‘There’s always something to be done’: how the Janes provided illegal abortions before Roe
Regardless of whether the supreme court fully overturns Roe v Wade later this month, as indicated by the majority draft opinion leaked in May, or merely allows it to be gutted at the state level, the US will continue its years-long march backwards on reproductive rights. Abortion access in the US in 2022 mirrors 1972, the year before the supreme court ensured a woman’s right to an abortion with Roe v Wade, and a time when a sparse patchwork of legalization in a few states forced many women to seek care from dubious illegal providers or dangerous at-home methods.
The Janes, a new HBO documentary on an underground network of abortion providers in Chicago in the years just before legalization, looks to this past as a window into America’s passed by Republican state legislatures banning abortion , before most women know they’re pregnant.
