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- [Narrator] Funding for this program

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was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

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and the Center for New Television.

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(mid-tempo music)

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- Mrs Jackson, as you suspected, you are pregnant.

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- (sighs) I suspected it.

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But it is a little upsetting.

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It\'s gonna make some problems.

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- I went to a doctor who just treated me like dirt.

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He said, if you girls would keep your legs together

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you wouldn\'t have to be coming in here

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until after you got married.

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- Doctor, I need help.

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- I remember saying to the doctor,

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after paying him all the money I had,

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what am I supposed to do?

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And his response was, well you\'ve got to go out there

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and find the father and he\'s going to have to marry you.

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(phone ringing)

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- It was really a time when if you needed an abortion

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for whatever reason, you took your life in your hands.

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And you were terrified, absolutely terrified.

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All you knew was that you might die,

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that this person didn\'t know what he was doing

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and he was going to take hundreds of dollars

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and you were going to bleed to death in some motel room.

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- I thought my life was going to be making souffles,

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and setting exquisite tables,

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and cooking wonderful gourmet food,

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and just being the perfect hostess

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for whatever lifestyle we were going to have.

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If somebody had told me that I was going to get arrested

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for abortion and conspiracy to commit abortion

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10 years later, I\'d have said they were out of their minds.

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(jazz music)

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- [Man] This is Chicago, the city

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where the skyscraper was born.

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This giant of the Midwest contains the same concentration

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of problems and achievements as urban areas

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everywhere in the world.

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In many more ways, however, Chicago is typically American.

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- I started college in 1963 at the University of Chicago.

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And from the minute I came to campus

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it was like my world opened up.

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And I loved it.

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I loved campus life in those years.

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In \'64 there was a recruitment of people

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to go south to Mississippi.

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And I was one of a number of northern students

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that went down to both voter registration

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and Freedom School training.

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♪ Good news ♪

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♪ Good news ♪

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♪ Freedom\'s coming ♪

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♪ Good news ♪

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♪ Freedom\'s coming ♪

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♪ Good news ♪

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♪ Freedom\'s coming and I don\'t want to be left behind ♪

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- Mississippi Summer had a profound effect on me,

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and I think on everyone who was part of it.

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We saw the value of working for a goal

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that was much larger than ourselves.

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We saw how you really could create change,

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change people\'s lives, change the reality by taking action.

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We also were involved in non-violent civil disobedience

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because we felt there were some laws that were unjust

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and needed to be confronted and resisted.

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In 1965, after I\'d returned from Mississippi,

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a friend of mine said that his sister was pregnant

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and was very frightened and was looking

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for a doctor to perform an abortion.

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And while I had never really thought about the issue before

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and wasn\'t sure what to do either, I made some calls

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and contacts and located a physician

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who was willing to perform an abortion.

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- Abortion was illegal.

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The hospital and doctors wanted no part of any abortion

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and were not willing to even see you

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if they suspected an abortion.

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So a woman bleeding and possibly dying

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could be sent away from a hospital.

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- Everybody I knew, everybody I talked to

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who had become pregnant and didn\'t want to have a baby

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and had tried to abort had done something

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really painful or horrible and they were all hysterical

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and desperate, just like I was,

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just hysterical, desperate, and scared, scared.

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- Several months later, word of that had spread

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and someone else contacted me.

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And then several months later, word had spread again

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and someone else contacted me.

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And I realized that there was a real need out there.

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And I decided to set up a system for talking with women

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who were trying to figure out what to do.

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And I set up what became known as the service, or Jane.

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- [Narrator] Mary\'s 13.

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She\'s growing up from a child into a woman.

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Various changes are taking place in her.

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To understand them we must start

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at the beginning of the story.

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In the farmyard you can see how baby chicks

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grow into pullets and cockerels,

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which before long become adult fowls.

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- We didn\'t know anything about our bodies at that time.

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We didn\'t know things like this.

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(gentle music)

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- I remember that one day the boys went in one room

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and the girls went in the other room,

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and they told us about sex.

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But I think that they told us in such a delicate way

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that I got no information whatever.

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- The people who called in the early years,

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it was mostly a student network.

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First at the University of Chicago,

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then from other Chicago-based schools,

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and then on through other campuses in the Midwest.

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And my recollection is that I was receiving

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some of these calls when I was living in a dormitory.

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And I told people who called to ask for Jane,

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so it was anonymous.

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- She had been running a kind of one woman

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referral service, so to speak.

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She would check up and say, how did things go?

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And if somebody asked for more money

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or if somebody was rude or if somebody

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was physically unpleasant in some way,

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that person got dropped from the list.

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- In 1967 I was married.

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In 1968 we had our first child.

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And I could no longer handle the volume,

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which was increasing, of people coming through

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on the counseling service.

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And I also wanted to be involved in additional things.

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So I started to go around to meetings

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that I just went to normally, and at the end of the meeting

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would say, those people who would like to become involved

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in a counseling service, an abortion counseling service,

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they should see me after the meeting.

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- It was a time when living consisted

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of being politically educated.

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- [Man] Brothers and sisters, the time has come

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for each and every one of you to decide

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whether you are going to be the problem

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or whether you are going to be the solution.

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- [Man] That\'s right.

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(crowd chanting)

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- [Woman] This was Vietnam, 1968 and \'69 Vietnam,

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assassinations, and political disenfranchisement.

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- [Lorraine] It was after the disastrous

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\'68 Convention in Chicago

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with the police riots and everything.

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(crowd yelling)

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- [Man] Police have gone berserk.

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Wanton brutality replaces rule of law.

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- [Lorraine] And all of the people were disillusioned.

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- [Woman] It was a time where not to decide was to decide.

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- The radical movement at the time was a male movement.

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And therefore abortion as an issue

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couldn\'t be very important \'cause it was so female.

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- The whole world was supposed to change.

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We were going to have this big revolution.

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Everything was going to be different

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for everybody except women.

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- So we had this one meeting,

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we decided to make it on women\'s liberation,

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which was in its early stages.

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And Heather said at the meeting, she says,

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I know what\'s something that we can do.

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We can do abortion counseling.

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- I went through several of these formative meetings

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organizing the group, and I\'d completely forgot

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that I myself had had an abortion.

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So that shows you what that kind

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of an experience can do to you.

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It was just a slice out of my life that I had cut out

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and put the two ends together, and that was gone.

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- And one of the reasons we set up a consulting service

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in addition to finding a physician was to let them know

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this is what they could expect medically,

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this is what they could expect emotionally,

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and then to provide some emotional

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and human support for them.

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- And since I was a social worker and I knew

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about emergency intervention I thought, oh, I\'ll do that.

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So that\'s what I did.

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Changed my life.

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- I was a graduate student

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at the University of Chicago in sociology.

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And worked through the summer of \'68 as a liaison

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between the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam

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and the McCarthy campaign.

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And after the Convention, went to work

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for the ACLU gathering evidence

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to prosecute policemen for police brutality.

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And one day Jody came breezing in.

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She said she was working on a project

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that desperately needed some help,

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and asked if I would help.

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So I said, sure. (laughs)

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And Jane turned out to be the project.

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- In the early summer of 1970, I thought I was pregnant.

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I called a friend of mine who was a medical student,

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because I assumed, well, they know all these docs,

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they probably know how to do it themselves.

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And he said, everybody here says

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call this number and ask for Jane.

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Now of course, at the time I didn\'t know

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just how hilarious that was.

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Here\'s all these docs and medical students,

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they won\'t touch it, of course.

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They send people to Jane.

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- Health was of interest to me

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and medical stuff was of interest to me.

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And legal stuff was of interest to me.

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And this was a neat combination of medical stuff

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and feminism stuff and just haning around

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and having a good time.

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- Ultimately I discovered after a very long time

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that I was not pregnant

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and called her back to tell her that.

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And I was extremely interested in what they were doing.

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And she said, well we\'re taking in new counselors

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in the fall and I\'ll call you.

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- When I came to Chicago I was 20 years old,

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or I was actually 19 years old.

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I turned 20 when my daughter was born,

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just about a week before.

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We had had a big debate about whether or not

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we were going to keep her or not,

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because abortion was out of the question.

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There was no place to get an abortion.

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First of all, I was embarrassed at having had sex.

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Who was I going to tell?

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My parents had no idea I was pregnant.

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I mean, I got married, I had a 24 inch waist.

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I mean, I was married in March, she was born in May.

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After I had my daughter, my mother\'s comment was,

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Why didn\'t you tell me?

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I would have gotten you an abortion.

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That was her comment.

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And my father\'s was, why didn\'t you tell us?

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You could have gotten married right away.

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I mean, I think that for me was a very radicalizing thing

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to be forced into motherhood,

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you know, ready or not, here she comes.

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- So that\'s basically where we started out from.

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We started out from ground zero.

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And we had no idea it was going to develop into what it did.

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(slow music)

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(phone ringing)

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- Hello.

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Alice, you found one?

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Just a minute, let me get a pen.

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Three, three.

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- [Heather] First there was a physical level of involvement.

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- [Penny] We would drop them off

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and then one of Mike\'s people

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would pick them up and blindfold them

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and take them to a building

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where the abortion would be done.

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And then they would be dropped back off.

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- A lot of guys who do abortions come onto the women

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and are abusive, either on moral and ethical grounds,

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which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it,

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like, oh, you got yourself in trouble,

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or you\'re a bad girl, you know, that kind of thing.

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Or the sexual approach.

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Our guy, none of that.

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- He came from, I don\'t even think working class,

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I think even poorer than working class.

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And the kind of way you don\'t trust anybody,

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and everybody\'s out for themselves.

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- The first thing he said,

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I guess he said to Ruth and to me both,

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was we can\'t meet together.

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Only two of us at a time

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because if more than two meet,

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it\'s a conspiracy.

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So, first, he and Ruth go off

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and have their little chat.

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And then, they say, okay, Ruth comes in

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and says, okay, you can go down now.

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And I go off alone with him.

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We just talked money.

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I said, look, let\'s talk money.

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And he said, that\'s what I wanna talk about.

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And we struck a deal right away.

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I said come down on your price, and he says no,

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we\'re not coming down below $500.

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- All of us women, I\'m sure, felt that the fee

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of $500 or $1,000 was extraordinarily exploitative.

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And made it impossible for a lot of people

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to get abortions when you needed them.

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So when it became clear that this was not

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an especially difficult thing to do,

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pressure was put on him to teach us

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and say, hey you know,

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this looks like something we could do.

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And amazingly,

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he thought it was too and that that wasn\'t such a bad idea.

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- The blindfolds came off and the prices were coming down

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and those of us that had known him the longest

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were also beginning to learn and very quickly,

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very quickly training others of us

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so that I, who had come in in October of \'70,

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by the beginning of \'71 was one of the people

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who had already begun to do long term abortions

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on an extra day that we added where we were the only staff,

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we didn\'t have him, it was just us.

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- What we did was we broke the bag of waters

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and pushed out the water and then over a period of time,

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the fetus would die.

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And the woman would miscarry.

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- After I took the instrument in my hand,

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he said here, feel what it feels like,

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here\'s the feeling you\'re looking for.

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And man, I could close my eyes and I could just

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I could feel it exactly.

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Exactly the feeling.

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And I thought, I can do this,

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and all of a sudden, this just vista opened up.

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- Also, somewhere in that period the group discovered,

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I don\'t know if discovered is the right word.

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I\'m not quite sure what the right verb is here.

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It was known, suddenly that he was not an MD.

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And then Mike was gone.

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- Well he\'d already made enough money,

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the mafia had moved in on him.

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Also he believed in what we were doing.

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- And then after I left,

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it wasn\'t until I think several years after they started

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to do the procedures, that I was even informed

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they were doing the procedures.

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And I was told, almost as an afterthought,

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because I think they thought I knew.

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But I didn\'t know.

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And I was quite amazed.

17:16.640 --> 17:20.220
- So this one time we were at an apartment

17:21.230 --> 17:25.349
and this last case of the day, the last woman of the day,

17:25.349 --> 17:28.940
was supposed to be a long term, and

17:30.750 --> 17:35.750
instead of, when I went in to break the water bag

17:35.750 --> 17:40.503
instead of water, out came a body part.

17:41.490 --> 17:45.673
And uh oh, now I\'d better go ahead and finish this.

17:45.673 --> 17:48.100
You know, can\'t leave it that way.

17:48.100 --> 17:50.700
And we told the woman, we said look,

17:50.700 --> 17:53.770
we\'re gonna do a DNC on you and she was

17:53.770 --> 17:56.710
she said really, where it might be over today?

17:56.710 --> 17:59.953
And then we finished it and it was like a party.

18:00.830 --> 18:03.950
The woman got up, she says oh I can\'t believe it\'s over.

18:03.950 --> 18:04.783
It\'s over.

18:05.750 --> 18:07.980
You know, I can\'t believe it, she was so happy

18:07.980 --> 18:10.010
and we were laughing and crying

18:10.010 --> 18:13.850
and from then on we said hey, let\'s do this.

18:13.850 --> 18:15.443
Why not, let\'s do it.

18:16.897 --> 18:20.034
(crowd murmuring)

18:20.034 --> 18:23.050
- When I went to college, my first year,

18:23.050 --> 18:27.130
this was this huge kamikaze sit in

18:27.130 --> 18:29.280
in the administration building

18:29.280 --> 18:34.020
and I joined it because it was the only social event

18:34.020 --> 18:36.930
that the University of Chicago had that year.

18:36.930 --> 18:39.790
And the people who were always leading the speeches

18:39.790 --> 18:43.723
always had in credibly complex,

18:44.610 --> 18:48.050
total explanations of everything.

18:48.050 --> 18:50.670
In which everything fit into the context

18:50.670 --> 18:53.320
of the Marxist, whatever framework

18:53.320 --> 18:57.300
and it always struck me as just nuts.

18:57.300 --> 18:58.653
Just not real.

18:59.770 --> 19:03.580
And when I joined the service, it was just right

19:03.580 --> 19:05.900
for me and for the women in the service

19:05.900 --> 19:07.923
because it wasn\'t about talking.

19:11.190 --> 19:15.160
Or meaning, or understanding, it was about doing.

19:15.160 --> 19:17.210
- I wasn\'t a feminist particularly,

19:17.210 --> 19:20.230
I wasn\'t not a feminist, but I think I was probably

19:20.230 --> 19:21.970
just too busy to think about it.

19:21.970 --> 19:24.850
I had two little kids and

19:26.530 --> 19:29.330
so I just helped out and

19:31.270 --> 19:33.813
I thought it was a good thing to be doing.

19:35.030 --> 19:36.990
- Some of us could hardly wait

19:36.990 --> 19:38.940
to get our hands all sticky and gooey.

19:38.940 --> 19:41.700
Some people were really turned off

19:41.700 --> 19:43.453
or really uncomfortable.

19:44.510 --> 19:46.410
People had to go through the training sessions

19:46.410 --> 19:48.080
before they could come to meetings

19:48.080 --> 19:52.100
and before they could find out about how we functioned.

19:52.100 --> 19:53.640
The way that we tried to do it

19:53.640 --> 19:55.460
was the person who was actually gonna perform

19:55.460 --> 19:58.010
the abortion did the hand holding the first time around,

19:58.010 --> 20:00.200
and the assistant did the initial things,

20:00.200 --> 20:03.670
gave little shots and dilated the cervix and so forth.

20:03.670 --> 20:05.900
And then you switched places

20:05.900 --> 20:10.210
so that there was a real team kind of feel to it.

20:10.210 --> 20:13.260
- I know the first time I was allowed to do anything

20:13.260 --> 20:15.640
and I gave a shot, what was amazing to me

20:15.640 --> 20:17.240
was that giving a shot was not

20:18.510 --> 20:19.970
I mean, I didn\'t have anybody who went

20:19.970 --> 20:21.210
screaming into the woodwork.

20:21.210 --> 20:23.200
Actually people would say to me, gee that didn\'t hurt,

20:23.200 --> 20:26.110
I mean how come it hurts so much when a doctor does it?

20:26.110 --> 20:28.320
And that really was, I mean, maybe it\'s because

20:28.320 --> 20:31.150
when a doctor does it, he really isn\'t afraid of hurting you

20:31.150 --> 20:32.460
he assumes that it doesn\'t matter

20:32.460 --> 20:34.190
whether he or she hurts you.

20:34.190 --> 20:36.850
Whereas, with us, we were very much concerned

20:36.850 --> 20:39.310
about whether we did it right or not.

20:39.310 --> 20:42.309
- It was on the job training. (laughs)

20:42.309 --> 20:44.870
And it just lasted as long as you were there

20:44.870 --> 20:48.240
and had time for it, then when somebody thought

20:48.240 --> 20:51.630
you were ready to carry on by yourself, then you did.

20:51.630 --> 20:53.450
- I remember the first time that

20:53.450 --> 20:57.210
somebody put a curet in my hand and said okay, you finish.

20:57.210 --> 21:00.220
And going into the uterus and having

21:00.220 --> 21:02.660
an absolute three dimensional feeling

21:02.660 --> 21:04.320
of what the inside of a uterus looked like

21:04.320 --> 21:06.260
and it was just like the pictures.

21:06.260 --> 21:08.700
I think that for me was the most mind boggling thing

21:08.700 --> 21:10.350
that happened because

21:11.370 --> 21:13.910
I don\'t know, you see diagrams, medical diagrams

21:13.910 --> 21:15.740
and you say oh these are medical diagrams.

21:15.740 --> 21:18.460
But when you actually can feel that the medical diagram

21:18.460 --> 21:22.270
is correct, it was I don\'t know, I mean

21:22.270 --> 21:25.270
it was one of those, it gives you goosebumps kind of things.

21:27.380 --> 21:29.180
That was really pretty amazing.

21:29.180 --> 21:30.750
- In terms of the population,

21:30.750 --> 21:34.183
there was a real shift when it became legal in New York.

21:35.260 --> 21:37.160
That was very dramatic.

21:37.160 --> 21:40.310
I think the price was about $100-150 for an abortion

21:40.310 --> 21:43.680
in New York, plus airfare and

21:43.680 --> 21:45.923
then maybe you would have to stay somewhere.

21:46.850 --> 21:48.967
So you were looking at, I don\'t know,

21:48.967 --> 21:51.470
$400, something like that,

21:51.470 --> 21:54.210
which for a middle class person was not,

21:54.210 --> 21:55.870
I mean you could do that.

21:55.870 --> 21:57.680
So our population changed.

21:57.680 --> 21:58.720
We then

21:59.810 --> 22:01.880
no longer had the population of people

22:01.880 --> 22:04.410
who could afford $300-400.

22:04.410 --> 22:07.385
We had the population of people who could not.

22:07.385 --> 22:10.430
- They were married women, they were single women,

22:10.430 --> 22:13.360
there were Catholic women, there were Jewish women.

22:13.360 --> 22:15.520
Ask yourself how many different kinds of women there are

22:15.520 --> 22:16.860
and that\'s how many different kinds of women

22:16.860 --> 22:18.210
came through the service.

22:18.210 --> 22:21.900
- As soon as we printed our little leaflet

22:21.900 --> 22:23.983
and put that telephone number down,

22:25.310 --> 22:26.830
word got out.

22:26.830 --> 22:29.350
- Pregnancy was such a terrifying thing then,

22:29.350 --> 22:32.690
that when I did get pregnant, my mind went blank.

22:32.690 --> 22:35.150
I was just in a state of terror.

22:35.150 --> 22:38.850
I did not wanna have a baby, I was 19 years old.

22:38.850 --> 22:41.260
I would rather die than have a baby

22:41.260 --> 22:44.430
and I was so freaked out and I started doing all kinds

22:44.430 --> 22:47.520
of crazy stuff, like running up and down stairs,

22:47.520 --> 22:51.740
jumping off tables, I jumped off somebody\'s garage roof

22:51.740 --> 22:55.530
about 10 times and taking burning hot baths.

22:55.530 --> 22:58.580
And everything everybody told me

22:58.580 --> 23:00.279
to try to abort myself.

23:00.279 --> 23:03.220
I got ahold of some quinine and got myself really

23:03.220 --> 23:06.850
really sick and somebody gave me a number of

23:06.850 --> 23:09.063
this guy, who was actually named Vinnie.

23:09.910 --> 23:13.740
And I called him up and he sounded

23:13.740 --> 23:15.560
just so ignorant on the phone

23:15.560 --> 23:18.690
that I couldn\'t do that, I would rather kill myself

23:18.690 --> 23:20.033
than let Vinnie kill me.

23:21.120 --> 23:23.633
He wanted $600, and back then,

23:24.710 --> 23:29.710
my rent was about $80 a month and $600 was a fortune

23:30.320 --> 23:33.260
beyond belief that I couldn\'t imagine getting

23:33.260 --> 23:35.710
that much money together and then

23:35.710 --> 23:37.820
I was flipping through a newspaper one day

23:37.820 --> 23:39.450
and I saw this ad.

23:39.450 --> 23:40.840
Pregnant, need help?

23:40.840 --> 23:41.863
Call Jane.

23:43.310 --> 23:44.143
Click.

23:44.143 --> 23:45.900
- You know, the women would call Jane,

23:45.900 --> 23:48.930
there\'d be this terrified message,

23:48.930 --> 23:52.280
at one end of the tape and then Jane would have

23:52.280 --> 23:54.810
to collect the messages and call and say

23:54.810 --> 23:58.000
this is Jane from Women\'s Liberation.

23:58.000 --> 24:00.020
You know, I\'m calling to let you know

24:00.020 --> 24:02.440
that we\'re going to be able to help you.

24:02.440 --> 24:06.167
- It was almost a personal relationship right there.

24:06.167 --> 24:09.430
It was a real, it was like I bonded with someone

24:10.320 --> 24:12.530
and I had to trust this person because

24:14.020 --> 24:16.490
she was going to be the person

24:16.490 --> 24:20.710
who ultimately would determine my life.

24:20.710 --> 24:23.960
I mean I was putting my life into someone

24:23.960 --> 24:26.670
who\'s basically a stranger\'s hands.

24:26.670 --> 24:29.780
- So Little Jane, or Callback Jane would pick up

24:29.780 --> 24:32.500
the messages off the tape and talk to the women,

24:32.500 --> 24:35.900
collect all the information, see what was needed

24:35.900 --> 24:40.350
and then give her list of names to Big Jane,

24:40.350 --> 24:43.910
who then assigned them to counselors.

24:43.910 --> 24:46.410
And then once the counselors gave the names back,

24:46.410 --> 24:49.340
Big Jane would set up the working day.

24:49.340 --> 24:51.287
- We\'d take the stack of cards to the meeting

24:51.287 --> 24:52.710
and pass them around.

24:52.710 --> 24:57.710
People would take out cards and pick people to counsel.

24:58.250 --> 25:01.500
Then you had the problem ones that were like

25:01.500 --> 25:04.370
somebody who lived in the far south suburbs

25:04.370 --> 25:07.530
and they were 16 years old and it was a secret

25:07.530 --> 25:10.240
and they were like 20 weeks pregnant or something.

25:10.240 --> 25:12.680
Nobody wanted that one and then you had to pass that card

25:12.680 --> 25:15.320
around and finally somebody\'d say oh alright,

25:15.320 --> 25:17.500
I\'ll take that one.

25:17.500 --> 25:20.570
- They made an appointment for me to go to someone\'s house

25:20.570 --> 25:23.580
to a counselor\'s house for a second screening.

25:23.580 --> 25:25.950
- Having an abortion was scaring me,

25:25.950 --> 25:27.280
was it gonna hurt?

25:27.280 --> 25:31.560
Was anything awful gonna happen afterwards?

25:31.560 --> 25:35.683
Was I going to bleed to death?

25:35.683 --> 25:39.010
Was something gonna happen so I\'d never

25:39.010 --> 25:41.000
be able to have more children?

25:41.000 --> 25:43.050
- At this point, you could\'ve chopped me up

25:43.050 --> 25:47.000
and put me in a sewer, because I felt that I

25:47.000 --> 25:49.620
had done something that was just

25:49.620 --> 25:53.250
totally wrong, that I would be morally judged,

25:53.250 --> 25:55.880
that I would have to live with my sins.

25:55.880 --> 25:57.640
- So the first thing I had to do

25:57.640 --> 25:59.720
was get them to relax.

25:59.720 --> 26:03.340
My kids would be there, you know, if I were serving dinner,

26:03.340 --> 26:04.530
I would say, do you want something to eat?

26:04.530 --> 26:07.600
You know, I mean, there was never a sense of

26:07.600 --> 26:10.270
this is this horribly formal procedure.

26:10.270 --> 26:13.230
- We told them right up front we weren\'t doctors.

26:13.230 --> 26:15.980
And some women that really bothered a lot.

26:15.980 --> 26:18.900
- I never used any euphemisms.

26:18.900 --> 26:21.530
I did explain to them that the doctors call this

26:21.530 --> 26:24.760
a DNC but that it was basically a Latin term

26:24.760 --> 26:26.930
that meant to open up and scrape out

26:26.930 --> 26:29.000
and that\'s what\'s gonna happen.

26:29.000 --> 26:31.430
- And I would talk about how there would be cramping

26:31.430 --> 26:34.500
as the cervix was dilated

26:34.500 --> 26:37.770
and that women ranged from little to a great deal

26:37.770 --> 26:39.693
of discomfort during that part.

26:42.480 --> 26:47.480
And then I described the curet and what it looked like,

26:47.870 --> 26:50.470
a long, thin rod with a spoon

26:50.470 --> 26:53.470
with the middle missing.

26:53.470 --> 26:56.840
And an edge, a scraping edge like your fingernail.

26:56.840 --> 27:00.900
And that\'s what\'s used to separate the pregnancy

27:00.900 --> 27:03.790
from the wall of the uterus.

27:03.790 --> 27:06.080
- I was nervous, because I was having an abortion

27:06.080 --> 27:08.200
not because I was having a Jane abortion.

27:08.200 --> 27:09.930
I completely trusted them,

27:09.930 --> 27:12.103
it was such a relief to find them.

27:14.730 --> 27:16.870
They had a good reputation.

27:16.870 --> 27:19.160
- By the time I got to that point,

27:19.160 --> 27:21.900
I felt like I was just part of a team,

27:21.900 --> 27:24.530
we\'re gonna go there, we\'re gonna get this over with

27:24.530 --> 27:27.681
and go home and get on with our lives.

27:27.681 --> 27:30.764
(light guitar music)

27:34.364 --> 27:39.364
- And here\'s Sheri, 28 years old 10 weeks, has one kid.

27:39.510 --> 27:41.820
- Pregnant women would lie to us

27:41.820 --> 27:45.050
about how many weeks pregnant they were,

27:45.050 --> 27:47.820
because they thought that if they told us the truth,

27:47.820 --> 27:49.527
we wouldn\'t do them.

27:49.527 --> 27:50.890
- But it wasn\'t like we would say

27:50.890 --> 27:53.260
oh, you\'re second trimester, go away.

27:53.260 --> 27:56.440
I mean, we would do it whether it was first or second

27:56.440 --> 27:58.470
and we would be up front about that,

27:58.470 --> 28:00.460
that you need to tell us the truth so we know

28:00.460 --> 28:02.580
what it is we\'re gonna be doing.

28:02.580 --> 28:07.580
- Gala, 13 weeks, 20 years old, DNC or nothing.

28:08.160 --> 28:09.530
That\'s a pretty tough order.

28:09.530 --> 28:13.683
Has $10, and right here, had VD.

28:14.560 --> 28:17.690
- I don\'t know how many women I helped with miscarriages.

28:17.690 --> 28:20.160
I had no idea, didn\'t keep a count,

28:20.160 --> 28:24.000
I might guess 100, I don\'t know.

28:24.000 --> 28:27.510
- The older women stick out in my mind the most,

28:27.510 --> 28:30.680
because a lot of them couldn\'t tell their husbands

28:30.680 --> 28:34.083
that they just could not have another child.

28:35.034 --> 28:39.640
We saw some women who were really tired.

28:39.640 --> 28:42.100
They stuck out in my mind just because

28:42.100 --> 28:45.263
of the kind of sadness of their situation.

28:47.070 --> 28:50.190
And then of course, there were young girls

28:50.190 --> 28:55.190
whose boyfriends took no responsibility,

28:55.960 --> 28:57.790
wanted no responsibility,

28:57.790 --> 28:59.983
told them they had done it on purpose.

29:03.190 --> 29:05.620
- [Woman] The youngest person I had ever worked with was 11,

29:05.620 --> 29:06.783
she came with her mom.

29:08.338 --> 29:11.050
Her mother brought her, her mother was a nurse.

29:11.050 --> 29:13.440
- And part of the politics was to have it be

29:13.440 --> 29:14.690
available to poor people.

29:15.810 --> 29:19.447
So that if we lowered the price, then poor people could come

29:19.447 --> 29:21.410
and that was the idea of it.

29:21.410 --> 29:25.333
And then ultimately we had 75,

29:25.333 --> 29:27.603
I would say 75% poor black women.

29:28.680 --> 29:31.080
- Catherine coming in from Michigan,

29:31.080 --> 29:34.663
10 weeks, 16 years old, has not a penny.

29:38.920 --> 29:40.430
- [Woman] We were working three and

29:40.430 --> 29:43.140
sometimes even four days a week.

29:43.140 --> 29:48.140
And at first, 10 or 14 people in a day was a day.

29:49.860 --> 29:52.280
But I\'m sure that by the end, it was 20 people

29:52.280 --> 29:54.250
or 25 people in a day.

29:54.250 --> 29:57.520
And 4 days with 25 people in a day, that\'s 100 people a week

29:57.520 --> 29:59.093
that got to be, that\'s a lot.

30:00.240 --> 30:03.720
- Word was out on the street that is this Jane,

30:03.720 --> 30:06.410
this abortion service that\'s very good,

30:06.410 --> 30:08.910
that\'s run by women, you can trust it.

30:08.910 --> 30:13.360
They won\'t mess you up and that that was a place to go.

30:13.360 --> 30:14.560
- On the day of the appointment,

30:14.560 --> 30:18.520
they told me that I should have something light

30:18.520 --> 30:20.630
or not anything for four hours.

30:20.630 --> 30:23.330
And to go to this house early in the morning,

30:23.330 --> 30:24.823
probably around 8:00.

30:26.910 --> 30:28.480
- We worked with two apartments.

30:28.480 --> 30:30.880
We had one place where the women came,

30:30.880 --> 30:32.310
that was the front.

30:32.310 --> 30:35.996
And then we had another place

30:35.996 --> 30:38.900
where the abortions took place.

30:38.900 --> 30:40.600
At the front, there would be lots of people,

30:40.600 --> 30:43.242
people waiting for women to come back from their abortions

30:43.242 --> 30:45.660
and women waiting to go for their abortions.

30:45.660 --> 30:48.980
And children, women, men, all different ages,

30:48.980 --> 30:50.600
all different sizes and kinds of people,

30:50.600 --> 30:53.400
eating donuts, drinking coffee or tea or milk,

30:53.400 --> 30:56.510
watching TV, reading comic books, and

30:56.510 --> 30:58.480
talking to the one or two women who were assigned

30:58.480 --> 31:01.341
to work the front who were doing

31:01.341 --> 31:04.000
you know, sort of caretaking there.

31:04.000 --> 31:06.153
- We did a lot of counseling at the front.

31:07.990 --> 31:09.883
A lot of additional counseling.

31:11.390 --> 31:13.740
We took everybody\'s temperature,

31:13.740 --> 31:16.763
make sure nobody had an infection or,

31:17.760 --> 31:19.480
\'cause if they had an elevated temperature,

31:19.480 --> 31:21.530
that\'s something we\'d have to know about.

31:22.430 --> 31:25.160
- And the friends would stay, then someone would come

31:25.160 --> 31:28.440
and ferry the women who were waiting from the front

31:28.440 --> 31:30.990
to the apartment where the abortion would be done.

31:30.990 --> 31:32.160
- The driver collected the money.

31:32.160 --> 31:35.070
What you\'d do is you\'d drive partway,

31:35.070 --> 31:39.900
you\'d pull into a parking space on a side street.

31:39.900 --> 31:42.470
And then you\'d say okay, (laughs)

31:42.470 --> 31:43.970
and you\'d just collect money.

31:43.970 --> 31:47.330
- And we would tell people, please pay what you can afford,

31:47.330 --> 31:51.120
assuming that there is somebody who has less money than you.

31:51.120 --> 31:53.640
And people did that, so that

31:53.640 --> 31:56.990
I had my person pay $36 in change and

31:56.990 --> 31:59.520
we all had stories like that.

31:59.520 --> 32:01.840
- Eventually we rented an apartment

32:01.840 --> 32:03.760
that we could keep set up all the time

32:03.760 --> 32:06.230
and that was lovely, it was really nice.

32:06.230 --> 32:10.553
- We also tried to keep it very unhospitallike,

32:13.060 --> 32:17.740
I mean we had crazy sheets, stripes and flowers

32:17.740 --> 32:20.140
and pop artsy stuff.

32:20.140 --> 32:22.400
- I don\'t know, in some ways it was like kids playing house,

32:22.400 --> 32:24.200
we had such a good time decorating it.

32:24.200 --> 32:27.350
We even donated our old makeup, so that the bathroom

32:27.350 --> 32:29.000
looked like somebody lived in it.

32:30.440 --> 32:32.680
- The atmosphere in the waiting room, it was kinda tense,

32:32.680 --> 32:34.330
nobody was talking very much.

32:34.330 --> 32:37.130
- Like how can you make small talk at a time like this

32:37.130 --> 32:38.810
and you\'re not gonna be introducing yourself

32:38.810 --> 32:40.910
to the person sitting next to you because

32:40.910 --> 32:45.733
who knows, you might be in a police report the next day.

32:47.370 --> 32:50.040
- When it was a woman\'s turn, they would come in

32:50.040 --> 32:52.410
and we would have already cleaned the room

32:52.410 --> 32:56.070
and put alcohol on the sheets and all the stuff.

32:56.070 --> 32:59.410
Sterilized the instruments and then

32:59.410 --> 33:01.310
she would be told to undress, we would give her

33:01.310 --> 33:04.490
a shot of ergotrate, which would prevent hemorrhaging

33:04.490 --> 33:05.983
following the procedure.

33:06.990 --> 33:09.690
And then we would begin the abortion

33:09.690 --> 33:12.390
and generally there would be someone to hold her hand.

33:14.070 --> 33:16.540
We would start with introducing the speculum

33:16.540 --> 33:20.180
and then giving four shots of Xylocaine,

33:20.180 --> 33:24.753
a local anesthetic and then do the DNC.

33:26.040 --> 33:30.310
- I think I almost broke the one counselor\'s fingers,

33:30.310 --> 33:32.340
I was squeezing her hand so hard, \'cause

33:32.340 --> 33:34.623
God it just hurts so much.

33:36.460 --> 33:38.090
They did give us

33:39.570 --> 33:44.570
antibiotics and they gave us ergot to shrink the uterus

33:44.930 --> 33:49.710
and they gave us instructions for aftercare.

33:49.710 --> 33:52.650
And I didn\'t have any physical problems

33:52.650 --> 33:54.370
from the abortion at all.

33:54.370 --> 33:57.780
Which was really amazing, considering the circumstances

33:57.780 --> 34:00.923
under which it was performed and how far pregnant I was.

34:02.120 --> 34:05.350
I had a good recovery, I did not get infected,

34:05.350 --> 34:07.800
I didn\'t have any problems at all afterwards.

34:07.800 --> 34:10.330
And my next period was perfectly normal.

34:10.330 --> 34:13.723
- And the kindness, and the consideration.

34:14.949 --> 34:19.610
Particularly in light of subsequent abortions that I\'ve had,

34:19.610 --> 34:23.320
it just made me realize how considerate

34:24.230 --> 34:26.500
the Jane abortions were.

34:26.500 --> 34:28.290
- Now what\'s interesting, too in our case,

34:28.290 --> 34:29.630
now this is true of medical students,

34:29.630 --> 34:31.040
this is true of nursing students,

34:31.040 --> 34:34.429
but because they have the license literally

34:34.429 --> 34:37.170
and the license metaphorically within the society

34:37.170 --> 34:39.650
to do what they\'re doing, if they mess up

34:39.650 --> 34:43.199
it\'s too bad, but of course everyone understands

34:43.199 --> 34:45.540
that some people make mistakes and

34:45.540 --> 34:48.429
even if patients die, this is very unfortunate

34:48.429 --> 34:50.110
and it\'s a tragedy, but it happens.

34:50.110 --> 34:53.110
And certainly the doctors and nurses feel terrible about it

34:53.110 --> 34:56.230
but we accept this, but in our case,

34:56.230 --> 34:58.140
nobody would\'ve accepted it.

34:58.140 --> 35:00.770
- Our main problem was that we were illegal

35:00.770 --> 35:04.230
and frankly, you\'re under enough stress as it is

35:04.230 --> 35:06.720
having any medical procedure, ask anyone

35:06.720 --> 35:07.670
going to the dentist.

35:07.670 --> 35:09.000
I mean if you had to go to your dentist

35:09.000 --> 35:11.310
and you had to go out on the street corner,

35:11.310 --> 35:14.000
and wear a carnation and somebody would pick you up

35:14.000 --> 35:14.833
and then they would take you

35:14.833 --> 35:17.490
blindfolded to this place, where you open your mouth

35:17.490 --> 35:19.390
and a drill goes in your mouth, I mean

35:20.970 --> 35:23.430
people have a hard enough time going when it\'s legal.

35:23.430 --> 35:25.596
- Packing up instruments and dragging them

35:25.596 --> 35:28.970
up flights of stairs and going in cabs,

35:28.970 --> 35:31.310
and being afraid you\'re gonna be busted

35:31.310 --> 35:34.600
is not the ideal atmosphere

35:34.600 --> 35:37.590
for women\'s reproductive healthcare.

35:37.590 --> 35:42.390
- Jane was very instrumental in

35:42.390 --> 35:45.880
making women aware of what their rights were

35:45.880 --> 35:49.990
and that they did have a right to demand

35:49.990 --> 35:53.050
the type of service and care that they got from Jane.

35:53.050 --> 35:55.260
- There were people who knew I had had an abortion

35:55.260 --> 35:58.330
and whenever they heard about somebody who needed help,

35:58.330 --> 35:59.470
they would have them call me,

35:59.470 --> 36:01.440
and I\'d tell them all about it.

36:01.440 --> 36:05.210
- You know, \'cause they would call Jane,

36:05.210 --> 36:06.730
but they were hysterical and scared

36:06.730 --> 36:09.350
and they wanted reassurance from somebody who\'d been there

36:09.350 --> 36:12.020
and they would call me up and I would tell them

36:12.020 --> 36:13.120
it was okay.

36:13.120 --> 36:15.840
- We wanted to change the system, we wanted to create

36:15.840 --> 36:18.260
a reality in which women were in control

36:18.260 --> 36:20.720
and we did, and I think that was helpful to the women

36:20.720 --> 36:22.520
who went through, I think we created

36:22.520 --> 36:24.670
a very loving experience for them,

36:24.670 --> 36:26.270
which was also very very important.

36:26.270 --> 36:28.200
Which you just don\'t get in a clinic

36:28.200 --> 36:31.200
where you\'re just another person coming through.

36:31.200 --> 36:36.200
- We also had the idea that a woman could come,

36:36.300 --> 36:40.080
have an abortion, join the group, become a counselor,

36:40.080 --> 36:42.580
and learn to do abortions, so go through the whole cycle

36:42.580 --> 36:44.810
that that was a very important thing.

36:44.810 --> 36:48.420
And that everybody had that possibility

36:48.420 --> 36:51.060
if they were interested and capable.

36:51.060 --> 36:53.250
- The years just went by.

36:53.250 --> 36:56.783
I mean it was sort of a blur, I was doing a lot of things.

36:57.870 --> 37:02.043
But the service definitely took precedence.

37:03.110 --> 37:05.910
- They called, I called her back.

37:05.910 --> 37:08.190
You know, and I said this is Jane,

37:08.190 --> 37:10.520
maybe that was the part that was so neat and gratifying,

37:10.520 --> 37:12.233
was saying this is Jane.

37:13.453 --> 37:15.970
- The group was not a collective in the beginning,

37:15.970 --> 37:17.498
it never attempted to be a collective,

37:17.498 --> 37:21.660
it grew, in that evolution, toward collective work

37:21.660 --> 37:24.500
and I believe by the end, when I was no longer in it,

37:24.500 --> 37:27.670
that it really had come much much closer

37:27.670 --> 37:30.120
to the kind of political ideal that we seek

37:30.120 --> 37:32.160
in women\'s movement work.

37:32.160 --> 37:34.310
But when I was in, this was not the case,

37:34.310 --> 37:36.620
there were a couple of women who had all the power

37:36.620 --> 37:38.070
in the case of knowledge is power,

37:38.070 --> 37:40.620
they knew a lot that other people did not know.

37:40.620 --> 37:43.620
Like they knew that he wasn\'t a doc before the other people,

37:44.550 --> 37:46.900
they chose who they would tell and who they wouldn\'t.

37:46.900 --> 37:48.080
All kinds of stuff like that.

37:48.080 --> 37:50.100
Extremely manipulative, very

37:52.210 --> 37:56.660
covert, but the operation itself,

37:56.660 --> 38:00.510
the whole thing, the service, worked very well.

38:00.510 --> 38:02.480
- They must have thought I was okay.

38:02.480 --> 38:04.440
Because one thing I did know in Jane,

38:04.440 --> 38:08.080
was if somebody wasn\'t regarded well,

38:08.080 --> 38:12.650
there was certainly a lot of trash talk about that person

38:12.650 --> 38:16.840
and they were generally manipulated out of

38:16.840 --> 38:20.410
whatever the power core didn\'t want them to do.

38:20.410 --> 38:22.000
- It just was the way things were,

38:22.000 --> 38:23.770
and while we might argue about it,

38:23.770 --> 38:25.623
we might dislike it intensely,

38:27.730 --> 38:30.270
we had a job to do and our job was to see to it

38:30.270 --> 38:32.770
that everybody who needed an abortion, who came to us

38:32.770 --> 38:34.577
got an abortion at a price they could afford,

38:34.577 --> 38:37.300
and not to have a lot of infighting among ourselves.

38:37.300 --> 38:38.910
- I was just so amazed sometimes,

38:38.910 --> 38:42.850
when I\'d look at what was happening among us,

38:42.850 --> 38:47.040
and friendships and fighting, and all those kinds of things

38:47.881 --> 38:50.280
and yet the service just kept right on working

38:50.280 --> 38:52.790
and women got their abortions and things kept going

38:52.790 --> 38:55.110
just the way it was supposed to go.

38:55.110 --> 38:58.560
- I suppose that people who go to medical school,

38:58.560 --> 39:01.810
or other kinds of health profession training,

39:01.810 --> 39:04.810
learn about professional distancing

39:04.810 --> 39:07.410
when handling people\'s bodies.

39:07.410 --> 39:09.180
But I didn\'t have that.

39:09.180 --> 39:12.570
And I didn\'t really like it and I was

39:12.570 --> 39:15.020
increasingly uncomfortable with this

39:15.990 --> 39:19.840
unusual intimacy I had with these women

39:19.840 --> 39:21.110
who I didn\'t know.

39:21.110 --> 39:25.210
I think in the end, it was too much responsibility

39:25.210 --> 39:27.533
at too early an age for me.

39:28.720 --> 39:30.030
And I don\'t think we did this,

39:30.030 --> 39:31.960
I don\'t think we looked out for each other in Jane,

39:31.960 --> 39:33.910
it was all we could do, look out for ourselves.

39:33.910 --> 39:38.570
So I don\'t criticize that that was the circumstance

39:38.570 --> 39:41.770
but nobody was looking out for me.

39:41.770 --> 39:43.980
- There were people who I would never in the world

39:43.980 --> 39:47.210
have been friends with and

39:48.200 --> 39:50.640
I would do anything for them there.

39:50.640 --> 39:53.030
And that doesn\'t go away,

39:53.030 --> 39:55.270
there\'s a lot of feeling there,

39:55.270 --> 39:56.890
and we were doing something together

39:56.890 --> 39:59.140
that we really, really, really cared about,

39:59.140 --> 40:02.923
and the intensity of that is very hard to imagine.

40:04.580 --> 40:05.863
And you get, you know,

40:06.730 --> 40:09.550
whatever personal satisfaction you\'ve gotten from that,

40:09.550 --> 40:12.130
you\'ve done this together as a group

40:13.500 --> 40:18.430
and then it\'s that feeling, is spread then with the group.

40:18.430 --> 40:21.963
- The illegal part was exciting and interesting to me.

40:23.460 --> 40:26.890
I\'m sure it wasn\'t like that for everybody,

40:26.890 --> 40:28.970
but for me, that sort of

40:28.970 --> 40:32.590
made it an even more valid activity.

40:32.590 --> 40:35.560
- We knew that our phones were tapped at times,

40:35.560 --> 40:37.340
because you could pick up your phone

40:37.340 --> 40:39.250
and not get a dial tone and hear people

40:39.250 --> 40:40.703
talking in the background.

40:41.760 --> 40:45.303
That\'s how unsophisticated the wiretaps were.

40:47.970 --> 40:50.360
And I remember once picking up the phone,

40:50.360 --> 40:54.033
saying damn it hang up the phone so I can call my mother.

40:55.130 --> 40:58.000
- You just get used to it and it becomes

40:58.000 --> 40:59.630
a part of your daily life where

40:59.630 --> 41:01.583
you\'re just dealing with that.

41:03.640 --> 41:06.850
Not only your daily life, it becomes your life.

41:06.850 --> 41:10.060
- So, miss, I\'ve noticed for the last six months,

41:10.060 --> 41:12.445
you come in here and the only thing you buy

41:12.445 --> 41:15.390
are three pints of alcohol every week.

41:15.390 --> 41:17.140
That\'s very unusual.

41:17.140 --> 41:18.840
- So I went to visit the pharmacist

41:18.840 --> 41:22.100
and he turned out to be a very delightful person

41:22.100 --> 41:23.620
to deal with.

41:23.620 --> 41:24.810
He knew what we were doing,

41:24.810 --> 41:27.020
he thought it was the right thing to do

41:27.020 --> 41:30.330
and for a nice healthy profit,

41:30.330 --> 41:34.680
he agreed to, you know, it was a sweetheart of a deal,

41:34.680 --> 41:35.910
all the way around.

41:35.910 --> 41:38.260
I used to go there, he would order stuff.

41:38.260 --> 41:41.690
It would just be stacked in boxes in the back.

41:41.690 --> 41:44.287
I\'d come in, back my car up to the back of his pharmacy,

41:44.287 --> 41:46.550
load up the trunk.

41:46.550 --> 41:47.570
- And of course what we were doing

41:47.570 --> 41:50.740
was so outrageous that I don\'t think that anybody,

41:50.740 --> 41:52.780
unless they knew one of us, would ever have dreamed

41:52.780 --> 41:55.530
what was happening, what all these women were doing.

41:55.530 --> 41:58.380
I mean if you saw a bunch of women

41:58.380 --> 41:59.620
riding in a station wagon,

41:59.620 --> 42:01.380
would you assume they were going to have an abortion?

42:01.380 --> 42:03.480
I mean, come on, that\'s the most outrageous notion

42:03.480 --> 42:05.100
you could imagine.

42:05.100 --> 42:10.100
- Cabbies, doctors, everybody who referred anybody to us

42:10.120 --> 42:13.060
was in that network.

42:13.060 --> 42:17.870
The large, non-conspiracy that was the service in Chicago.

42:17.870 --> 42:19.300
- Some of us were active in other things,

42:19.300 --> 42:21.800
peace movement stuff, civil rights movement stuff,

42:22.910 --> 42:24.550
women\'s movement stuff and

42:24.550 --> 42:26.590
we would be on marches or demonstrations

42:26.590 --> 42:29.620
and the same cops were always there,

42:29.620 --> 42:32.500
the red squad, you know, Chicago\'s red squad, et cetera.

42:32.500 --> 42:34.380
And they were always taking pictures

42:34.380 --> 42:36.660
and they had files on everybody that they saw.

42:36.660 --> 42:39.740
And they once called this one woman

42:39.740 --> 42:42.200
whose name was not Jane, Jane.

42:42.200 --> 42:43.850
Hi, Jane, how ya doing?

42:43.850 --> 42:45.480
And so of course then we knew

42:45.480 --> 42:50.010
that the political cops, or the anti politico cops,

42:50.010 --> 42:52.950
also knew that we were abortion people.

42:52.950 --> 42:56.170
- Until those men knocked on the door,

42:56.170 --> 42:59.420
and I opened that door, it had never entered

42:59.420 --> 43:02.500
my pretty little head, I\'m ashamed to say,

43:02.500 --> 43:03.463
but it\'s true.

43:04.300 --> 43:06.320
- This was May 2nd, 1972.

43:06.320 --> 43:09.340
And we were expecting the guy, the maintenance guy

43:09.340 --> 43:12.177
to come and do our screens that day.

43:12.177 --> 43:14.800
And the doorbell rang, and I said to Diane,

43:14.800 --> 43:17.020
I said, could you please answer the door.

43:17.020 --> 43:18.190
You know, we were in the middle

43:18.190 --> 43:20.733
of breaking somebody\'s water bag,

43:22.120 --> 43:25.440
and the next thing I knew, there was this large gray man

43:25.440 --> 43:27.413
in the doorway, you know, it\'s like.

43:28.500 --> 43:31.310
I heard somebody say, don\'t let him in, don\'t let him in.

43:31.310 --> 43:32.970
And I thought, why would you not wanna let the

43:32.970 --> 43:34.920
guys from the screens in?

43:34.920 --> 43:37.700
- These guys, who are so, it\'s like a neon light,

43:37.700 --> 43:40.610
cop, cop, cop, these are the police.

43:40.610 --> 43:44.190
Practically like that, white guys, six feet tall,

43:44.190 --> 43:46.523
in trenchcoats, shiny black shoes.

43:47.470 --> 43:50.510
I opened the door and there were the tallest men

43:50.510 --> 43:52.353
I\'ve ever seen in my life.

43:54.420 --> 43:56.353
I don\'t know what they said,

43:56.353 --> 43:58.140
I don\'t remember what they said.

43:58.140 --> 44:01.270
But I turned around, walked back into the livingroom

44:01.270 --> 44:04.830
and said, maybe they said they were the police.

44:04.830 --> 44:08.233
These are the police, you don\'t have to say anything.

44:09.300 --> 44:12.460
- And I really think my situation was a little unique,

44:12.460 --> 44:16.607
because when I came the second time,

44:16.607 --> 44:21.460
that\'s when they actually got busted.

44:21.460 --> 44:25.963
And then I really thought, oh, my life is over.

44:27.100 --> 44:30.400
- The guys that arrested us were homicide cops.

44:30.400 --> 44:31.963
Abortion was homicide.

44:32.880 --> 44:35.340
And they hated it.

44:35.340 --> 44:39.020
And here they rounded up this bunch of middle class women.

44:39.020 --> 44:42.920
There wasn\'t this handful of cash that they usually found,

44:42.920 --> 44:44.530
there was this bright, clean apartment

44:44.530 --> 44:46.920
with all of these medical instruments sitting in it,

44:46.920 --> 44:51.193
and antiseptics, and it just didn\'t feel good.

44:52.040 --> 44:53.760
- Ultimately what happened was that

44:53.760 --> 44:58.360
the police brought everyone who was at the place

44:58.360 --> 45:00.630
and everyone who was at the front

45:00.630 --> 45:03.800
down to the police station on Cottage Grove.

45:03.800 --> 45:06.270
So they had about, I think it was 40-45 people,

45:06.270 --> 45:08.710
including little children running around screaming,

45:08.710 --> 45:10.741
those police, I\'m sure, were very very sorry

45:10.741 --> 45:12.970
that they had done this.

45:12.970 --> 45:14.570
- And they couldn\'t figure out really

45:14.570 --> 45:16.920
which one of us, really, who were the victims

45:16.920 --> 45:19.780
and who were the perps, really, because

45:19.780 --> 45:21.850
I mean, everybody was so mixed up.

45:21.850 --> 45:23.410
- So they had to sort through all their people,

45:23.410 --> 45:24.770
question all their people, et cetera.

45:24.770 --> 45:26.220
I remember the cop who interviewed me,

45:26.220 --> 45:29.253
he was wearing a short-sleeve yellow sport shirt.

45:31.259 --> 45:33.959
Like a dress shirt, but short sleeve and he said to me

45:35.630 --> 45:38.230
I see you used to be a high school teacher.

45:38.230 --> 45:39.810
He said, I used to be a high school teacher,

45:39.810 --> 45:40.940
I was a biology teacher.

45:40.940 --> 45:42.710
He said, how did you go wrong?

45:42.710 --> 45:44.010
I said, how did I go wrong,

45:44.010 --> 45:46.540
why did you stop being a teacher and become a cop?

45:46.540 --> 45:48.140
You know, it was very funny.

45:48.140 --> 45:50.420
- Somebody must have called me

45:50.420 --> 45:54.540
and I immediately began trying to get money

45:54.540 --> 45:57.520
so that I could get a bond.

45:57.520 --> 45:59.513
And by the evening I did.

46:00.570 --> 46:03.970
- And there was some real fear, we were charged

46:03.970 --> 46:07.400
with like 110 years worth of felonies,

46:07.400 --> 46:09.710
it was really a lot.

46:09.710 --> 46:13.430
We talked about starting a craft coop at Dwight

46:13.430 --> 46:16.260
because after all, you know, if we were gonna be there

46:16.260 --> 46:19.170
for 10 years, we should do something that was worthwhile

46:19.170 --> 46:21.410
and we could be political and we can organize people.

46:21.410 --> 46:24.590
I mean this is all, our fantasy of what it would be like

46:24.590 --> 46:27.260
to be in jail as opposed to being raped,

46:27.260 --> 46:30.730
which is probably just as likely as starting a craft coop.

46:30.730 --> 46:33.720
- The story that I got was that whoever picked up the call

46:33.720 --> 46:35.330
didn\'t know about the service

46:35.330 --> 46:36.740
and put it through the channels,

46:36.740 --> 46:38.590
and the bust happened.

46:38.590 --> 46:42.400
That they got calls all the time about the service

46:42.400 --> 46:43.643
and they ignored them.

46:45.570 --> 46:48.680
And that must be true, it can\'t be the first person

46:48.680 --> 46:52.310
who told on us, one bad tattle tale, I can\'t believe it.

46:52.310 --> 46:53.303
10,000 women?

46:54.190 --> 46:55.530
Catholic city?

46:55.530 --> 46:57.370
- [Woman] Next week is the latest, I know,

46:57.370 --> 46:59.953
because I don\'t want your situation to change.

47:01.040 --> 47:02.240
- We had to keep things going,

47:02.240 --> 47:06.300
we had 250 women waiting to have abortions.

47:06.300 --> 47:08.920
We called all over the country

47:08.920 --> 47:11.738
to find, you know, this place, this place,

47:11.738 --> 47:13.260
if the women could get there,

47:13.260 --> 47:16.570
they could get free abortions in New York and DC.

47:16.570 --> 47:18.020
- And they said not to worry.

47:19.530 --> 47:21.863
I went home, I got a telephone call.

47:23.210 --> 47:27.270
Plane ticket to Washington, and I went to Washington

47:27.270 --> 47:32.230
to a facility and it took all of an hour.

47:32.230 --> 47:35.350
- I know that we all stopped doing abortions

47:35.350 --> 47:39.103
for a while, and towards the end of the Summer,

47:40.010 --> 47:42.460
I decided that I really had had it.

47:42.460 --> 47:44.270
That I was tired of having the Chicago police

47:44.270 --> 47:46.170
tell me what I was gonna do with my life,

47:46.170 --> 47:47.680
that I was tired of people telling me

47:47.680 --> 47:50.270
what I was gonna do, that I was gonna make this decision.

47:50.270 --> 47:52.120
And for me that was a very conscious choice,

47:52.120 --> 47:54.300
going back in and doing it again.

47:54.300 --> 47:57.420
- I mean at that point, we were getting tons of calls.

47:57.420 --> 48:00.400
I mean, yeah, sure the bust was disruptive,

48:00.400 --> 48:03.940
but when we were back in business, we were back in business.

48:03.940 --> 48:05.820
I mean, it was amazing.

48:05.820 --> 48:09.276
So it probably gave us some interesting publicity.

48:09.276 --> 48:12.084
- [Women] Two, three, four, we don\'t wanna scrub your floor.

48:12.084 --> 48:17.084
Five, six, seven, eight, sisterhood will smash the state.

48:17.490 --> 48:19.910
- Also, there was an enormous amount of legislative stuff

48:19.910 --> 48:22.900
going on and people knew that we were heading toward,

48:22.900 --> 48:25.000
both locally and nationally, a time

48:25.000 --> 48:27.980
when there might be an overturning of abortion laws.

48:27.980 --> 48:30.740
- When push came to shove, nobody was willing to testify

48:30.740 --> 48:32.710
against us, one or two women came in

48:32.710 --> 48:35.830
with their own attorneys, \'cause they didn\'t wanna testify.

48:35.830 --> 48:38.883
I mean, they were so angry at being asked to do this.

48:41.697 --> 48:43.050
And the fact of the matter was

48:43.050 --> 48:45.420
that none of the women who came were pregnant anymore,

48:45.420 --> 48:49.590
when they got to court in June,

48:49.590 --> 48:52.460
I mean, how amazing that was and these were all second tris,

48:52.460 --> 48:55.060
so they had been taken care of someplace.

48:55.060 --> 48:57.230
Either in Philadelphia,

48:57.230 --> 48:59.650
or they had been taken care of by Jane.

48:59.650 --> 49:01.440
- And then we just waited.

49:01.440 --> 49:06.050
And then the rest is literally history.

49:06.050 --> 49:09.410
The decision came down, and

49:12.010 --> 49:14.994
they dismissed the case, that was that.

49:14.994 --> 49:18.292
- Very quickly, as you know, it became evident

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that really poor women were still going to have difficulty,

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that really young women were still gonna have difficulty,

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that most of the major, serious problems

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around abortion had not been solved by Roe V Wade.

49:30.790 --> 49:32.123
- When we were illegal,

49:35.530 --> 49:38.940
we had a reason for being, when it was legal,

49:38.940 --> 49:40.770
we really were illegal.

49:40.770 --> 49:43.340
I mean, there really is something called practicing medicine

49:43.340 --> 49:46.100
without a license, when there are real doctors doing it

49:46.100 --> 49:48.980
and real doctors will undoubtedly persecute you

49:48.980 --> 49:52.230
because you\'re cutting into their business.

49:52.230 --> 49:54.090
- I just felt like, you know once it was legal,

49:54.090 --> 49:55.640
it was somebody else\'s problem.

49:57.720 --> 49:59.270
I passed the torch, you know?

49:59.270 --> 50:00.403
It was over for me.

50:01.320 --> 50:04.420
- I just said, that\'s it, I can\'t stand to see

50:04.420 --> 50:06.230
any more of this suffering.

50:06.230 --> 50:08.560
I\'ve had all I can take.

50:08.560 --> 50:13.560
I would have dreams of lines of people

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lined up like in concentration camps almost,

50:17.080 --> 50:19.160
this is how my dreams would be of these women

50:19.160 --> 50:22.013
standing there in line and oh,

50:23.070 --> 50:25.620
I just couldn\'t stand to see the suffering anymore.

50:27.140 --> 50:29.460
- I think that we just led a charmed life.

50:29.460 --> 50:30.930
I really do.

50:30.930 --> 50:33.460
I think that the gods were watching out for us.

50:33.460 --> 50:35.670
And I think part of it was that we did take care of people,

50:35.670 --> 50:39.060
we did give them antibiotics, but other clinics do that too.

50:39.060 --> 50:42.610
I just think that we were lucky, and that also

50:42.610 --> 50:45.510
there was a lot of caring.

50:45.510 --> 50:49.700
- Jane is a success story, and

50:50.750 --> 50:52.820
it\'s a great testament to the ability

50:52.820 --> 50:57.820
of a group of women who put aside personal differences

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and political differences.

51:01.540 --> 51:03.810
It\'s a testament to their ability to work together

51:03.810 --> 51:06.260
to accomplish something that if you looked at it

51:06.260 --> 51:09.593
on the face of it, you\'d say they could never do that.

51:10.480 --> 51:14.390
- I felt really blessed, that I was able to

51:15.540 --> 51:18.240
go on with my life, have this beautiful child

51:18.240 --> 51:20.490
and I think I had the time

51:20.490 --> 51:24.700
to really properly prepare myself for it.

51:24.700 --> 51:28.760
- I\'m just really grateful that I was able

51:28.760 --> 51:31.120
to wait until I was ready to have a child.

51:31.120 --> 51:33.990
It would\'ve been a disaster for me to have a child

51:33.990 --> 51:36.490
in 1969 when I was 19 years old.

51:36.490 --> 51:40.920
I was not at all ready, and I wasn\'t ready in 1973,

51:40.920 --> 51:44.870
or 1974, but 1976, I was ready.

51:44.870 --> 51:47.630
- And you have to realize that we\'re talking about

51:47.630 --> 51:52.630
close to 10,000 people, who were so sure

51:53.710 --> 51:56.570
that an abortion is what was right for them

51:56.570 --> 51:58.230
that they were willing to risk,

51:58.230 --> 52:00.103
for all they knew, their lives.

52:01.458 --> 52:06.020
Going to essentially a group of strangers

52:07.380 --> 52:11.830
in a nonmedical setting doing something illegal.

52:11.830 --> 52:14.360
- Part of what these movements are about

52:14.360 --> 52:18.740
is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things

52:18.740 --> 52:21.080
because they decide to take action.

52:21.080 --> 52:22.990
- Look at the ordinary people that worked

52:22.990 --> 52:24.700
in the Underground Railroad,

52:24.700 --> 52:28.200
what it took was you had to have the courage

52:28.200 --> 52:30.720
and the commitment, and the determination,

52:30.720 --> 52:33.860
and the belief that what you\'re doing is right.

52:33.860 --> 52:38.860
I always, I used to read about the Underground Railroad

52:39.110 --> 52:42.210
when I was a kid and it always made me cry.

52:42.210 --> 52:44.430
- I worry about kids who don\'t

52:45.840 --> 52:48.050
care passionately about anything

52:50.490 --> 52:54.234
and I want my kids to know that if it really matters,

52:54.234 --> 52:58.190
they should decide which side they\'re on.

52:58.190 --> 53:01.910
- We as women have rights and I don\'t care

53:02.788 --> 53:06.910
if you\'re 12 years old, you have to ask questions,

53:06.910 --> 53:09.600
you ask questions because that\'s the only way

53:10.900 --> 53:13.710
you as a woman are going to get an answer.

53:13.710 --> 53:15.270
If you have to ask your mother,

53:15.270 --> 53:17.543
if you have to ask your grandmother,

53:19.080 --> 53:22.517
you have to ask questions, you want the answer,

53:22.517 --> 53:26.660
and the answer isn\'t someone telling you what to do.

53:26.660 --> 53:29.160
- Assume that you must educate yourself

53:29.160 --> 53:31.940
and that you must find people who seek

53:31.940 --> 53:34.400
to be conscious and seek to do good and right

53:34.400 --> 53:37.230
in the world and be with those people.

53:37.230 --> 53:41.090
Seek women and girls who want to have integrity

53:41.090 --> 53:44.330
who want to own their personal power and use it

53:44.330 --> 53:46.860
to make their way through life in this world

53:46.860 --> 53:49.780
and hang around with those girls and women.

53:49.780 --> 53:51.680
Don\'t stay where people tell you

53:51.680 --> 53:54.270
you\'re crazy, you\'re stupid, you\'re weak.

53:54.270 --> 53:56.860
Don\'t spend time with people who tell you

53:56.860 --> 53:59.920
oh it\'s pointless, it\'s useless, or oh they tried that,

53:59.920 --> 54:01.920
or it\'s passe or this is post feminism,

54:01.920 --> 54:03.603
just say, okay, that\'s who they are,

54:03.603 --> 54:05.100
we\'re done with that.

54:05.100 --> 54:06.580
Now we\'ll move onto the next.

54:06.580 --> 54:09.560
It can be lonely, it can be scary,

54:09.560 --> 54:11.720
it will be lonely, it will be scary,

54:11.720 --> 54:13.970
but it will not be impossible.

54:13.970 --> 54:17.080
- And when you go down to a women\'s march

54:18.263 --> 54:21.077
1,000 miles away and you\'re a long way from home,

54:21.077 --> 54:23.324
and you carry your little banner,

54:23.324 --> 54:26.050
and you have total strangers walking up to you

54:26.050 --> 54:29.583
after 25 years saying, oh, I remember you,

54:31.060 --> 54:32.260
it makes you feel good.

54:32.260 --> 54:36.080
- I think it takes time to sort out what things mean.

54:36.080 --> 54:39.210
And the people in power often get to decide

54:39.210 --> 54:41.700
and for a while, the people in power really wanted

54:41.700 --> 54:43.860
it not to mean anything.

54:43.860 --> 54:47.420
I mean, what did the feminist revolution mean

54:47.420 --> 54:48.483
to Nancy Regan?

54:51.870 --> 54:55.840
As she gazed adoringly at Ronnie, you know, I mean.

54:55.840 --> 54:58.160
So those people had to believe

54:58.160 --> 55:00.410
that it didn\'t mean anything and everything was okay

55:00.410 --> 55:03.760
and it was the same and yeah.

55:03.760 --> 55:06.700
But they don\'t get the last word, do they?

55:06.700 --> 55:08.480
And I don\'t think they will get the last word

55:08.480 --> 55:10.930
because things have changed a whole God damn lot.

55:13.063 --> 55:15.102
- [Women] Not the church, not the state.

55:15.102 --> 55:16.960
We alone decide our fate

55:16.960 --> 55:18.908
not the church, not the state.

55:18.908 --> 55:20.770
We alone decide our fate.

55:20.770 --> 55:22.139
(folk music)

55:22.139 --> 55:24.295
♪ I woke up one bright morning ♪

55:24.295 --> 55:26.945
♪ About the middle of May ♪

55:26.945 --> 55:29.433
♪ I had some kids and a good old man ♪

55:29.433 --> 55:32.033
♪ And things were going my way ♪

55:32.033 --> 55:34.487
♪ But I looked at my calendar ♪

55:34.487 --> 55:37.264
♪ And there I read my fate ♪

55:37.264 --> 55:39.649
♪ Five pounds here and a bigger brassiere ♪

55:39.649 --> 55:44.649
♪ And I was seven weeks late ♪

55:44.713 --> 55:46.822
♪ It\'s another bright May morning ♪

55:46.822 --> 55:49.386
♪ My problems all resolved ♪

55:49.386 --> 55:52.173
♪ But my heart is heavy weighted ♪

55:52.173 --> 55:54.693
♪ Because I hear Jane\'s been dissolved ♪

55:54.693 --> 55:59.529
♪ No more abortions or councillees for Mrs. Ms, or Miss ♪

55:59.529 --> 56:02.039
♪ \'Cause when you dial the number ♪

56:02.039 --> 56:06.494
♪ The message sounds like this ♪

56:06.494 --> 56:11.229
♪ 643-3844 can\'t help you anymore ♪

56:11.229 --> 56:13.673
♪ We\'ve been put out of business ♪

56:13.673 --> 56:16.658
♪ From your dirty legal war ♪

56:16.658 --> 56:21.626
♪ We gave you an abortion no matter what the reason for ♪

56:21.626 --> 56:26.126
♪ But 643-3844 can\'t help you anymore ♪

56:36.133 --> 56:38.800
(upbeat jingle)

56:40.510 --> 56:43.100
- [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by

56:43.100 --> 56:45.530
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting

56:45.530 --> 56:47.293
and The Center for New Television.