She said-Before 1973 (From “Jane: Documents from Chicago’s Clandestine Abortion Service, 1968-1973”)
“She gulped some water in the kitchen and said, Oh thank you, you’ll never know what this means to me, thank you so much. I can’t thank you enough, I’m sure. I know some people say it’s wrong, abortion, that you shouldn’t take a life. And maybe you did take a life. But it’s all give and take, isn’t it? My mother always said that everything always comes down to give and take. So the baby, today, that was the taking-and me, me, my own life, I think that was the giving.”
This is from a pamphlet I found last week at Bluestockings, a feminist bookstore collective around these parts. Everyone should know the history of the Jane Collective, which was an underground abortion collective in Chicago in the pre Roe v. Wade era.
