Before 'Roe v. Wade,' The Women of 'Jane' Provided Abortions For The Women Of Chicago

[CountAllVotes]

Time: Before January 22, 1973 --

In 1971, Winnette Willis was a 23-year-old single mom in Chicago when she became pregnant again. "I was terrified of having another child," she tells Radio Diaries.

Before the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade 45 years ago, abortion was illegal in most of the United States, including in Illinois.

Women like Willis who wanted to terminate their pregnancies had limited and often frightening options. She wasn't sure what to do. And then one day, while she was waiting on an L train platform, she saw a sign.

"The sign said, 'Pregnant? Don't Want to Be? Call Jane.' And a phone number," Willis remembers. "So, I called."

<snip>
The dangers faced by women seeking abortions in the pre-Roe v. Wade era are well-documented. In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women in the United States, though there were likely many more unrecorded mortalities. After antibiotics were introduced in the 1940s, the number of women dying from illegal abortions dropped dramatically. However, every year, thousands of women continued to be admitted to hospitals nationwide for complications of illegal abortions.

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/19/578620266/before-roe-v-wade-the-women-of-jane-provided-abortions-for-the-women-of-chicago

Does anyone else out there remember the the days before Jan. 22, 1973 and the things women put themselves through if they were to become pregnant and did not want the child? Self-abortion was often rather unsuccessfully tried and places and organizations such as "Jane" were around if you were lucky enough to know/find such a place.

It was not a good time in America for women. I can remember the young women who attended high school and were pregnant. They wore their maternity dresses and stood in the back of the school with other unwed mother's to be. They were often sneered at by others and in many cases, the other young people were simply too horrified to look.

One young woman I knew swallowed an entire bottle of Tylenol in an effort to self-abort. She ended up in the hospital and a psychiatric unit but ... the baby was gone, that is what was important to her. Other women tried different things but in general, the result was a giant fail and perhaps death.

Others could have ended up at a home for unwed mothers, a thing that no seems to remember very well as they are now a thing of the past hopefully.

YES, that is just one example of how bad it could be to be pregnant before the likes of Roe v. Wade!

Please, do not let your children forget! What is "legal" today may not be "legal" tomorrow which is a genuine fear for everyone in America.

[demmiblue]

1. Kicking to read later. n/t

[MineralMan]

2. In my small town in California, during the early 1960s,

there was one doctor who performed D&C abortions. He didn't do lot of them, but he did some. I knew one girl in my high school class who had one. She told me, but swore me to secrecy about it. I later learned that he did them only for his existing patients, and only after being persuaded to do so and with the understanding that it would not be disclosed.

Nobody ever bothered him about it. I suspect that was because his services were sometimes used by influential members of the community when their daughters "came up pregnant," as the saying went. He was never charged with a crime.

He wasn't my doctor. I didn't really know him. I did go to him once, when I was in High School, when my own doctor was out of town. He seemed like a very nice man. I was good friends with his daughter, who was one class behind me. The subject never came up, so I don't know if she was aware of it.

I suspect that such abortions were not all that rare, and that quite a few doctors in different communities provided them from time to time. But, they certainly were only available under very specific circumstances.

However, when the birth control pill became available, a year after I graduated from high school, a number of the doctors in town were prescribing them for girls' mothers, after examining their daughters. It took a while before single women under the age of 21 could have a prescription for them.

On the other hand, the health center at the college I attended paid no attention to that limitation and prescribed them to any female student who requested them. That health center, too, in 1964, had a big fish bowl full of condoms in the reception area, with a sign on it that said, "Free! Take as many as you need." That's California for you.

[CrispyQ]

3. In '74, two of my HS friends had abortions at Planned Parenthood.

A few years earlier & they would not have been able to, so easily. One of them told me, "No way am I going to let the community shame me while my boyfriend is basically off the hook." And she was right. That's how it was in my small community. The girls that got pregnant were shamed & the boys that got them pregnant were forgotten.

[RandomAccess]

6. That's how it was in EVERY community, large or small

That's one of the reasons single women were so desperate to have illegal abortions if they couldn't get legal ones. THEY WERE WILLING TO RISK DEATH.

Married women are also often equally desperate.

[mopinko]

4. if you wanted a legal abortion in illinois, mostly you went to wis.

assuming your could afford that, of course.
even so, it could be risky. in my small town outside of chicago, there was a weekly bus that went over the border to a clinic. i dont recall how much it cost, wanna say it was $185, but it was a decent chunk of change that often sent young women scrambling for cash. mim wage at the time was $1.50.

the bus took you back home according to the clock, not according to your need for medical care.
lots of women werent really ready for the ride back, but what else were you going to do? if you had the wherewithal to get there and back on your own, you wouldnt have been on the bus.

if you had complications when you got back, you didnt go to a catholic hospital. cook county had a ward set aside for women whose abortions, medical or otherwise, had gone bad. they wouldnt provide safe abortions, tho. even before hyde, they would do them.
at a catholic hospital, they might well let you die or refuse you care. lots of small towns in those days had only a catholic hospital.

and of course the church was hypocritical. if you were pregnant and unwed, and in a catholic school, you would get the boot the minute they found out.
the church ruined my sister's life that way.

and of course, if you could afford it, you could get a "referral" to an ob/gyn who would do it for you for you in his office. that option was $2k. he could get you admitted to the other hospital in town in case of problems, but if you didnt have a doc on staff there you were out of luck.

[Orange Free State]

5. In my hometown

The daughter of a doctor became pregnant in HS by a basketball player. This was mid 60s. They sent her to Switzerland to get an abortion. Her father was a prominent member of the Catholic Church, btw. This was one of those small town things that was widely,known and never openly discussed.
I was researching something unrelated in microfilmed old newspapers at the local library, and was startled to see ads for, basically, abortion pills. This was 1880s I think. They cured “obstructed flow”, and were probably based on pennyroyal. Abortion was very common in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Knowledge of the methods was mostly lost when the laws forbade disseminating information on birth control.

It would be tragic if women start planting pennyroyal again.