Ex-members of secret US abortion group fear return to dark era

HUNTINGTON, United States: They were once part of an underground network that helped an estimated 11,000 women get abortions before the US Supreme Court established a constitutional right to the procedure in 1973.

More than 50 years on, former members of the “Jane Collective” are watching in disbelief as America slides back toward the era they risked everything to end. “I was crushed,” recalls Abby Pariser, speaking to AFP ahead of the third anniversary on June 24 of the landmark Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade and erased the federal right to terminate a pregnancy.

“I was infuriated that they could do this to women,” adds the 80-year-old Pariser at her home in Huntington, a suburb of New York City, wearing a T-shirt declaring “Bold Women. Change History.”

Like many of the now-retired women, Pariser devoted her life to defending reproductive rights at a time when abortion was widely illegal in the United States. The story began in Chicago in the late 1960s.

Students, mothers, and young professionals -- “ordinary women,” as they describe themselves -- came together, helping others access clandestine abortions. They risked prison as they negotiated prices with doctors willing to perform the procedures -- and some even learned to do them themselves. “It was just unbelievable that this would occur in this time and era, that we would go back to something this devastating,” says a fellow ex-Jane, Sakinah Ahad Shannon, her voice breaking with emotion.

The seismic reversal -- and the release of the HBO documentary “The Janes” -- brought renewed attention to their story. Several former members have since spoken out, recounting the hardships women faced before the Roe ruling.

At the time, access to contraception was severely limited, and the very notion of abortion was steeped in taboo, recalls Laura Kaplan, a former Jane and author of a book on the subject, who now lives in the iconic New York village of Woodstock. Out of public view, women resorted to desperate measures to end unwanted pregnancies -- from ingesting poison to seeking help from underground abortionists.