00:02:50.020when I was the host of the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You.
00:02:52.620And relistening to her story this week, I was reminded that when she was young, she was organizing to make changes that must have seemed super far-fetched until they weren't.
00:03:03.180It's a story of hope and promise, and I feel like we could all use a little of that right now.
00:03:08.560And just FYI, I was a much greener interviewer and podcast host back in 2018.
00:03:14.160So, you know, keep that in mind as you're listening.
00:03:22.620Hey, this is Bridget, and you're listening to Stuff Mom Never Told You.
00:03:37.260And today, we're continuing our series all about abortion,
00:03:40.720bringing you stories about abortion that you might not know about.
00:03:43.520And today's story is the Jane Collective.
00:07:17.460Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:07:21.880I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:07:26.340I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:07:33.400They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:07:37.860But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:07:41.320They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:07:44.940Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:07:53.380If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:07:59.320This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:08:11.800I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:08:18.900I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:08:22.040From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:08:28.440It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:08:36.360Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:08:45.520Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:09:08.720Well, I'm so glad to be talking with the amazing Bridget Todd and what a service you're doing to the public,
00:09:14.840providing this information out about some of the stories that are not as well known.
00:09:19.740Exactly. That's really what we want to do with this series. Everybody feels like they know a lot about abortion and about, you know, reproductive health. But there are so many stories about abortion in choice that people might not know. You know, the Jane Network was such a critical thing for these women who were living, you know, while before Roe v. Wade was enacted. And, you know, people don't even really know about it.
00:09:42.360Glad to describe how it came about. And I appreciate your spreading the word to let people know that if we organize, we can change the world. We have changed the world and we need to change the world. And the story of organizing the Jane Network is one important example of that.
00:10:08.640So when you started Jane, you were just a 19-year-old student at the University of Chicago.
00:10:13.140So what was your life like before you started Jane?
00:10:16.480A little bit about my life and also a little bit about what women's lives were like in general.0.89
00:10:22.820For me, I was brought up in a family that was very loving and believed that people should follow the golden rule.0.97
00:10:32.560We should treat each other as we wanted to be treated.
00:10:35.380And I carried that with me. I became active in the civil rights movement. In 1964, I went to Mississippi with the Freedom Summer Project, and some of you may have heard about it because that was a time when the civil rights movement was recruiting northern students to come down to Mississippi because in Mississippi, black lives did not matter in 1964.
00:10:59.940and they thought that the attention of northern students might bring additional visibility and potential power
00:11:09.060to shine a spotlight on what was going on in Mississippi.
00:11:14.180And during that summer, the three young men, Andrew Goodman, James Cheney, and Michael Schwerner,
00:13:09.700But we make progress when we organize.
00:13:12.780And those were some of the lessons that I learned also from the civil rights movement.
00:13:17.320On the campus, to give a sense, though, of how women were treated broadly, I formed a, pulled together a group called the Women Radical Action Program, or WRAP, W-R-A-P, and we did studies about and supported women to promote women's positions on campus.
00:13:41.660It probably was the first campus women's organization of the new and emerging women's movement in 1965.
00:13:51.300And we found that professors gave four times as much attention to men's students as to women's students.
00:15:45.480To bring us up to Jane to explain how my involvement with that and how that developed,
00:15:52.180Against this backdrop, a friend of mine told me his sister was pregnant and was nearly suicidal because she wasn't ready to have a baby, and she wanted an abortion.
00:16:07.460I had never thought about the issue before that I recall, and I've never had to face the issue myself.
00:16:13.840But I said I'd try to do what I could do to help, again, sort of as part of the golden rule, trying to go on to others.
00:16:23.300I went to the network of doctors from the Medical Committee for Human Rights, which was the civil rights medical arm.
00:16:33.280And I found a doctor, Dr. TRM Howard, who had a clinic on 63rd Street in Chicago, a friendship clinic.
00:16:43.840I didn't know his history at the time, but he had been a dynamic civil rights leader in Mississippi
00:16:53.100and came to Chicago when his name appeared on a Klan death list.
00:16:59.400I called him up. He agreed to do the procedure.0.98
00:17:03.460Actually, I didn't really think much more about it.
00:17:06.780But word must have spread because a short time later, someone else called.
00:17:11.740I thought it was a coincidence, and then word must have spread, and someone else called.
00:17:18.160At that point, I realized there really was a broader problem that needed to be addressed.
00:17:25.300And being an organizer, I decided to create a system and called it Jane.
00:17:29.960Over time, the women of Jane themselves performed 11,000 abortions between 1965 and 1973 when Roe became the law of the land.
00:17:45.880and the experience of Jane both improved the lives of the women who came through
00:17:54.320who were looking for a way to decide when or whether they could have a child.
00:18:00.820It changed the lives of the women who were in Jane,
00:18:06.280letting them know what they could do to improve the lives of women on a broad scale.
00:18:14.540And it also provided a basis, giving people confidence, I hope now, to say we can make change if we organize.
00:18:26.420So let's say that I'm a woman who calls Jane. Can you walk me through the logistics? Once I call, what happened?
00:18:32.640Well, first there were two or three eras of Jane, eras.
00:18:38.900When I first started it, it was a very small service.
00:18:48.440When it started, someone would call up and ask for Jane.
00:18:53.560Even before they said they were asking for Jane, I knew immediately there was a sort of hesitant pause on the phone,
00:19:00.380and I just knew immediately what they were probably calling about.
00:19:03.780So they usually said some version, that they were pregnant and were looking for an abortion.0.93
00:19:15.880For some women, we'd do the counseling on the phone.0.98
00:19:20.040We'd then try and arrange a time where they could come in and have a longer conversation1.00
00:19:25.980I could talk with them and find out what the details were, how long they were, had been pregnant, what their medical history was a little bit.0.99
00:19:38.180And then we'll just go through the details of what to expect.0.98
00:19:46.860They want to know how long does it take?
00:24:15.920In fact, after Roe became the law of the land, there was a study done by a University of Illinois program called Perceptorship, which was about entry into positive medical care within Chicago.
00:24:37.520And they did an analysis of the outcomes from Jane and the outcomes from clinic service for abortion and found that the results from Jane were more positive than the results in a clinic setting.
00:26:25.100There's a book about Jane by Laura Kaplan called Jane, I think it's Jane and Abortion Story.
00:26:34.080There's also a movie about it. And actually, I'm now told there's at least two Hollywood-made movies that are being made about Jane, as well as a new documentary.
00:26:45.200And there are more details of it captured in the book that Laura Kaplan wrote about Jane.
00:26:53.400So, Heather, now you're a part of this really robust tradition of Jewish activism.
00:26:58.480I actually read someplace that at one point you wanted to be a rabbi, but that you heard that women couldn't be rabbis.
00:27:04.260Do you feel like your background as, you know, part of the robust legacy of Jewish activism and social change work, did that also impact your work with Jane?
00:27:15.360It did. It was part of my moral upbringing.
00:27:18.560I believed, as it's said in the Bible, justice, justice I shall pursue, saying justice twice, because it's that important.
00:27:31.000really believing that the stories of the prophets should guide us in some ways,
00:27:40.860that it's the people who should rise, and not just those in wealth and power.
00:27:52.000There also was a history of struggle, of the Passover story,
00:27:58.320Passover's coming and the story of people even going 40 years in the desert to a land of greater promise to escape oppression.
00:28:12.960And I believe that that was a tradition that was worth embracing.
00:28:18.520So that was part of the moral upbringing that I had and have tried to carry that on into the organizing work I've done.
00:28:28.320And since that time, I've tried to carry it on in so many ways.
00:28:34.380I started a training center for organizers called Midwest Academy.
00:28:38.000I encourage your listeners to pursue Midwest Academy because it's a place to learn the skills of organizing.
00:28:48.500Their website is www.midwestacademy.com.
00:28:53.180I've also ended up running some large-scale organizations for advising them.
00:29:01.780I was strategic advisor for the immigration reform campaign, the Alliance for Citizenship.
00:29:07.020I ran the campaign for financial reform that won the Dodd-Frank bill.
00:29:12.280I was the coordinator around the marriage equality campaign.
00:29:17.120I just was the field director around the campaign to stop these tax breaks for the millionaires and billionaires that will mean that there will be an excuse to make cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and education and other essential human services.
00:29:36.900So the struggle continues. And right now, people, I think, especially need to learn this lesson, that even when time seemed the most difficult, we can make progress if we organize. And if we organize, we can change the world. And we need to change the world.
00:29:57.660I could not have put it better myself.
00:29:59.620These fights are still fights that need to be fought,
00:30:01.980and we can get complacent and we can get comfortable,
00:30:05.000but as you said, we need to be organizing,
00:30:07.540and I'm so glad that you're in the fight doing this work with us
00:30:11.200because we need you, Heather, and I'm so glad that we have you.
00:30:15.720Well, and I'm so glad that we have you spread the word, spread the message.
00:30:20.840I'm so glad we have those who are listening in.
00:30:23.780I hope they'll take, they probably have been taking action.
00:30:28.120We need to continue taking action and unify and give people confidence that we can organize.
00:30:36.640And when we organize, even in times that seem the most difficult, we have changed the world in the past and we can change the world for the future.
00:32:07.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:32:11.900I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:32:16.360I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:32:23.980They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:32:27.880But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:32:31.340They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:32:34.440Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:32:43.400If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:32:49.340This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:33:01.820I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:33:08.940I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:33:12.520From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:33:18.460It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:33:25.920Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:33:35.540Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:33:47.540Well, Spinty listeners, now I know abortion can seem like an issue that we no longer have to fight for like we did in the 70s.
00:33:53.860Okay, hi, it's 2022, Bridget, and wow, how wrong I was.
00:34:00.660So right here in the original episode, I started going on and on about how even though Roe was the law of the land,
00:34:07.080we still needed to be vigilant because of state-based attacks on abortion.
00:34:10.560And now, here we are in 2022, and as you know, Roe vs. Wade has been overturned.
00:34:16.600And even though it is truly devastating, abortion advocates have been preparing for this moment for a very long time.
00:34:23.820There are organized networks of abortion funds and bail funds and providers who are ready to assist folks looking for abortions.
00:34:30.120We're not in a place where scrappy college kids need to invent underground collectives out of whole cloth like Heather did with the Jane Collective back in the 70s.
00:34:38.060There are people who care and who want to help who are prepared for this moment.
00:34:42.360Go to abortionfunds.org and support them.
00:34:44.340And, you know, in this moment, which I know seems so dark and so tough, remember, we are the majority.
00:34:52.300There are more of us than there are of them.
00:35:31.240If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
00:35:34.620For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:35:41.940I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
00:35:52.940what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are The Survivor Files. Every
00:35:58.940week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,
00:36:04.340and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:36:09.540Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:36:17.920If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:36:23.680Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:36:32.000Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture
00:36:35.460with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.