Jane Collective

The Jane Collective or Jane, officially known as the Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation, was an underground service in Chicago, Illinois affiliated with the Chicago Women's Liberation Union that operated from 1969 to 1973, a time when abortion was illegal in the United States. The collective was started by activists in the women's liberation movement in an effort to address the increasing number of unsafe abortions being performed by untrained providers. Since illegal abortions were not only dangerous but very expensive, the founding members of the collective believed that they could provide women with safer and more affordable access to abortions. In an informational brochure distributed by Jane in 1969 they characterized abortion as a social problem that mirrored the oppression of women in social and political arenas. During the years which Jane operated, the collective performed more than 11,000 abortions. The collective disbanded after Roe v. Wade made abortion legal throughout the United States in 1973.

The collective originated in 1969 with University of Chicago student Heather Booth, who helped her friend's sister find an abortion provider. The founders of Jane initially focused their attention on providing women access to competent physicians willing to provide abortion services. They found a physician they called "Mike" who was willing to work with them. After creating a close relationship with Mike they found out that he actually wasn't really a physician and some Jane activists have characterized him as a "con man." However, many of the techniques he used were safe and effective. The women of Jane then decided to cut out the middleman and perform the abortions themselves. Mike taught the women his technique, and from then on the women performed the abortions themselves. The women were taught several methods, such as the cannula method for early stage abortions, and the super coil method used in later stage abortions which caused the women to miscarry, but the most widely used was the D&C (dilation and curettage) method. The D&C method involved the opening of the cervix and the insertion of a curette that was used to scrape the walls of the uterus to extract the fetus and placenta.

...
Wikipedia