During my own lifetime, women were arrested and jailed for receiving or performing safe abortions. Now, it seems, the country is poised to return to the days depicted in the frank, revelatory documentary, “The Janes.”
The interview subjects are middle-aged women. Grandmas and retirees looking back more than 50 years ago to a time when their underground group in Chicago, The Jane Collective, took in scores of desperate women of all races, classes and circumstances, and provided safe abortions.
And went to jail.
People younger than, say, 40 years old, will be chilled by the way the legal and medical systems operated as recently as 1972 – back when male physicians had all the power concerning women, many of whom died from backroom abortions, often performed by shady, mob-related, people. Others bled to death by trying to perform the procedure on themselves, by themselves.
When you hear people today warning about how scary and tragic a return to pre-Roe vs. Wade times would be, perhaps it sounds like politically colored hyperbole. The brilliance of this calm, level-headed and straight forward documentary is that it is the opposite of hyperbolic; it is a first person recounting of then young, idealistic women (and a man or two) who were also involved in civil rights activism. They considered this a part of that greater cause.
I realize this is a touchy topic, and people have firm, unmovable positions. This film will not convert anyone, but it will serve as a warning that, when the Constitutional right that has been the rule of law for half a century goes away in the near future, it will be a return to deaths of pregnant women who feel trapped, doomed, and powerless.
But besides serving as a warning, The Janes also provides inspiration to future warriors for women’s rights.
The Janes is currently streaming on HBO Max.
