membership guests for sort of like active [00:11:30] members, um, of the core group, not the people that were.
Further out fundraising, loaning their apartments. I mean, that that's a pretty big network, but if you, if you're, if you're thinking about just the core group, maybe 20 at any given time, something like that. And then over the years, a larger number because there were people at the beginning, Heather, as, as Tia was saying, who stopped at a certain [00:12:00] point, you know, when we got all of these women together that we were able to interview, there were people that came in towards the end.
That had never met Heather for instance, uh, cause their time just never overlapped. Quite a touching thing to witness for all, some of these people to have met each other for the first time. Um, but considering, um, what they accomplished, not nearly as big as you would think. And also that it's not like they were getting pregnant.[00:12:30]
Doctor's salaries to do this work.
[00:12:34] Carolyn: Can you talk about, um, what they were like in the 60s and now, if you were able to get a sense of sort of both of those personalities from the women that you met?
[00:12:45] Tia: I would say that they're maybe the unlikeliest outlaws because they were sort of ordinary people, weren't part of the weather underground.
They weren't part of the Black Panther Party, but they, they created a clandestine organization of self described homemakers. They were [00:13:00] secretaries, they were students, they were dropouts. They range in age from 19 to 45. And I guess, You know, they, personality wise, they just didn't want to take any shit.
And they still don't, but they also had, had some fun with each other, you know, so they had some pluck, they had a bit of playfulness and, um, but they knew what they were doing was right. And maybe some of them were a little naive. They didn't understand [00:13:30] exactly what the consequences would be for them personally.
Um, by and large, they were white, by and large, they were middle class. Uh, and so one could say they, they were privileged. On some level, and I think they leverage their privilege to, to help others who are being disproportionately affected by illegal abortion, uh, mostly low income communities, rural women, um, disproportionately people of color.
Um, all that said, there were [00:14:00] black Janes in the group, there were a couple of Latina Janes, um, but it was mostly white. And, and when they were ultimately arrested in 1970. Two, um, the seven of them were all, all white. Half of them were Catholic, half of them were Jewish. And in fact, because I think that their white skin privilege, they were able to only spend a night in jail and they were finally exonerated.
[00:14:25] Carolyn: Yeah. Did you have a sense of, um, The experience of the Janes [00:14:30] who weren't white or weren't college students or weren't 19 of it being very different, does it just vary by each individual person?
[00:14:39] Tia: I think the stories are individual, but I think there, there was common ground and there was absolutely contested terrain.
Marie Liener, one of the Janes, uh, we interviewed who is black woman was a foot soldier in the civil rights movement. So a lot of her thinking, a lot of her understanding of race and this world [00:15:00] came out of the work that she did trying to integrate the swing pool at the college that she went to, helping in the defense of Bobby Seale.
She understood women that they were serving, who at a certain point after New York made abortion legal, the majority of women they were serving were women of color because white women and women with means could travel either by plane or by car or by bus to New York that required resources, that required the ability to take off time, [00:15:30] that required some wherewithal that the poorest of the poor didn't have.
And so, She saw the, she saw the complexion of the women that they were serving. And she, she wanted to be of service. She wanted them to see an ally, a kindred face, um, someone who's experienced. wasn't different or very different from theirs. And so, um, I think was there racism in the group for sure? I'm sure there was.
I mean, it was 1968, but I think, well, they [00:16:00] wouldn't use the term ally. I think that's exactly what they were doing. They were being allies as we need to be today. We'll continue this
[00:16:08] Carolyn: story in just a moment.
[00:16:15] ?: Hey, it's JB, the co producer of the show. I want to tell you all about illegal and political podcasts. I think you'll enjoy. Okay. It's called Talking Feds. The show is hosted by law professor, political commentator, and former U. S. attorney, Harry Lippman. [00:16:30] Talking Feds is a roundtable discussion that brings together prominent former government officials, journalists, and special guests for a dynamic and in depth analysis of the most pressing questions in law and politics.
Past guests include Senator Cory Booker, Congressman Jamie Raskin, Erin Brunette, Stacey Abrams, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Maggie Haberman, and many more. I love this show. I used to produce it and I'm still an avid listener. I can honestly say there's no better podcast to listen to this election [00:17:00] season. So tune in wherever you listen to podcasts.
[00:17:06] Carolyn: And we're back with Extraordinary The Fight for Reproductive Justice. I'm going to play another minute long clip from the documentary here. The three voices you'll hear are Laura Kaplan, Sheila, and at the end, Marie Liener.
[00:17:25] HBO: That meant that all those white college [00:17:30] students who could see themselves getting on a plane and flying to New York and getting an abortion and flying back, did that.
That's what really changed the demographics of food culture.
It was really the lower middle class and the poor women who were [00:18:00] stuck. If you have other kids, if you don't have the money, it was hard to do. A decent one bedroom apartment in Chicago was going for about 150 a month. Illegal abortions cost between 500 and 600. Women of color were just kind of on the outs because they couldn't afford it.
And to me, that was just outrageous. How did the leadership work? Can
[00:18:28] ?: you tell us a little bit [00:18:30] about that?
[00:18:30] Emma: The Jane Collective is a total misnomer. I mean, there was leadership in there as there needed to be. Jodi and Marie were pals, and that's how Marie came into the group. Um, and Again, you know, she sort of saw instinctually that this was something that she could, she could do and she could contribute, uh, to make, I mean, you know, cops were, were murdering black Panthers, nevermind black people in Chicago at the [00:19:00] time, it was charged in Chicago.
So there was a lot of really good, remarkable, incredible movement work that was happening, but there was a lot of, of fear and, and, and. She was around the service because of Jodi, and she was aware of it, and she identified this as something that she could do to be, um, a familiar face and say it's, it's okay to be [00:19:30] incredibly vulnerable and come into an incredibly vulnerable medical situation, a legal medical situation, with a group of white women.
I mean, it's a very complex thing, which is why, as. tough as it was going to be to get it right. Tia and I were very fixated on including that aspect of race and class and in the film.
[00:19:54] ?: I'd just love you to dig deeper into the kinds of risks that these women were putting themselves into.
[00:19:59] Tia: Well, the [00:20:00] biggest risks were the risks for the women they served who could have found back alley butchers, um, who rendered a basically a very safe procedure into.
You know, a possibility of infection and possibly death, so highly stigmatized medical procedure. Many of them were young people living with their families who couldn't be found out. Some of them were [00:20:30] people in battered relationships who couldn't leave for an afternoon, much less overnight, for health care.
And the biggest risk When abortion is illegal are for the women who are trying to end a pregnancy and for women who are carrying pregnancies to term and are dedicated to having that child who are carrying one in pregnancies but can't get appropriate pregnancy care because abortion is taken out of the toolbox.
We've seen over the [00:21:00] years Catholic hospitals refuse women with intended pregnancies. Um, DNCs and abortion care when they have miscarriages and it imperils their life. Um, and we're seeing that today on steroids. We just saw five women in Texas file a lawsuit because they didn't get the care they needed when they needed it and they could have died.
And these were all women who had wanted pregnancies. Um, it turns out that abortion care [00:21:30] is part of gynecological care, and it's one option if you have a miscarriage, and you need to complete that miscarriage. So I guess that's the number one risk. In terms of what risk the chains are facing, abortion providers are going to jail all the time in this country in the 60s.
Whether they were doctors or mobsters, and they had jail sentences in Minneapolis, in Boston, in Los Angeles, happening all over the country. And whether they served, [00:22:00] um, a few months in jail or a few years in jail, they got heavy fines and they were risking their medical licenses. So, of course, the women of Jane didn't have medical licenses, so they weren't risking that.
Many of them had young children. Uh, Martha had four children at the time. Um, she was one of the seven that were, was busted. Um, Judith had a baby, uh, who, who was still nursing. Um, [00:22:30] so they had responsibilities. Obviously the women who did have children had responsibilities too, and so for risking time in jail, they were risking a stigma that they would never necessarily be able to get rid of.
They were risking having their names in the papers and having their families find out. You know, ultimately the seven teens that were arrested served a night in jail, but each of them were facing 110 years in prison. I think they each were being charged with 10 or 11 counts of abortion, because that's how many [00:23:00] women were there that day, um, of the bust.
It was really thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe in January of 73 that they got off. The prosecutor in Chicago, the state's attorney, decided to drop the charges. They didn't have to, but they did, and they could go on with their lives. So
[00:23:25] ?: your documentary came out in June 2022, which was [00:23:30] basically around the same time with the Dobbs versus Jackson decision.
So when you started this project, did you feel like Roe was in jeopardy? And was this something that was a part of this? Did you feel like you were sort of telling this still evolving history when you were doing this project? I
[00:23:45] Tia: think there was no question in our minds that, that it was imperiled. Anybody who'd been following the situation understood that there'd been a steady erosion of abortion rights since Roe.
starting with the Hyde Amendment that restricted government funding for poor people to get abortion care. [00:24:00] Um, 2021 was a landmark year in the number of laws passed by state legislatures around the country restricting abortion care. So it wasn't a rosy picture before DOBS. Um, and I guess after DOBS, it just got a hell of a lot worse, uh, for women and people with uteruses in this country.
Nothing medically had changed. The only thing that changed since 1973 was The composition of the court and the right wing had been gunning for [00:24:30] the court and for Roe for decades, and they kept at it. And when Trump was elected, he had their guy. So look, we were informed by this as it was unfolding.
Supreme court decided to take up the Dobbs case as the oral arguments were being heard as Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett. I mean, that was happening in the real world. Throughout production and post production on this film, and we couldn't help be informed by that. And I think the questions that we asked and the story that we told [00:25:00] reflected the reality of the 60s and early 70s in Chicago, and it reflected our current day reality.
We like to think that this film is making a difference in educating people about what's at stake, um, about the grim reality of illegal abortion. But also inspire some hope or resistance. You know, there's so many ways that we can, um, be on the side of right and to [00:25:30] resist in the spirit of the Janes, you know, they'd come
[00:25:33] Emma: with us to a lot of Q and a here, there as total rock stars.
I mean, people like come up and circle around them after the Q and a is to talk to them. Um, so that's very touching for Tia and I just to be, um, able to witness them get their due for the work they did so long ago. Um, but I think they're [00:26:00] pissed, but they are hopeful because they are seeing young people pick up the baton.
I
[00:26:09] Tia: think, you know, this is not just for the young. I mean, look, I think we all need to step up. We, we need to be courageous now. We can't rely on or wait for The next generation of the Janes. We need to be the Janes. We all have something to get. Em and I are filmmakers, but everybody has a skill. And if you don't have a [00:26:30] skill, you have money.
And if you don't have money, you can drive. And if you can't drive, like there are just so many ways to be of service right now. Um, and I just challenge every single person in the listening audience to kind of figure out what they can do, what they can give. Because it is a public health crisis right now.
We are infinitely more capable than we give ourselves credit for, particularly women.
[00:26:57] ?: Well, [00:27:00] thank you so much, Tia and Emma, and that's it for this week's episode. Thanks again to HBO for the clips that we used in this episode. You can stream Emma and Tia's amazing documentary on HBO Max now.
[00:27:11] Carolyn: In our next episode, we'll meet another amazing person, Dr. Willie Parker. As a teenager, he was an evangelical Christian.
As a young man, he was an OBGYN who avoided abortion. Ultimately, he dedicated his career to providing abortion care in the Deep South as a traveling doctor. [00:27:30] We'll learn his extraordinary story next time. Thanks for listening to Extraordinary The Fight for Reproductive Justice. Our podcast is produced and hosted by me, Carolyn Silvera.
And me, Jennifer Bassett. Katrina Zemreck composed our theme music and Mauricio Diaz designed our cover art, mixing by Max Liebman. If you liked what you heard, share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or rate us on Spotify. The fight for reproductive justice [00:28:00] remains ongoing and urgent, as you well know.
We encourage you to speak up, make sure you're registered to vote, and learn more. Substack Newsletter always has more resources about reproductive health and ways that you can get involved. Check it out at theextraordinarypodcast. substack. com.