DOCUMENTARY
THE JANES
JACOB SULLUM
From 1968 to 1973, when abortion was illegal in Illinois and most other states, an underground network in Chicago helped women terminate some 11,000 pregnancies, offering a safer and more affordable alternative to the services sold by local mobsters. The HBO documentary The Janes, which tells that organization’s story, is a timely reminder of the potential fallout from criminalizing abortion, which the Supreme Court allowed states to do when it overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
The situation now is different in two crucial ways from the one women confronted before the Court discovered a constitutional right to abortion. First, abortion remains broadly legal in most states. Second, the availability of abortion pills means that traveling to clinics in other states is not the only option for women seeking to end unwanted pregnancies.
Thanks to those alternatives, the impact of ’s reversal is apt to be less dramatic than the casualties described in . Until 1973, the documentary notes, Cook County Hospital maintained a “septic abortion ward” to deal with the grisly and sometimes deadly consequences of botched DIY or black-market surgeries.
