Cool Rerun Part Two: The Jane Collective: Direct Action Abortion Access Works

It's another Cool People Cool Rerun!

Margaret finishes talking with Samantha McVey about the more than a hundred women who provided safe, affordable abortion in pre- Roe v Wade Chicago.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello and welcome to Cool People who
did Cool Stuff. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. This is
a rerun episode. Everyone loves rerun episodes. Why is this
the rerun episode? Well, a couple reasons. One of them
is that some stuff happen this week. You might have
been there, you might have noticed. But the other reason

(00:23):
is that I'm on tour right now and I'm finally
headed back home, which means that I will be back
to being able to record in a more easy way
instead of recording intros in a rest area somewhere in
California in the morning. Is what I'm doing anyway, This
rerun episode is about the Jane Collective. You see, imagine

(00:45):
a time when abortion isn't legal in the United States.
It's probably easy for you to imagine if you live
in a lot of states right now, and yet most
people are okay with it, which we all saw at
the polls last week. What a bunch of people did
as they got together and they offered abortion services safely,
and developed new technology for them and did all kinds

(01:08):
of amazing things even though it was a crime. Because
sometimes resistance looks like protest, and sometimes it's just outright crime,
which we would never advocate, but we sure will talk
about some of the people who did it as cool
on this podcast. Hello and welcome to Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff. It's a podcast. The title isn't sarcastic.

(01:31):
We actually talk about people we think are cool and
who did things but we also think are cool. And
you know who else is cool? Is my guest this
week Samantha McVay, who is the host of Stuff Mom
Never Told You and is not only my new best friend,
but dear listener, she is your new best friend as well. Yes,
how are you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Pease? I'm doing so. See. This is the thing that
I've been trying to run with. This is how I
make friends by trying to tell them I'm cool. So
this is perfect going to be on the show about
when people would do cool stuff because I want to
be cool like that. That's how it works, right, and
then people want to get friends with me.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, definitely. Okay, all right, that's what I'm relying on
as well.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Okay, I'm gonna channel this. Let's go.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah. And we also have Sophie with us, who is
not only the producer of the show, but and the
coolest and it's also basically the Pope of podcasts. Yes,
that's the podcasts. And much like the Pope, she decides
who lives and who dies.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, yes, and much like the Pope directly like tells
us what's moral and what's not, even if we don't
believe her half the time. And I'm just kidding, I
always believe you.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, and then we just act on whatever Sophie says
instead of actually listening to her. Sorry, we painted you
into a corner here, so let's move on.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
I too like fun hats. Yeah, it is true, it's true,
you do. Yeah, but you know it's not about me.
Let's go, let's go.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Okay, Okay, So today we're doing part two of our
two part series on the Jaine Collective, who are a
badass crew of underground abortionists in pre Roe v. Wade, Chicago.
And this episode will make approximately zero sense if you
don't go back and listen to part one. So go
listen to part one. We'll wait. Okay. So Jane offering

(03:19):
abortions no longer reliant on crime guy Nick Mike, but
are doing it themselves. Mike Nick, Yeah, Mike Nick.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Sorry, And I'm just making sure we have both versions
in So, yeah, we are correct, but we did forget
the title sexy, so sexy Mike Nick Sexy Nick Mike.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Right right, totally, yeah, that is the title of the Yeah,
like obviously, yeah, okay, So so Jane is offering abortions
for every trimester and this is like really not how
to DIY in abortion podcast, although if those exist, you
should go listen to them, but this is not one
of them. And the techniques I'm going to be talking
about are like fifty years old and are transmitted through me,

(03:57):
who is an absolute lay person, who who doesn't have
a uterus and is completely grossed up by the idea
of the inside of my own body. Like if I
go to a training about how to apply a tourniquet,
I what I do is I pretend like I'm not
there and then learn the information. So just keep all
of that in mind.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Seems like a good method of many things. Pretendly they're
not there and just learn.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah, exactly, but it it feels important to me to
understand some of the ways that people have historically and
can temporarily go about ending unwanted pregnancies. For some weird reason,
it just seems like really important right now. I'm it's
hard to say.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Why HM as a person in Georgia with many laws
of floating, I don't either.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, so it's so weird, just some in the air,
I don't know. And one thing I talked to when
I was talking through this show with one of my
friends who's a reproductive rights justice activist person all those
words in the proper order. One of the things that
they were pointing out is that it's important not to
present this dark age before Roe v.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Wade.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Legal abortion access matters, and we need to defend that,
but we need to like soberly recognize that people can
and have learned how to take care of not just
their own health, but like on a community level and
on a like a real level, so that people recognize
that they do have real options if we lose Roe v. Wade, right,

(05:23):
so that it's not like your only option is to
go to someone who's really sketchy, because we need to
instead fight to make sure that that doesn't become the case.
So when Jane started, they're mostly doing a style of
abortion called a dilation and curetage or a DNC, especially
for first trimester abortions, and what they do is they
injected a local anesthetic and then they scrape the walls

(05:44):
of the uterus with a loop shape instrument called a curet,
and they then provided pills and injections to stop infection
and bleeding. And they recommended a gynecologist or they recommend
it getting a gulogical checkup, and if you didn't have one,
they recommended you one. And D and C, at least
as it was performed originally, is a fairly dangerous procedure.

(06:05):
It's not a bad procedure. It's important that people be
able to do this, but it's a It evolves sharp
objects and sensitive areas. And Jane was really fucking good
at it. But it seems like some of the worst
ways that inexperienced abortionists fuck patients up is with DNC,
and especially also with herbal abortions, but we're not going
to get into that on the show, and Jane didn't

(06:25):
fuck with herbal abortions. To my knowledge, DNC is still
used today, although the term is a wider usage now,
basically to include things other than a sharp curet. They
like suction curets, or a vacuum aspiration as it's sometimes called,
where they vacuum things out instead of scraping them out.
But to tell you about vacuum aspiration, I get to
tell you about a bunch of other really cool people,

(06:47):
some people who are let's go with people who are complicated,
who did cool things for some of these people instead
of people who I want to blanketly tell you are cool. Right,
Because Harvey Carmon was not an MD, some reports claim
that he is a psychology doctorate, so he was technically
a doctor. Others claimed that he just had a master's

(07:08):
degree in theater.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
And vastly different.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, it is, it is. He might have had both.
He might have later gone back and got a doctor
a degree in psychology. I don't know. Okay, when he
was still a student, he was practicing abortion in California
and one of his patients died and he served two
and a half years in prison for it. And I
literally don't have a means by which to judge whether
or not he was a responsible practitioner who happened to
lose a patient due to the circumstances that he was

(07:32):
forced into by criminalization, or whether he was a sketchy, fucking,
shitty abortionist. I literally don't have a way to at
least my information gathering powers did not answer this. But
he was an innovator, and which really doesn't answer the
question of whether or not he was responsible or ethical,

(07:53):
because just because you want to try new shit doesn't
necessarily make it good.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Right. It's kind of like when doctors were practicing curing
hysteria on women and we know what that led to, right, Totally.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
One time, when he's in jail for practicing abortions, he
invents a new abortion technique which has revolutionized first trimester
abortions and is like largely the reason as far as
I understand that we have, say, first trimester abortions. However,
when I say revolutionize and invented, you'll be shocked to
know that Chinese doctors figured it out a long time earlier,

(08:28):
and that information was not transmitted to the West until
after a Western practitioner figured it out, which happens time
and time again. Every time you're like this guy invented
a thing, you're like, this guy invented for the Western world.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Or got credit for it.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, totally something. But he invented something called the Carmen canula,
which is a flexible curet and it basically allows vacuum aspiration.
It allows the idea of using in this case originally
a syringe to suck things out with a flexible tube
instead of using a sharp curet and it dramatically reduces

(09:06):
the risk of perforating the uterus, and it reduces the
need for anesthesia to relax the cervix. And it I
mean this just a fucking flexible tube as far as
I can tell. And it gets called vacuum aspiration, or
the non medical term, and I'm going to talk about
this in a little bit, is called menstrual extraction. The former,
as best as I understand it is like the medical
name and the latter as it's d medicalized name used

(09:27):
in different people by two women who immediately took upon
his concept and improved upon it. Carol Downer and Lori
Anne Rothman were two of the most important underground abortion
providers at the time. Yet they're rarely referred to as
that because what they did is they invented and again
I can't speak to everyone ever having done this before,
but they invented a menstrual extraction. They took the existing

(09:52):
vacuum aspiration and they added both a one way valve
in order to keep air from accidentally going into the uterus,
and then also a jarged a mason jar that's attached
to it so that more rich material can be removed
at once. And so now you can do a full
menstrual extraction, which is basically the idea of like you
can pass all of your mensies all at once instead

(10:14):
of waiting for it to slowly pass. And what happens
when you do that is if you happen to be pregnant,
and if with a first trimester abortion, you are suddenly
no longer pregnant, Okay. And they didn't like advertise this
as an abortion technique because that would have been illegal. Instead,

(10:35):
they like were like, oh, groups of women could just
all get together and provide this service for each other.
Because it actually takes multiple people to use this device.
You can't necessarily self administer it just because of angles
and shit. I don't know, right, and I to be frank,
I had never heard of this, and about half of
the people I've talked to who have universes had heard

(10:55):
of this, and half of them hadn't. And I don't
know other.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Myself seeing them in person, like I obviously have seen
the pictures of them. As you describing me, I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay,
I get it.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
I get it.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yep, yep, yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, And it gets called. Their invention is called a
Dell M D E L space EM in case you
all want to go look up how to do this
kind of interesting thing. In nineteen seventy one, they invent
this thing, and then they downplay the abortion side of it.
But they go to the National Organization Conference of Women,
the NOW Conference in California in nineteen seventy one so
they can announce this invention to the world, and they

(11:29):
were like, hell, yeah, everyone's going to love this. But
instead the NOW organizers were like, this is a little
bit much for a booth. I don't think you can
have a booth for an abortion here. And they're like, what,
it's revn structure right now, I'm putting words in their mouth.
And so they put up flyers saying, hey, come to
our hotel room and we'll show you how to use
this device. And everyone fucking loved it, right because it

(11:50):
fucking ruled. Yeah, And so they gathered this list of
names and they went on this greyhound tour across the
country giving presentations about the Dell M and I just
love how like scrappy it is. Is that they like
invent this thing that involves Mason Jars and they don't
have a car, so they just like again, I mean
maybe a car, but they go on a greyhound tour
that rules. And Lorraine has a quote from two thousand

(12:11):
and two that sums up the sort of de medicalization
approach that was popular with a lot of the underground
abortion access people before nineteen seventy three. What did women
do before there were doctors. Let's stop the humiliation of
trying to persuade the powers that be to legalize abortion.
Let's just take back the technology, the tools, the skills,
and the information to perform early abortions and be in

(12:33):
charge of our own reproduction. And once again, you'll be
shocked to know that this device is having something of
a comeback in the modern era. And so Jane didn't
use the del M specifically as far as I can tell,
but they did use the Carmen canula extensively, and I
think in generally in combination with vacuum aspiration. They also,

(12:53):
and this gets into the sketchier side of some of it,
they use Another one of Carmen's inventions that was a
lot less successful, something called the super coil. I'm actually
curious have you heard of this? I'm trying to figure
out how known this is.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
And I don't think so. But it's one of those
I'm like, as you describe it, I may know of it.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Because I'm not trying to put you on the spot. Yeah,
I'm trying to just be.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Like no, no, yeah, because I'm sitting here like, Okay,
We've gotten through several devices and I think I'm glazed though,
but yeah, keep.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Going no, no, no, So the super coil is not
around today, okay, because it is a bad idea as
far as I can tell. It was meant to revolutionize
second trimester abortion. Basically, he was like, I have revolutionized
first trimester abortion and made it easier for lay people
to do it. Now I want to revolutionize second trimester abortion.
And so the super coil involves coiling up like like

(13:44):
tightly coiled plastic rings basically attached to a string that
are inserted into the uterus and then left to expand
so that they could be pulled out and then clear
out the area as they you know, I did.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Not know what this is. This is horrify though. Yeah,
I feel like I've had Sophie. Yeah, so my last
interaction with Robert when Sophie was them talking about a
birth control that attached itself and to our people's shooters.
So this is amazing. I feel like we come full circle. Yeah,
we definitely have come full circle. But that thing, that

(14:18):
thing on that episode with Robert was like one of
the It like makes me itchy. I'm like, it was
so terrifying. Yeah, I still see people post you. But yeah,
we're back here to something that goes out, expands and
tries to pull things out of people's vaginas. So I'm like, okay,
we're back, We're back. That's our thing, Samantha. I love

(14:40):
being associated with this. Let's keep going. This is amazing.
I mean I'm now like, yes, this is my world,
let's go.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
This is the This is the darkest chunk of this episode.
I believe even later they get arrested and it's not
as dark as this chunk. So they helped Carmen test it.
They they sided with him in debates to come, and
they were probably about it. It was meant to help
lay people provide abortions. But it was probably too good
to be true. Basically like they were. At least one

(15:08):
person I read argued that basically they were like sucked
in by the idea of like, oh, we have a
numerical device. This rules because they had just gotten a
numerical device from the same guy. Not numerical but not numbers,
but miracle device that is new. So he goes and
tests it, and he first tests it through with International
planned parenthood on Bangladeshi women at a large scale, and

(15:32):
it I'm not aware of it killing anyone, but it
did not do incredibly well, and there were a lot
of complications.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
I will say it sounds like it could cause a
permanent damage, yes, which is kind of the horror stories
people tell that are anti choice about the permanent damage.
And this seems to follow suit because I can't imagine
something just at that point in time being like, oh,
it's self working. It just expands and grabs the right things,

(16:00):
doesn't what does it exactly?

Speaker 1 (16:02):
And I've seen a couple different things about whether or
not Jane was involved in using this or testing this.
I do believe they did use this successfully for a
number of abortions, and again, their overall results were that
they were as good as any medical facility at that time, right, right, right,
But anyway, this is a darker thing that they were

(16:24):
involved in, right.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
I mean that makes me a question did they give
the people who came in, the patients and clients a
choice on what kind of procedure they could have? And
I know they were pretty good about giving like risk
statistics and let them know aftercare and all of that.
So I wonder if there was like a moment of like,
you have these options, now, which would you like to do?

Speaker 1 (16:48):
I would like to get off of them the benefit
of the doubt of that around that, But I don't know.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
And because I honestly did not know this part of
this history, I was like, oh, yeah, that's a little alarm.
You don't want to start testing things and when you
have someone testing on a different group of people, you
know is probably not good, which is the history of
all medicine essentially. But you know, that's a whole different
rabbit hole that I will not do as a negative,

(17:15):
neelly moment. So I'm gonna stop now.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
No, No, I mean like, and this is like, this
is the most warts and all that I'm going to
get around this and even this is like a complicated thing,
you know. One of the things that I read, one
of the black women who volunteered for this was like
basically defended her position being like I'm paraphrasing, but like,
you're fucking kidding me. You're saying that I can't consent
to this just because I'm a black woman, you know.

(17:38):
And so there's this like I'm reading biased reports, right,
I'm reading people who are trying to make positions to
either claim that this was this terrible thing that people
did or this brilliant, brave thing that people did, And
I don't have anything near the right position to understand
what is and isn't ethical for what happened here, and

(17:59):
like level of informed consent was available, But I'm also
under the impression that a lot of their other options
were worse.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Right, I Mean, again, we come back to the fact
that there's so many things that pushes people to a
certain point, and when it's not accessible and becomes looked
at as again lawful unlawful, then people I push to
the point that is uh is extreme, So you do
what you can, and people being in that point, we

(18:29):
are going to choose what they think is lesser uh
able for them. Yeah, and it's not the case like
that's he shouldn't have to be even that conversation.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, totally. And and so as a Carmen, he kind
of disappears after this whole fiasco. He's like, I tried
to invent a thing and it didn't work, and he
kind of his trub was cold, at least from my
my slooping at this point.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
It wasn't a medical doctor, right, you're saying that he's
either gone maybe maybe in psychology, but also maybe theater.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Like you just right did a thing. However, as as
a different states would legalize abortion, he was so well
known that he would be invited to come participate in
legal abortion areas because he was a really experienced abortionist.
But that also empowered him to do all of these
things that are real messy, and so it's just like

(19:23):
kind of interesting that like this is the person who
did the thing that got say, first trimester abortions available,
you know, right, I mean some good did come of it, right,
and now we have chemical abortions for first trimester that
are safer and better than this method. As far as
I understand him, a circumstances, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
There's so many things to this in this conversation about
what this looks like when it is not considered healthcare
and why it's so blase, and yes, some good did
come of it, but some bad to come of it,
and then there's this need of like understanding it is healthcare.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, totally okay, but who is cool? Yes, I will
go on a I don't know limb to say is
another abortionist to popularize some shit that Jane wound up
using a guy named Robert Spencer. And Robert Spencer was
a true believer and he was not a grifter. He
was a doctor, an actual medical doctor, and the coal
fields in Ashland, Pennsylvania, and he cut his doctoring teeth

(20:23):
inventing new ways to treat black lung and coal miners,
including a lot of pioneering work. And I don't know
to pronounce this word bronchoscopy. Bronchios is ticking cameras down
people's throats, I don't know, looking at people's throats. And
he did experiment with black lung. But this is also
a situation where you're like, oh, these coal miners are
dying and no one here is like paying attention to
black lung except me, and so he's very well liked,

(20:45):
this doctor in this town. And then sometime in the
early twenties, he starts a coal miner's wife is like,
you know, I'm pregnant. I'd really rather not be. And
I tried calling Jane, but the number isn't active yet
or something. I'm like forty years too early. So he
he performs an abortion, and then he just starts performing
abortions in this town. And he single handedly performed something
like forty thousand abortions. He died in nineteen sixty nine

(21:09):
before his work could become legal, and his wife burned
all of his records, I guess to either protect his
legacy or maybe his staff or maybe herself, I don't know.
And he eventually the entire town's economy, like huge chunk
of the town's economy relies on this guy because people
are coming from all over the place to get abortions here,
and they like staying at hotels and shit. But the

(21:29):
hotels didn't some of the hotels at least didn't let
black patients stay. So he built accommodations so that black
patients could still come and get abortions. In this town.
He was arrested three times for providing abortions. One of
the times he was arrested, at least was because a
patient died. They died from anesthesia problems. And you know,

(21:50):
I'm not a doctor. I know that anesthesia is a
complicated thing, especially eighty years ago. You know, I'm not
trying to like lay judgment at him for this, but
he was acquitted two of the times he was arrested
because I think everyone in town was like, you can't
convict this guy. You what are you talking about? Like
this is our guy. We like this guy. We're like

(22:11):
abortion town.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
He's making his money, come on, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
And like and he also had union protection, The United
Mine Workers had his.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Beat was it the coal Okay, okay, yeah, ok.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
And they're like union miners did not fuck around back then,
as our boy, don't touch him.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
And to his quote about why why people liked him,
I've been here since nineteen nineteen. I dare say I've
helped out half the town, even on the abortion end.
There's probably one of my patients related to a family
in half the town. I think most of the town
would stand up for me.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
That's just like I think they would stand up with me.
I think I think we're cool.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah. And so he's seventy nine years old. He keeps
going into retirement and then coming out of retirement because
people need his help, right, because he's really fucking good
at his job, and he provides abortions for cheap And
I'll get to that. And he's seventy nine and he's
awaiting trial for a third time and he dies of
old age while like actively practicing, and he was performing

(23:12):
three to four abortions a day right up to the end.
There's this whole article from Village Voice from nineteen sixty nine.
I think it's called the Death of an Abortionist, and
it's a journalist who travels down there to basically just
to meet him, just to be like, you are amazing.
You are the reason that people feel safe, you know.
And he charged the cheapest rates, some of the cheapest
rates of anyone. His first abortions cost five dollars, and

(23:35):
then as the cost of drugs and overhead went up,
at the end, he was charging two hundred dollars. In
the late sixties, but again most abortions were costing six
hundred to two thousand dollars. He was this like lovable weirdo.
He treated everyone kindly. He covered his office in like
weird plaques from tourist traps. And the Village Voice journalist
who showed up, she asks him, like, why did you

(23:57):
perform abortions when the people first asked you? And he said,
because I could see their point of view? And I
just I love that as an answer, you know, just
like basic human empathy. And his name never really appeared
until he died. His name like didn't really appear much
in print. I think one place dox him or whatever,
but he was always just printed as the legendary doctor

(24:18):
s and Okay. And he popularized a technique or using
something called I don't pronounce this word Loundback's paste Loanback's
paste to help dilate the cervix. It's like a soft soap.
Is not currently in use, but Jane used it and
was very glad for it. It helped make their whole
anesthesia process much safer. And they I don't know whether

(24:42):
they made their own or got it from Robert Spencer,
because Robert Senser was making his own because it was
no longer commercially available. I don't know. I think he's
cool too, And I really liked that Jane was building
from This was part of this larger framework of people
who were like, how do we do this like absent
of like the medical industry, how do we actually like

(25:03):
figure out how to do this safely.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
And well right, actually caring about their patients? That's revolutionary?

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, totally, God, I wish I wish that revolution that's stuck. Yeah,
you know who does care about their patients?

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Who? I'm ready?

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Well, potatoes, I've been I've been trying to get advertised
by potatoes. I don't know how potatoes have become doctors,
but I think potatoes are great. And I want to
be sponsored by entirely wholesome things. So if you hear
anything unwholesome in the ads, that was a mistake.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
It's Robert's fault. It's Robert again, it's Robert's fault.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Agreed. Yeah, And so here's some ads for potatoes and
maybe some other stuff. And we're back and we're discussing
whether or not we should actually expand our list of
sponsors to include kittens.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
I mean, you cook cute and cut it dogs. I
think yes, I mean it's good to diversify. I mean,
I think it's important that we talk about kittens and puppies.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Right, I think so. We just have to make clear
that we're advertising the concept of kittens and puppies, not
the people who traditionally go about selling kittens and puppies.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yes, it's very clear. Not a kitten mill or puppy
mill type situation at all. Is the idea of just
cuddling with some kittens or cuddling with a dog maybe,
or at least looking at cute pictures.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, while one kitten is in one arm and one
puppy is in the other arm.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
My favorite is when kittens and dogs are friends.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, totally. I can't wait to introduce my dog to
more cats. It's actually never gone. Well, so I actually
think my.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Dog does not love cats either. This is the fantasy though.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Well, my dog loves cats, the cats don't love the dog.
That's fair. He does not know how to play. So
I want to quote a little bit at length from
why Jane Collective did this work. It's from a statement
about why they did is a pamphlet that they gave
to prospective clients. Abortion as a social problem. We are

(27:11):
giving our time not only because we want to make
abortions safer, cheaper, and more accessible for the individual women
who come to us. But because we see the whole
abortion issue as a problem of society, the current abortion
laws are a symbol of something subtle but often blatant
oppression of women. In our society. Women should have the
right to control their own bodies and lives. Only a
woman who is pregnant can determine whether or not she

(27:33):
has enough resources economic, physical, and emotional at a given
time to bear and rear a child. Yet at present,
the decision to bear the child or to have an
abortion is taken out of her hands by government bodies,
which can have only the slightest notion of the problems involved.
The same society that glamorizes women as sex objects and
teaches them from an early childhood to please and satisfy men,

(27:54):
views pregnancy and childbirth as punishment for immoral or careless
sexual activity, especially if the woman is on edge, cad, poor,
or black. Our society's view of equal opportunity means that
lower class women bear unwanted children or face expensive, illegal,
and often unsafe abortions, while well connected, middle class women
can frequently get safe and hush hush dncs and hospitals.

(28:15):
Only women can bring about their own liberation. It is
time for women to get together to change the male
made laws and aid their sisters caught in the bind
of legal restrictions and social stigma. Women must fight together
to change the attitudes of society about abortion and to
make the state provide free abortions as a human right.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
I like that.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
There's so many things that like it just applies today.
I know we're talking about that, but the problem is
because it is women centered typically, and especially during that time,
people see that as being less important in conversation. Has
become made in a moral ground. Yeah, even though it's
very political obviously, but yeah, I do love that sentiment

(29:00):
and h and we still need that sentiment.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, No. I I like like sometimes when I get
like lost in the weeds about like this is how
they did this one thing and this is how they
did this other thing, and then instead you're just kind
of like, here's like a hundred people who got together
to commit felonies to try and keep people safe, and
it's just like that's always cool, you know, like like
and there's always something I don't know, So I like
hearing the the why they did it. But speaking of felonies,

(29:25):
this is not an ad transition. I'm not advertising felonies
on the I'm probably advertising felonies on the show, but
not from the point of view of a sponsorship.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, not trying to get money for it.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Oh yeah, well you got to go out and get
your own money, you know, felonies, just say it. Yeah. So,
so Jane is this big open secret and everyone knows
about it. They advertised and they had security procedures in place,
but clearly the police knew about them, and most of
the reporting about Jane basically says the cops didn't bust

(29:59):
them because the cops kind of liked them. They were
clean and safe and no one was dying, so why
bust them? Right? To me, this fundamentally misunderstands the nature
of the police, especially the Chicago Police Department. In a
nation of corup police departments, Chicago like consistently stands out
as one of the crookedest. And the other thing you'll
hear is that police put up with it because the

(30:21):
wives of police and the wives of politician were amongst
their clients. And this feels more plausible to me. But
I suspect that politicians' wives at least could afford a
trip to New York, and so I feel like there's
some kind of like, to be clear, I think crime
is cool, But the same accounts also say that mafia
didn't come after them for similar reasons. They're like, oh, well,

(30:41):
they're not really making a profit, so why would the
mafia care? And this doesn't sound like if that doesn't
sound like the police, and that doesn't sound like the mafia.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
So this is amazing, all of this, all this moment
is amazing.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, I'm just I'm enjoying this entire thing, all right.
The other part of this is because they don't see
this as an issue for them because at that point
in time, I think the majority of the police were men. Yeah,
just speaking, so since it was a woman's thing, it's
also kind of like same level of like not talking
about periods and being shameful about women's bodies. So it

(31:16):
was like a good point, we're gonna particular you don't
exist because it's easier for us to ew icky, even
though I mean to be frank, the majority of the
times kind of like today when we talk about abortion
and abortion rights and abortion being healthcare men typically outside
of the morally loud, like this isn't just whatever, just

(31:38):
don't care because it has nothing to do with them,
and it's just gross and it's like, eh, it's women's issues,
so we'd rather just ignore it, and doesn't think it's
necessarily important. Of course we've got the religious bits.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
But yeah, no, this is actually, this is actually that
helps sell me on it better because like all I
can see, I am again really not trying to use
anyone who might be alive of any kind of crime,
but it seems like the mafia might have been getting
a share out of this. I don't know, again like
no judgment of whatever people need to do to keep
the shit running. But yeah, because everyone knows about this

(32:11):
and no one's doing anything about it. But the thing
you're saying also about like basically people being like we're
just not going to fucking touch it is also completely possible.
And then the way it all falls apart, well, it
doesn't actually really fall apart. The way that some people
get in trouble can be told a couple different ways.
I've run across one probable story and then one maybe story.
One day in nineteen seventy three, a Catholic woman comes

(32:34):
to get an abortion, and at the time, I actually
behind the bastards did a better podcast. But this and
I remember exactly when the Protestants started caring about abortion,
but for a while, like only the Catholics cared. Catholic
woman comes in to get an abortion, and she was
a mixed minds about the whole thing. A Jane volunteer
named Genie Gallitzer Leve spends a long time talking with
her about it and like counseling her, and later she's

(32:57):
really bitter about the long time she's spent talking to
her about it. Her sister in law, the patient's sister
in law, was there with her, and her sister in
law called them in. And what I've heard is that
she didn't call them into the police station in the
district where they were like seen as friendly, but instead
called them into a different district, and so suddenly bad

(33:18):
things happen. But that's the story I hear most often told.
Another account is that the anti abortion lobby was trying
to get some arrests in to do some damage on
the legal front because Supreme Court was about to see
Roe v. Wade, and which spoiler alert legalized abortion federally
across the US and a seven to two ruling, So

(33:39):
maybe someone wanted to get some abortionists on trial and hurry.
And then there's a third story, which comes from the
person who's very critical of the super coil testing, that
the bust happened on a day that they were planning
on doing supercil testing and that it was like related
to all of that. I tend to believe the the

(34:00):
Catholic story best, but I feel like there's something I
actually don't believe any of these stories. Frankly, that's what.
I don't know what it is.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, we just know that they got raided and we
don't know how it began. But yeah, it could be
any of the stories. But that's the one I heard too,
is the Catholic Two Catholic women have reported them, but
any physical reason. Again, it was coincidentally around and I
will use air quotes more coincidentally around Roe versus Wade

(34:28):
and the big back ladging back and forth and controversy
with that. So yeah, yeah, I've had them with you.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, I think I would put the most likely is
the combination of the first two things. Is the Catholic
women and some people trying to get some shit on
going on. I don't know, but yeah, they get raided.
A May third, nineteen seventy two, Genie is working at
the front and she's caring for three children left behind
by a patient. When she hears a knock at the door.
She thought it was another Jane who had just like

(34:56):
dropped off some snacks, come back to drop off more snacks,
or maybe forgot's something or something, and instead it was cops,
really really tall cops. Genie is like, let them in
and told everyone in the waiting room, these are the police.
You don't have to tell them anything. And then Genie,
describing the event, says, they were really tall, really weird.

(35:16):
I developed this whole theory. I love crackpot theories. I
intend to be a crackpot when I grow up. This
is Genie, not me, although it is also true of me.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
No, this is even better.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah, yeah, quote, I intend to be a crackpot when
I grow up. My theory is that you had to
be really tall to be a homicide cop. These were
homicide cops because abortion was a homicide, and they were
homicide cops who hated being there. You know, it's not
easy to make homicide detective. You have to be really good.
It's not even political, like taking the sergeant's exam. You
have to really do something, and they do it because
they want to. And by and large, what they do

(35:50):
is track people down who kill other people, and they
think of themselves as good guys and they hated being there.
This was not their kind of crime. End quote.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
That is an interesting theory. I really like there's so
many observations about just the male appearance, that these characters
are so like that they're all tall, very tall.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
She is though I know, right, all the cops are
like five foot seven, you know, right.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah, average, but they're tall as I'm four foot eleven, okay.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah, totally, or maybe they like scent. They're like, there
are three people who are, you know, six foot six?
Over to go arrest everyone. So they detain everyone at
the front and they start asking everyone questions. And the
way they figured out who the Janes were, apparently, is
that when they asked the Janes questions, the Janes refused
to answer. And while this did get them separated out
for arrest, it probably saved them later in court, or

(36:46):
at least it was very helpful in court. Their lawyer
later thanked them, was like, I'm so glad you all
didn't say anything, right, And patients, though, were asked all
kinds of questions and they largely answered one question that
left the cops completely confused. They kept asking how much
the Jane's charged, and everyone gave wildly different answers. The
police came, I guess, maybe expecting a mafia style for

(37:07):
profit enterprise, and they didn't find one. And at the
same time, the cops arrive at the place and arrest
everyone there. And apparently they showed up and they were like,
where are all the men? Though, you know who's doing
the abortions? Right, So I guess they actually really didn't
know Jane inside it out, you know, if they think
all these things and so at least they probably weren't infiltrated, right,
if this is what the cops.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Think true, no spies.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, I tend to think that, like the cops know everything, right,
because we talk about how we live in a pentopticon
and we're all being studied all the time or whatever,
and then like every now and then the cops are
just like they don't know shit. I want to tell
a completely off based story about all of this right.
One time, my friend was being investigated as the leader
of international anarchism by the FEDS, and never mind, I'm

(37:53):
not going to tell that story. Okay.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
So there's so many levels of understanding why. I'm like, yeah,
I have I have a cookie cutter of vanilla life,
and I'm really sad that I'm not a part of this.
I don't want to be investigated because I do not
have the anxiety to go through an investment. But just
knowing someone, I'm like, yeah, hell yeah they are. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Well the spoiler alert, there is no leader of international anarchism.
It goes against the whole idea, and eventually the fense
figured that out. But the more personal details about it,
I'm not going to get into.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
You're not You're not gonna do that, Okay, Yeah, but okay, So.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
They're all thrown into paddy wagons. They're taken off to jail,
and Genie says that when they were taken off to
jail on the paddy wagon, all the all the other
women in the in the paddy wagon were sex workers
who kept everyone in good spirits by just like telling
fun horrible stories about their lives or whatever. And I
really like that they were there to keep everyone's spirits up.
And then in the paddy wagon, the jaans all pulled

(38:51):
out all the index cards with all of the patient
info and shit, and they rip them up in the
little pieces, passed them out and ate them, which is
a great badass. They only spent one night in jail,
probably because they're middle class white women. One of them,
I think, one of them, who was a nursing mother,
was let go that night because she had to go
home and feed her kids. And Genie talks about how

(39:13):
the cops like treated them all well as fellow middle
class white people while being rude to any of the
patients who ended up in jail and all the other
people and all the other women in jail, which yeah,
I guess doesn't really surprise anyone who's listening to this. Yeah,
but in jail all the only food they got offered
was bolooney sandwiches, which Genie couldn't eat, presumably because she
was vegetarian. And the reason that I include this is

(39:34):
because one time I was arrested at this demonstration in
DC thirty years after all this shit, and in two
thousand and two, and they gave us all Bolooney sandwiches,
and we all just like sat there and like laughed
at our Blooney sandwiches because we were all fucking like
vegans and vegetarians and shit, and we're like, what are
we going to do with this? And it was it
was mostly a bad experience. But I was only in
jail for like thirty six hours, possibly because I'm middle

(39:55):
class and white and I don't know, so I didn't
get to eat in jail and sucked, but whatever. I
just like that this has been like a true thing forever.
Is that like when hippies and activists and shit get arrested,
they're like, what the fuck am I gonna do this?
Blooney sandwich? Yeah, So they get led out on bail
and they're each facing one hundred and ten years because
the eleven counts of homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide

(40:17):
in the case that will be known as the abortion seven.
And at least according to Genie, Jane kind of distances
themselves at this point from them, and they I guess
like as like they were like, Oh, it's this strategic necessity,
We're going to keep going. And Jane did keep going
while the trial was ongoing, but it still doesn't sound

(40:38):
good to me, honestly, and Genie at least felt really betrayed.
According to the interview I read with her. The rest
of the feminist movement kind of though, had her back.
There was a defense committee formed with the sick name
of the Abortion Task Force the ATF, and several of
the arrestees were part of an organization called the Leche Lee,

(41:00):
which was a pro nursing organization. Nursing, I guess was
out of style at the time, and La Leche League
had their back, which fucking rules that the like the
Mother's Association was like, yeah, of course we're defending these abortionists,
you know. And I don't really know what the distancing
looked like because several of the Abortion seven actually went
back to work for Jane while they were out on bail,
which is also fucking badass, and they spent a while

(41:22):
finding lawyer. Most of the lawyers they found were terrible.
One guy was very movement focused and wanted them to
basically go to prison, was like, yeah, you're gonna be
martyrs for the cause, you know, and they're like, we
don't like that very much. This is not actually our plan.
And so finally they settled on Joe Anne Wolfson, who
one account calls the Queen of the hopeless, and she
once ran away from home to join the circus and

(41:44):
like work with elephants and shit. Okay. So her brother
was an attorney too, who once got sentenced to seventy
years in prison in nineteen eighty five after pleading guilty
to racketeering in an anti corruption case in Chicago. That'
saw a fuck ton of the judges, lawyers, and cops
sent away for organized crime. So, okay, mafia and corruption
shit just runs deep in Chicago. Yeah, of course, So

(42:08):
this is their lawyer and she is the what I
do know about her, she was the right lawyer for
the job, and she rules. She saw Roe v. Wade
on the horizon and she was like, all right, here's
the plan. Let's delay this shit as long as possible.
And the court was fine with that plan too, because frankly,
they saw the writing on the wall and they didn't
want to waste court resources on it. So in January
nineteen seventy three, the Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth

(42:30):
Amendments guarantee of the right to privacy included the right
to have abortions in a very I had my lawyer
friend try and explain this whole thing to me recently,
and Roe v. Wade is like complicated as a from
a legal perspective, but it worked for now for good.
We'll see maybe but time you're listening to this anyway. Whatever.
So prosecutors knew if they wanted, they could come after

(42:51):
them for practicing medicine without a license, but they decided
it was more trouble than it was worth and they
really just didn't want to make a fuss out of it.
That said, also, my your friend was explaining to me
that most Supreme Court decisions are not retroactive. But basically
they're like this shit, as far as I can tell,
they're like, this shit is way too political. We don't
want to fucking touch this case. So they made they
cut a deal. We don't charge you with practicing medicine

(43:12):
without a license, you don't ask for your medical equipment back,
and the Jane seven said, oh my god, yes please.
They took their deal and their charges were dropped. The
end of Jane that's the name of my little section
in the script. Roby Wade fucking rules and I don't
want to pretend like it doesn't. The fact that it's
under threat is fucking bad.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
You know.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
I hope that this doesn't sound like we're talking from
distant utopian past when you all hear this episode come
come out, because this episode will probably come out about
a month after we record it. But it's not enough,
and the women of Jane knew that right because abortion
was legalized, but it was also remedicalized. It went back
in the hands of maile doctors. It became it tied
once again into an inaccessible medical system that treats women

(43:53):
like bodies like cars to be fixed. Jane actually continued
for a few weeks after the ruling, but everyone was
just so fucking exhausted and burned out and the fire
was gone. And ironically, they were afraid that they might
catch charges for because the for profit medical industry might
lead the charge on them for practicing medicine without a license.
They threw a fucket were done now party, and Jane

(44:15):
was over after their fucket were done now party, which
is the way I'm praising it, And I like that
people miss the intensity of it. Jane. Activist Ruth Circle
put it like this. For the people I know, it
was the single most intense period of our life, and
when it stopped, there was something missing and you couldn't
find anything to do that carried quite that energy for
a long time. But you know what does carry energy

(44:37):
is potatoes. And you should eat food of some type,
whatever type you like, but it is healthy and good
and that's why we advertise it on this show, the
concept of food.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Have we talked of sweet potatoes?

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah, all potatoes. All potatoes are great as well as
whatever's abby and advertised. And we are back. And so
this intensity leaving is something that I think is familiar

(45:12):
to a lot of people who are involved in activism,
especially like more intense activism. I'm guessing that anyone who
was radicalized by the twenty twenty demonstrations has felt this
when you leave this moment of intensity. But people keep
going right. TRM. Howard, the black civil rights leader who
is the first abortionist the network called. He kept providing
abortions now legally and his private black owned practice offered

(45:35):
abortions for fifty dollars less than what local hospitals charged.
The Defense Committee with that sick name the ATF, they
switched to becoming a new group that also had a
sick name health evaluation and referral services. Hers. It's a
shitty name, but it's a great acronym, and I feel
like they really, I don't know, they started off with
not strong naming game, but I think that they over

(45:56):
the course of time they figured it out.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Get in there.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah. So Hers and Heather Booth, Jane's founder, they went
on to start the Chicago Abortion Fund in Chicago nineteen
eighty five, which is a nonprofit that is still around
today and is a simple, clean, honest name that does
what it says on the tin. And as the host
of cool people did cool stuff, I appreciate a thing
that just does what it says on the tin. So
I want to talk about some of the other direct

(46:20):
action abortionists who've come since, because this need continues, right
and there are millions of people who've done this kind
of work. Probably as long as there's been legal restrictions
on abortion, there have been people fighting against it. You
talked about some of them actually at the beginning of
the show, and I'm hoping you chime in with more
of them as I go through some of these and
I want to do more episodes about more of these people,
or I think people can listen to other podcasts that

(46:41):
talk about it too, So normally I stick with people
in the past for this show, but this issue just
feels too important to me right now to not include
some of these. So there's Women on Waves, which is
a Dutch organization that was started by the physician Rebecca
Gombert's in nineteen ninety nine. And she used to be
the ship's doctor aboard a Greenpeace ship and she was like, oh,
boats are fucking cool, which is my paraphrasing, not a

(47:03):
direct quote. So she got a boat and she headed
out to various countries with restrictive abortion practices. She loads
up patients on shore heads twenty miles out to sea,
and since it's a Dutch ship, Dutch law is in effect,
though even the Dutch are a little wary about the
whole thing, and the ship is only authorized to provide
the abortion pill non surgical abortions to pregnancies up to
nine weeks. And they don't just provide abortions, they provide

(47:24):
contraception and education. And the first place they go is
Ireland because you don't have to go very far from
the Netherlands to go to a country that had terrible
abortion laws in two thousand and one. Ironically, Ireland is
liberalizing as abortion laws just as the US is regressing.
And this boat is super contentious. And also it's contentious
when you tell people who have ships that they're called
boats because they don't like that. They like to be like,

(47:47):
this is a ship, not a boat. But I think
it's funny because boat is a cuter name. So Portugal
blocks women on waves from approaching with a fucking warship.
And then in Guatemala they make it less than a
day before a war ship comes and pushes them out
to see and oh, in the you actually were talking
about Poland earlier. Women on Waves once flew a drone

(48:07):
carrying abortion pills into Germany from Poland, in case anyone
needs any ideas amazing and Rebecca Gomperts goes on in
twenty eighteen to form a nonprofit called aid Access that
focuses on helping pregnant people self manage their own abortions
with abortion pills, which are generally a combination of I
don't know how to pronounce these words. I'm terribly sorry.
Maybe you do, MiFi, prestone, and mysoposatol. These are the

(48:32):
primary abortion pills that people are taking right now to
end first trimester abortions and sending them through the mail
in the US and to other countries that are increasingly
criminalizing abortion. And they field at about fifty thousand requests
in the first year that they were operational. At least
one organization is bulletproofing vans getting ready to help people
safely leave Texas to get to states where they can

(48:52):
get the healthcare they need. They're like park getting ready
to park the vans right outside the border of Texas.
And frankly, what isn't isn't legal, doesn't dictate what is
and isn't safe. Right During the fifty years we've had
Roe v. Wade in the US, abortion workers have regularly
risked and sometimes lost their lives in order to help
people terminate unwanted pregnancies. Receptionists, security guards, and clinic escorts

(49:14):
have all been murdered, kidnapped, attack threatened, you name it, right,
And one of the reasons I bring that up, I
hate ending on this kind of darker note, but one
of the reasons I bring that up is because we
can have this concept that direct action abortion can only
happen when it's illegal and that's just not true. Like
I don't know. In one southern city I lived in,
there were for years there were no clinic escorts because

(49:36):
the people and clinic escorts, for anyone who doesn't know,
are the people who waited outside of clinic and shield
patients from the abuse from anti choice protesters. And there
are no clinic escorts in this town because all the
escorts have been followed home and had their windows shot out.
And my sister does clinic escording, and I just want
to shout her out. She's a direct action hero from
my point of view. Even if what she's doing is legal,

(49:57):
you know, it's still a risk. Yeah, totally. I only
did it once. It was a long time ago in Louisville, Kentucky.
And basically as I understood it, I was told by
the punks in town. They were like, the anti choice
protesters here are like really scary, so they want the
scary punks to come be the clinic escorts. Yeah, you know,
because like normally, if you don't have really bad protesters,

(50:18):
you kind of don't want the scary people to come
to like help escort people in. But when people are
really threatening, then you call the really threatening looking people,
which when I was twenty, I was a very threatening
looking person just by being a punk.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
I love it. I love that be'st the threat. It's like,
I'm a punk, that's right, come.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
On, yeah yeah. And we were all like full of ourselves,
like twenty year old anarchists who were like, we'll do anything,
you know, And the world needs lots of angry twenty
year olds. Also, unfortunately, it also needs a lot of
the angry twenty year olds to stop. It depends on
what they're angry about, really.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Right, I mean, just a reminder, I mean, I just
want to put this also sad little fact in here.
Even after a Rowe Versus waged in the Supreme Court
in nineteen seventy seven, we had the High Amendment, which
is still in place and has never gone away, which
restricts funds for health care and access, which means pretty much,

(51:13):
it is a very classist and racist amendment making sure
those who really probably are the ones that need it
and need this help and need this choice are the
ones that can't get access to safe abortion and safe
reproductive care in general. And then that has always been
in place and it has not been removed, and it
has not even come close to being removed and could

(51:35):
have been and should have been by some administrations. But
that's something to remember to Yeah, but that's part of
the problem is we have other things that yeah, sure,
now we supposedly have the right to do so, but
we don't have access to do so. And that's a
conversation we need to have in pretending like it's actually

(51:56):
free and it's not or not actually free, that it's
actually accessible and it's not, and who that truly affects
and why it's such a bigger conversation, as well as
the fact that the gag rule exists, which Title ten
came in trying to help out to get those funds,
and then we have the gag rules saying like well, nah,
I guess individuals can choose this. So it gets so

(52:18):
convoluted and there's so many policies and amendments on top
of each other that it becomes almost impossible to know
what is accessible and what is legal. And yeah, just
because it's not legal doesn't mean you can't get it, yeah,
or you should be. But like that's this whole conversation
in this bigger picture of like we're coming back to

(52:40):
the basics unfortunately, but we because we were never unable
to unravel the minute details that really bind us. For
those who want to get that ability, they just have
a choice. And again, reproductive care is not just an abortion,
Like there's just a whole bigger conversation once again, the
fact that the COBA morbidity for black women is higher, Like,

(53:03):
it's just there's so many conversations and what these policies
are and who they truly affect and why these policies
are in place. It's it's supremacy, patriarchy, those things. The
reason we keep harping on these two, these three words,
and people get pissed off about it is because it's true. Yeah,

(53:23):
there's no other ex I'm sorry, I'm sorry it bothers you,
and that you've been benefiting from that fuck you is
still true.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Yeah no, I ran finished, No, no, no, I incredibly,
this is part of why I'm really excited that you're
the guest for this is the High Amendment. Is that
the thing where like I know that like at least
for a while, there was like only one abortion clinic
in Kentucky and it was because you weren't allowed to

(53:50):
have an abortion clinics hallways must be exactly and I'm
making this number up thirty one inches wide, whereas a
normal clinic has to have thirty three inch wide things.
And so they would do the shit where you like,
cannot have any a clinic that is anything other than
an abortion clinic, which means that it is entirely financially
it's just mistable and impossible.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Yeah, it starts stripping things. Essentially, the High Amendment really
took away the funding, so any public funding could not
go into it. So if you had accessibility to so
if you say, yes, we offer abortion care, then you're
automatically stripped of it. You cannot get government funds okay, period.

(54:29):
So any kind of like services that would take Medicaid
amatic care, you cann't go to there and get abortion
because that was restricted for government funds. So like it
absolutely was a classist law, yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Which just continues the previous status quo where the rich
have access to reproductive health in them and.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
It's so sneaky. It's so sneak because people don't know
about it much like they really think they have access
because it's a liberal state.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
But High Amendment, Yeah, reproductive care is so much more
as you said reproductive cares so much more than abortion,
and like a lot of it is also about like
the ability to choose to have children, right.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Right, people who have children. This is a high risk
thing for many, many people, and they need that care.
And there's a reason why people died in childbirth and
it shouldn't have to be because there are advancements that
can prevent that, but people can't afford that. Like that,

(55:29):
that in itself is that conversation that we don't actually
care about those who are giving birth, like to make
sure they're healthy. That's not pro life.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Yeah, yeah, totally. God, the hypocrisy of all that stuff
like can like keep me up at nights sometimes because
I like, I try to have empathy with people I
disagree with, and it short circuits my empathy because I
can't understand it because it makes no fucking sense, right
that you're like claiming to be you know, this one
thing and then you just don't give a shit about
people when they actually have children, and like, I don't

(56:01):
know whatever.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
I love that. That's why you quoted that doctor from
what was the Kentucky Pennsylvania Well, yeah, that's the same.
I'm just kidding Pennsylvania, because just seeing their perspective, that
is the true point of it, and this conversation of
late term abortions, A majority of the people who are
having late term abortions are not by choice. Typically they

(56:25):
have been preparing for their child. And I know many
of people who were anti choice for the longest time
when they had to be put in that situation and understanding, oh,
this is still technically an abortion, they may have different
terms for it, realizing that, oh, and then costing thousands

(56:47):
and thousands and thousands of dollars, putting their lives at risk.
Coming back to being pro choice, realizing what this conversation
of what these types of laws really hurt and who
they really hurt, and how damaging it is. Because there's
this mystic religious moral background that when order to demoralize

(57:07):
and demonize those who even talk about it as an option.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Yeah, the moral crusaders are just being used as useful
idiots by people who want to do this other shit.
And they like get people riled up into being like
this is what is moral, and they're like okay, and
you run off and go do the thing, and like
that's not what the people controlling those people and give
a shit about any of.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
That, right, this is not about that.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, and they're just you're being used if you made
it this far and you're you're a moral anti rant. Yeah,
you're just being fucking used.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
You warned them in the first episode.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Yeah, we're going a bit.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
We're on this length, so you know, they know, y'all,
y'all know, right, But yes, thank you so much for
bringing those because I love talking about the history. I
definitely learned more because I was like, what what is that?
Things I didn't want to know and things I didn't
want to know, So thank you for giving me that blend.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
Yeah, yeah, no, I yeah, I was realizing. I was like,
this is a thing that some people know a lot
about and some people don't know about it all, And like,
I'm really excited that more and more information is coming
forward and people are coming more and more aware about
Jaine Collective and all of the people who've done this
kind of work, because like, because we fucking need it,
and and we've already said that a bunch of times
on the show, but it just it feels worth repeating.

(58:18):
Is that, like we need to know that we can
like be brave and do the right thing, you know,
and we need to know that the means by which
to do it, do the right thing. We can have
those means. We can figure that out right, you know,
so can't give up. Yeah, well, well, thank you so
much for coming on and being a guest.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Thank you for having me. I am a new best friend.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Yeah well so many new best friends also because all
the listeners. But I want to be more of the
best friend than them.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
Any plugs at the end here, Like I said on
the last episode, which I hope you listened to and
you stayed around for the second part, I'm on stuff.
Mom never told you a podcast with iHeartRadio. You can
get it wherever you listen to your podcast. We are
on Instagram and on Twitter. We don't type. We don't type.

(59:08):
Is that this is how old I am. We don't
post a lot. I don't type things on there a lot,
but we're there. We love getting messages. I am also
on the social media's obviously not very good at it.
On Instagram with McVeagh Sam and Twitter Sam McVeigh because
that's how creative I am.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
And you can see pictures of her dog.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Yeah, yes, that's pretty much all it is is pictures
of my Dog. So if you like that, come on
check it out and then we'll be back next week
on Monday and Wednesday. All right, Margaret yay wherever.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Talk to you all soon. Bye, everyone, buy listeners.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more po podcast from cool Zone Media,
visit our website foolzonmedia dot com or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.