Making Abortion Safe Outside of the Legal System: A Q&A on Self-Managed Abortion

Sociologist Naomi Braine’s new book on the global feminist movement for self-managed abortion took her to Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe to study activists’ work there.

FELICIA KORNBLUH
Jan 30, 2024

From 2017 to 2019, sociologist Naomi Braine, a professor at Brooklyn College, traveled in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe to study what she terms a global feminist movement for self-managed abortion (SMA). The result is her new book, Abortion Beyond the Law: Building a Global Feminist Movement for Self-Managed Abortion (Verso, 2023).

The story of self-managed abortion starts from the fact that, according to the Guttmacher Institute, at least half of all abortions around the world in 2017 were medication abortions, in which people used drugs to end their pregnancies. (The ambiguous legal status of abortion in many countries means that the data is incomplete.) This contrasts with the common image of so-called “procedural” abortion, which occurs under professional medical care and mostly or entirely in a clinic or hospital.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/self-managed-abortion-naomi-braine/


‘A story of revolutionary deep care’: revisiting the history of radical abortion defense

In the book Deep Care, historian Angela Hume offers lessons from generations of underground activists and clinicians who worked to protect abortion access

Adrian Horton
Mon 27 Nov 2023

In the run-up and year following the US supreme court’s reversal of Roe v Wade in June 2022, there emerged a narrative of return: that abortion in states where it was suddenly banned would revert to the underground. It would be a return to 1972, when diffuse, partially anonymous groups such as the Jane Collective, a secret network of abortion providers in Chicago immortalized in the documentary The Janes and in a feature film starring Elizabeth Banks, stood in for legal reproductive healthcare.

In reality, the end of Roe didn’t so much send the US back to a pre-1973 landscape of unsafe abortions, but toward a bleak and unprecedented future of criminalized pregnancy. And the abortion underground never disappeared under Roe, anyway. Far from it – in a new book, the feminist historian, critic and poet Angela Hume draws on dozens of interviews with former unlicensed abortion providers, community clinic workers and volunteer clinic defenders who together formed the vibrant, multi-pronged and under-sung radical edge of the abortion defense movement.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/27/deep-care-book-abortion


Ohio’s Issue 1: Three women share their pre-Roe abortion experiences

October 24, 2023
BY GINNY RICHARDSON

On Nov. 7, Ohioans will vote on Issue 1, which would establish a state constitutional right to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions,” including decisions about abortion, contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and continuing pregnancy. Free access to birth control, including abortion when necessary, is a fundamental prerequisite to the emancipation of women and, therefore, all working people.

To contextualize this vote within the history of the struggle for reproductive rights, People’s World has collected three previously unpublished personal stories. Each one addresses an individual woman and her experience in obtaining reproductive care, as well as the impact of the prevailing laws at the time on her decisions and treatment.

Continued: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/ohios-issue-1-three-women-share-their-pre-roe-abortion-experiences/


USA – These women ran an underground abortion network in the 1960s. Here’s what they fear might happen today

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN
Sun April 23, 2023

The voice on the phone in 1966 was gruff and abrupt: “Do you want the Chevy, the Cadillac or the Rolls Royce?”

A Chevy abortion would cost about $200, cash in hand, the voice explained. A Cadillac was around $500, and the Rolls Royce was $1,000.

“You can’t afford more than the Chevy? Fine,” the voice growled. “Go to this address at this time. Don’t be late and don’t forget the cash.” The voice disappeared.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/23/health/abortion-lessons-jane-wellness/index.html


USA – This activist’s life shows abortion access is not just a ‘white woman’s movement’

Marie Leaner was one of the few Black members of a covert abortion network active in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. On the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, she tells her story.

By Candace McDuffie
Tuesday, Jan. 31

In the late 1960s, Marie Leaner made a tough choice, one criticized by even her mother: to join a group known as the Jane Collective, a covert abortion network that helped women secure services on the South Side of Chicago in the late 1960s.

Born and raised in the Washington Park neighborhood, Leaner was one of the few Black members of the group, which used code names and various fronts — including Leaner’s own home — to provide safe abortions.

Continued: https://www.wbez.org/stories/marie-leaner-on-being-a-black-jane/af19365b-ea29-418e-8eb2-1c416f824dc1


Learning to Self-Manage Abortions Is Key in a Post-“Roe” Society

As we head into 2023, we face the collective challenge of working to normalize knowledge of self-managed abortions.

By Kelly Hayes , TRUTHOUT
December 31, 2022

For many of us, the fall of Roe v. Wade was one of the most devastating events of 2022. When Politico published a leaked draft of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I was deeply rattled. My intellectual awareness that such an outcome was likely, given the Republican’s seizure of the Supreme Court, had not prepared me emotionally for the sight of those hateful, arcane words. Like many people, I was overwhelmed by the impulse to do something useful. So, I trained to become an abortion doula, which means that, in addition to my work as a writer, organizer and podcaster, I also provide various forms of support to people who are seeking to end pregnancies. Through that work, and my coverage of abortion rights on “Movement Memos,” I have built relationships with some great people who are working to help folks around the country access abortions. About six months out from the fall of Roe, we all agree about one thing: We desperately need to normalize knowledge of self-managed abortion.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/learning-to-self-manage-abortions-is-key-in-a-post-roe-society/


Review: A 1960s underground abortion network in ‘Call Jane’

By Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
Posted Oct 26, 2022

In Phyllis Nagy’s “Call Jane,” Joy (Elizabeth Banks) is a 1960s housewife married to a defense attorney (Chris Messina) with a teenage daughter (Grace Edwards) and a baby on the way. A heart condition, though, threatens her life in childbirth. The only treatment, her doctor tells her, is “to not be pregnant.”

When they, acting on the doctor’s advice, appeal to the hospital’s board for permission to conduct a therapeutic termination, this critical moment in Joy’s life passes curtly. The all-male board members discuss it briefly while not acknowledging Joy, across the table. “No regard for her mother?” she asks. Their votes sound the answer. “No.” “No.” “No.”

Continued: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/10/26/review-a-1960s-underground-abortion-network-in-call-jane/


USA – The human threat to abortion seekers

Apps and data matter — but people are often a weaker link

By LUX ALPTRAUM
Oct 15, 2022

In the years before Roe v. Wade, an anonymous group of Chicago-area women known only as The Janes came together to provide safe, clandestine abortions to pregnant people in need. Over the course of several years, the group provided over 11,000 abortions. When they were finally busted by the police in 1972, it wasn’t because of police surveillance or the group’s anti-war activism or even their willingness to provide abortions to the pregnant family members of police officers. It was a family member of a Jane patient who tipped off the police.

“Some nosey bitch tried to snitch on someone who needed an abortion,” says Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of the abortion storytelling organization We Testify.

Continued: https://www.theverge.com/23385553/abortion-seekers-security-threats-human-factor


The Post-Roe Abortion Underground

A multigenerational network of activists is getting abortion pills across the Mexican border to Americans.

By Stephania Taladrid
October 10, 2022

The handoff was planned for late afternoon on a weekday, at an underused trailhead in a Texas park. The young woman carrying the pills, whom I’ll call Anna, arrived in advance of the designated time, as was her habit, to throw off anyone who might try to use her license plates to trace her identity. She felt slightly absurd in her disguise—sun hat, oversized sunglasses, plain black mask. But the pills in her pocket were used to induce abortions, and in Texas, her home state, their distribution now required such subterfuge, along with burner phones and the encrypted messaging app Signal. Since late June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas and thirteen other states had effectively banned abortion, and more were sure to follow. In some of the states, laws that originated as far back as the nineteenth century had been restored. Providing the tools for an abortion in Texas had become a felony that could lead to years in prison, and a fellow-citizen could sue Anna and collect upward of ten thousand dollars for every abortion she was found to abet.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/17/the-post-roe-abortion-underground


As Supreme Court Prepares to Rule on Roe, Illinois Once Again Ground Zero for Abortion Access

Could it mean the return of the Jane Collective for a new era?

DePaul’s Center for Journalism Integrity and Excellence
June 1, 2022

When Maggie Olivia found herself in a Missouri doctor’s office in the wake of a positive pregnancy test, she didn’t mirror her doctor’s enthusiasm. She remembers being in a new relationship and not in a position to financially support a child.

“I was crying … It was really upsetting.” Olivia said. “My doctor at the time was like, ‘Congratulations, mom.’ They gave me a little gift bag with prenatal vitamins …”

Continued: https://news.wttw.com/2022/06/01/supreme-court-prepares-rule-roe-illinois-once-again-ground-zero-abortion-access