Thread by @womensmedfund

A lot of us read Laura's book last fall when she came for our ONE NIGHT ONLY event, but since then it's come out in a beautiful new edition. We're selling copies here, and Laura will be signing them after her talk.

Here we go! We're so excited to have Laura Kaplan, celebrating her book THE STORY OF JANE, about her experience serving the legendary pre-Roe abortion service.

Laura takes the mic! She's going to stand. "I'm very short, and getting shorter all the time," she jokes.

"I see a direct line between what you're doing here in Philadelphia now, and what we were doing way back then," Laura says.

Laura says the lack of technology in the early 1970s meant that women did not have easy access to information about their own bodies, let alone about birth control options.

"I didn't write our story because I thought it would be a blueprint for some later-day group," Laura says. "I thought it was an important piece of women's history that could be easily lost."

The women's liberation movement was transformative for a pretty simple reason, says Laura: "It was the beginning of women talking to each other and discovering that what we thought were our individual troubles and experiences weren't necessarily just our own."

A huge thing happened in these conversations. Women found out that abortion wasn't uncommon. More often than not, women didn't die as a result of these procedures—though the procedure could be unpleasant. Dirtiness, lack of respect, exploitation. Here was a problem to be solved.

Clergy groups were at the time instrumental in counseling women on how to get safe, respectful, affordable abortions.

Laura found an archival flier, and shows us. It reads: "Abortion: a woman's decision, a woman's right."

Founding member of Jane—activist Heather Booth—put volunteers through their political paces.

Jane worked very closely with one doctor to provide abortions in Chicago. Then they found out that he wasn't a doctor. Opinions were split. Some women thought, "we're no better than the back alleys." Others thought, "if he can do it, so can we—and cheaper."

"Whenever you break a taboo, there's that moment of crisis where you're going through the looking glass. And then you're on the other side. And you're fine." Laura and the rest of Jane cleared their mental hurdle, and learned to provide abortions.

Any member of the collective assigned to work as "callback Jane" returned the voicemails of women who called the service in need: "hello, this is Jane, how can I help you?"

"Callback Jane" passed information on to the main administrator, "Big Jane." Big Jane had to be on call 24 hours a day. Laura was often Big Jane. "It was the only time in my life that I ever watched soap operas," she jokes. "I was home."

A huge part of the Jane ethos was counseling sessions where women seeking help would be given a counseling session in which she was told exactly what would happen. "The scary part, we thought, was the not knowing," Laura says.

A counselor would keep in touch with the woman who got the abortion for about a week or so afterward, just to make sure she was ok.

Laura says that there are no records, but based on conservative estimates, they believe Jane provided 11,000 low cost abortions in the Chicago area.

Huge, appreciative applause in the room.

When New York legalized abortion, women with means and support would fly there for the procedure. What Jane was left with was the most vulnerable: poor women, Black women, women in abusive relationships.

Jane charged $100 for an abortion—or, whatever they could afford. "Some women paid $40," Laura says. "Or $12 and change. Or nothing."

At some point, Jane would offer women the chance to see their cervixes. "We felt like our mission was so much more than abortion," Laura says. "It was about education... It was about women taking control of their own bodies... Here is our opportunity to build a sense of self."

Jane was always interested in positioning itself not as an authority but as a partner in crime. "We're not doing this to you, we're doing this *with* you."

Jane used an "assistant" who would do the prep—injections, speculum insertion—while the abortion provider sat with the woman, held her hand and talked. At some point they would switch roles, and the assistant would come and talk. It subtly suggested the sharing of power.

"A certain portion of what we did is what gets the applause," Laura says. "But it was how we did it that was radical. It was the willingness to take responsibility for the change you want to see in the world."

Laura acknowledges the caveats to her experience. The group was comprised largely of middle class white women—women privileged enough to assume they were never going to go to jail.

"We were great with the women. We were kind and respectful. We were wonderful. But with each other, we sucked," Laura says. The room laughs with her. "Backbiting, cliques... When people refer to us as a 'collective,' I cringe." (Oops!)

"I encourage you to keep people's needs in front of you—so *that's* what's guiding you and steering you," Laura says, giving advice to present day activists. "Do that and you can't go wrong."

Laura urges us: organize, organize. "One person trying to do something alone is like trying to light a fire with wet wood."

"One of the ways you change the world is acting as if the world has changed." The group murmurs their agreement, and Laura jokes: "Like, I acted like a competent person, and I became a competent person!"

An audience member asks about infighting in activist groups. "Once you see the dynamics of power at play, I don't think you can unsee them," says Laura. But you're still a part of this culture; it's easy to replicate those structures. Continually interrogate your behavior.

An audience member asks what happened to Jane after the police raid. Jane had 300 women waiting for abortions when the service was busted. They made so many phone calls; some clinics out of state agreed to perform the abortions for free if Jane could fly them there. They did.

"The bust chapter was the most fun to write, because all of the women remembered exactly what happened!" Laura laughs.

Solidarity: at the arraignment, no one would testify against Jane.

"It's so arrogant, but we really felt like we were giving the best abortions anyone could have," Laura says of those members of Jane who wanted to keep working after the bust. Some members left. A smaller core continued working until Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973.

Laura says the radical piece of the movement got silenced after Roe. The legal victory made them complacent. But the fight wasn't just for legal abortion—it was about women taking back ownership of their bodies.

An audience member asks if there were any women Jane couldn't help because they were too far along. For the most part, Jane tried to help everyone—"we saw ourselves as instruments of women's will"—but some women lied about how far along they were, scared Jane would say no.

Jane induced miscarriages, but in some cases counseled the women about the risks involved in the procedure at late stages—both physically and legally. At the time, women who went to hospitals with evidence of an illegally induced miscarriages were often given hysterectomies.

The @womensmedfund ED @eliciag thanks Laura for her inspiring work, but also for her book as a historical document. "I didn't want someone else to portray us as heroes. Like, 'oh, I could never be her.' There's a roomful of 'her's right here," says Laura.