USA – The Experiment Podcast: The Resurgence of the Abortion Underground

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case that could overturn Roe v. Wade in June, the reporter Jessica Bruder speaks with activists prepared to take abortions into their own hands.

Chaay Tee
APRIL 22, 2022
33 minute podcast

There’s a common story about abortion in this country, that people have only two options to intentionally end a pregnancy: the clinic or the coat hanger. They can choose the safe route that’s protected by Roe v. Wade—a doctor in a legal clinic—or, if Roe is overturned, endure a dangerous back-alley abortion, symbolized by the coat hanger. But a close look at the history of abortion in this country shows that there’s much more to this story. As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case that could overturn Roe v Wade in June, activists are once again preparing to take abortion into their own hands.

Reporter Jessica Bruder explores the abortion underground to learn about the movement’s origins, and reveals how activists today are mobilizing around effective and medically safe abortion methods that can be done at home.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2022/04/resurgence-abortion-underground/629642/


A covert network of activists is preparing for the end of Roe

What will the future of abortion in America look like?

By Jessica Bruder
APRIL 4, 2022

One bright afternoon in early January, on a beach in Southern California, a young woman spread what looked like a very strange picnic across an orange polka-dot towel: A mason jar. A rubber stopper with two holes. A syringe without a needle. A coil of aquarium tubing and a one-way valve. A plastic speculum. Several individually wrapped sterile cannulas—thin tubes designed to be inserted into the body—which resembled long soda straws. And, finally, a three-dimensional scale model of the female reproductive system.

The two of us were sitting on the sand. The woman, whom I’ll call Ellie, had suggested that we meet at the beach; she had recently recovered from COVID-19, and proposed the open-air setting for my safety. She also didn’t want to risk revealing where she lives—and asked me to withhold her name—because of concerns about harassment or violence from anti-abortion extremists.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/roe-v-wade-overturn-abortion-rights/629366/


Canada – With her debut novel, Aimee Wall moves from translator to author

In We, Jane, Wall tackles rural abortion access in Newfoundland and Labrador

Elizabeth Whitten · CBC News
Posted: Feb 01, 2022

Aimee Wall's debut novel, We, Jane, starts off in Montreal with expat Marthe being lured back to her home province of Newfoundland and Labrador by an enigmatic fellow Newfoundlander named Jane, who is on a mission to increase abortion access in rural communities.

The name "Jane" is important, said Wall, who was inspired by a Chicago-based group with that name that performed abortions in the 1960s, when they were still illegal.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-reads-aimee-wall-1.6278095


Before Roe v. Wade, a secret group provided abortions. Two new films tell the story.

January 28, 2022
JENNIFER 8. LEE

Months before the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, seven women were arrested in a police raid of an underground illegal abortion service in two South Chicago apartments, and charged with counts of abortion or conspiracy to commit an abortion.

With Roe v. Wade declaring abortion a constitutional right, the charges against the seven women were dropped and the service they belonged to, the Jane Collective, dissolved.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1075836338/sundance-festival-2022-roe-vs-wade-the-janes-abortion


Jewish women are leaders on abortion rights. But they can’t do it alone.

BARBARA DOBKIN
JANUARY 26, 2022

(JTA) — In 1966, I was a student at Boston University’s School of Social Work when I received a phone call from a college friend. She explained in hushed tones that she needed an abortion and thought I could help her.

At that time, I didn’t know anyone who had terminated a pregnancy; all I knew was that abortion was illegal. I quietly asked some classmates if they knew how to end a pregnancy safely. One of them had an answer.

Continued: https://www.jta.org/2022/01/26/opinion/jewish-women-are-leaders-on-abortion-rights-but-they-cant-do-it-alone


Women Filmmakers at Sundance: Don’t Touch My Abortion

Sundance 2022: the films are reminding us what it was like when women did not have the right to choose

by SHARON WAXMAN
January 23, 2022

The women at Sundance are screaming at the tops of their lungs. They are saying: Why are you taking our rights away? Why are you turning the clock back 50 years?

As Roe v. Wade hits its 49-year anniversary this weekend with a near-assurance that it will never reach the 50-year landmark, multiple films at the Sundance Film Festival are reminding us what it was like when women did not have the right to choose an abortion.

Continued: https://www.thewrap.com/female-filmmakers-sundance-abortion-rights/


Mexican women’s solidarity defies Texas abortion law

Natalia Marques
January 3, 2022

Verónica Cruz of the Mexican women’s activist network Las Libres declared, “We aren’t afraid. … We are willing to face criminalization, because women’s lives matter more than their law.”

Cruz and other women in her organization say they will help bring U.S. women seeking abortion from Texas and other parts of the U.S. into Mexico, where abortion is now legal. They are also committed to providing women with medication abortion drugs — bring abortion pills into the U.S. or send them by mail.

Continued: https://www.liberationnews.org/mexican-womens-solidarity-defies-texas-abortion-law/


This is the future of abortion in a post-Roe America

The fall of Roe v. Wade won’t end abortion. Here’s what it will do.

By Anna North 
Oct 12, 2020

If Roe v. Wade falls, what happens to abortion in America?

That’s the question on a lot of Americans’ minds after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with the Supreme Court on the brink of a 6-3 conservative majority. If the Senate confirms President Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, the Court will likely have the votes to overturn the landmark 1973 decision that established Americans’ right to terminate a pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/21504883/supreme-court-abortion-roe-v-wade-barrett


USA – Self-Managed Abortion Is Medically Very Safe. But Is It Legally Safe?

Self-Managed Abortion Is Medically Very Safe. But Is It Legally Safe?

4/1/2020
by Carrie N. Baker

Between 1969 and 1973, feminists in Chicago with no formal medical training formed an underground abortion service called Jane that performed nearly 12,000 safe illegal abortions.

Today, as many states increasingly restrict medical professionals’ ability to offer abortion, women are once again finding ways to access safe abortion on their own.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2020/04/01/self-managed-abortion-is-medically-very-safe-but-is-it-legally-safe/


The Argument for Abortion as a Religious Right

The Argument for Abortion as a Religious Right
The world's largest religions support—and sometimes require—abortion.

by Leila Ettachfini
Feb 10 2020

When evangelical professor Bruce Waltke shared a standard biblical interpretation in favor of abortion in 1968, his words were hardly controversial.

“God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed,” he wrote in a 1968 Christianity Today article. “Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”

More than five decades later, a lot has changed. In that time, a concerted effort to place anti-abortion views at the core of the religious right has succeeded in rallying conservative Christians against reproductive rights.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjd3b7/the-argument-for-abortion-as-a-religious-right