The Abortion Counseling Service of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union (1968-1973) is often called JANE now, and all of us who worked in that pre-Roe underground are Janes.

Though Bob Dylan is an unlikely ally, his line "... to live outside the law, you must be honest ...." always reminds me of the underground abortion work we did.  It makes me think about what law is, and what honesty is ---- and the difference between law and justice.

Being a Jane has been big education, and I’m grateful. The work of the Service has influenced my writing, teaching, and performance over the years.  I first created a tiny, pocket-size chapbook, written in many voices — some are memory echoes, some are inventions; it’s called SHE SAID. After that, to my surprise, I wrote lots of poems that’re deeply informed by Jane-consciousness; those poems are collected in What if your mother.

Then I wrote fiction — based on a true story, as they say at the end of many movies. Several stories were published in journals; one was published as a zine; another won a prose fiction prize and was published as a chapbook. Two more are in the zine Chasing the Night created by Erin Yanke (#3/Fall 2016, and #4/December 2018). In early May of 2020, Oregon’s Left Fork Books published all the stories in a linked fiction collection called Hello. This is Jane. Here’s an interview about that book (questions by Jenny Worley) on Books to the Barricades (scroll down to the cover’s rose tattoo); here’s another interview (questions by Ken Jones) on KBOO Community Radio (show begins at about the 30minute mark); and here’s an online “conversation” (Mandy Medley/Pilsen Community Books in Chicago + Qudsiyyah Shariyf/Chicago Abortion Fund + me). AND: Check out the new edition (2022) of What if your mother — edited, with a revised preface and some other changes, from Oregon’s Flowstone.

Here are some earlier pieces: The Abortion Diary (in two interviews, a wide-ranging conversation; Melissa Madera did a great editing job).  Another good use of interviews/research is by Rachel Wilson, who talked with some Janes for an article and then collaborated with cartoonist Ally Shwed to make a comic, now in COMICS FOR CHOICE.  Jacklynn Blanchard did a long interview with actor/producer Cait Cortelyou and me; one section of that long 3-way conversation is at BITCH Media.  In 2017, Madeleine Schwartz talked to several Janes and published a brief oral history in Harper’s. In 2018, an interview by Rebecca Jacobson was part of the "Oregon Women" issue of Portland Monthly, and a 3-Jane podcast was created by Hannah Thi Minh Nguyen, who contributed her work to Stanford University's Survival Project.  In 2019, no doubt because of the rapidly increasing terribleness around motherhoood and abortion decisions in the USA, there were many interviews and articles about JANE.

There are early-but-still-relevant blogs at WORDS OF CHOICE/Repro Freedom Arts, produced by Cindy Cooper: 2-3-08 and 3-31-08. More recently, WORDS OF CHOICE published a blog (April/2020) about Hello. This is Jane. Then, at the end of August that year, Jaye Austin Williams performed the piece I wrote for Re-Generation, ReproFreedom Arts’ online performance event created out of conversations between elders and young women; it’s here.

Here's something I’ve been thinking about for years — more and more often right now:   We must pay attention to how this country’s changed attitudes and laws have become profoundly dangerous for women, girls, and trans people with uteruses — along with abortion providers.  We need to think about the safety of those who work to provide abortion access at present, when abortion is mostly illegal and certainly inaccessible in more than half of the USA; we are now, nationally speaking, definitively “post-Roe.” 

Those who decide to go underground to provide abortions and related healthcare in the current emotional and political climate (a climate promoting ignorance, shaming, violence) must set aside nostalgia and maybe even idealism if they look to the Janes’ pre-Roe Chicago action as a model. 

Useful as that model is, and effective as it was, now everyone has to think about this:  The work of the abortion service called JANE was an open secret in Chicago – much like other, related, resources during the illegal years in the USA (eg, Ruth Barnett’s clinic in Portland, Oregon). Police officers brought wives, daughters and lovers to JANE. Medical students, nurses, doctors and clergy sent people to JANE. College students in the Great Lakes region posted notes on campus bulletin boards with JANE’s phone number. Janes rarely experienced deep fear for the safety, health or freedom of the people we worked with, or for ourselves. We did not have to face the vicious harassment and violence, including the threat of assassination/murder, that clinic staff routinely deal with now, in the context of a national consciousness that's been deliberately created and fostered over five decades by this nation’s anti-abortion movement and political right wing.

Given this change – along with extensive technological advances in surveillance and tracking methods – models and methods must go beyond JANE. No one can assume safety to do the necessary organizing online; we all know more than enough about how vulnerable our online presence is. Resources and information are available online, however; checking their origins and veracity will be crucial. Useful history includes the Underground Railroad and related action during the pre-Civil War anti-slavery movement, the Warsaw Ghetto and European partisans during WWII, some of the strategies of the 20th century US Civil Rights movement, and resistance/communication systems devised by people in prisons, concentration camps, and countries under military rule. As I find myself saying pretty often these days, it’s different now.

We all know that know popular culture, certainly including movies, is both a cause and an effect of our thinking and behavior. From the middle of the 20th century until fairly recently, only a handful of good fiction films focused on abortion were shown in the USA: The Cider House Rules, Citizen Ruth, Vera Drake (from the UK), If These Walls Could Talk I, and Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days (from Romania). Then, in 2014, we got the smart, funny Obvious Child, and in 2015, Grandma played all over the USA while Dangerous Remedy popped up on YouTube (from Australia). In 2020, we got lucky with this really-good-thing-in-a-really-bad-year — a splendid film, directed by Eliza Hittman, available for viewing in various ways: Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always. In the non-fiction sphere, Oregon director Jan Haaken made a fine documentary about contemporary abortion healthcare in the USA a couple years before that: Our Bodies, Our Doctors. Let’s hope those movies, and new ones coming from thoughtful abortion-positive filmmakers, will counter anti-abortion films about pregnancy and motherhood decisions in the USA. Here’s a list of some others (and a few related resources) from past years that include the complexity of motherhood decisions, if only briefly - take a look.

For years I'd been imagining films that'd actually be about the Chicago underground - Janes in the movies - and now that’s happening. ASK FOR JANE, a feature-length independent fiction film based on the work of the service, opened at US theaters in May of 2019 and showed in other countries as well; screenings were packed in China and South Korea (here’s an audio interview with the producer/star, Cait Cortelyou, the executive producer, Caroline Hirsch, and me). A very fine fiction short has also been completed: JANE, by Natalija Vekic. And, as of January 2022, there are two new feature-length films, one fiction (CALL JANE) and one a documentary (THE JANES — on HBO; among several other Janes, I’m in it).

It goes without saying – though you’ll notice I’m saying it – that you should also read about abortion healthcare. Here’s a very short list of books I’m grateful for; these are available in libraries and independent bookstores, and online.

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty
— Dorothy Roberts
The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law
— Rickie Solinger
Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice
— Willie Parker
Handbook For A Post-Roe America
— Robin Marty
Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now
— Jenny Brown
Choice Words: Writers on Abortion
— edited by Annie Finch

Additional JANE-related Resources

• “The Greatest Abortion Story Ever Told,” article (probably with byline “Jane”) in Hyde Park Voices, ca. 1970

• “Abortion: A Decade of Debate,” op-ed by Judith Arcana in the Chicago Sun-Times, January 23, 1983

• Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, cwluherstory.org

• The Story of Jane, book by Laura Kaplan (various editions, interviews with Janes + commentary/history)

• Jane: An Abortion Service, 1995, 58 minute video documentary by Nell Lundy and Kate Kirtz available from Women Make Movies

• Jane: Abortion and the Underground, play by Paula Kamen, 1999 + recent revisions/versions by the playwright: paulakamen.com

• Words of Choice, theater created by Cindy Cooper, at www.wordsofchoice.org

• Jane: Documents from Chicago’s clandestine abortion service, 1968-1973; various authors in a zine first published by Firestarter Press in 2004; more recently, the zine has been printed/published by Eberhardt Press/Radix Media

• What if your mother, book (poems and monologues) by Judith Arcana; this one came out in a revised edition in early June of 2022.

• Keesha and Joanie and JANE, fiction zine by Judith Arcana, Eberhardt Press 2013 (new/revised version available in 2022)

• Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture, fiction chapbook by Judith Arcana, Minerva Rising Press (Prose Fiction Prize Winner) 2015

• “Abortion Is A Motherhood Issue” (revised), essay by Judith Arcana in Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives (4th edition); McGraw-Hill, 2006; ed. by Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey [earlier version in Mother Journeys, ed. Reddy, Roth and Sheldon]

• Listen here to an hour-long show about the abortion service, done by the CircleARadio collective on KBOO, Portland's independent community radio station (use the audio bar beneath this list).