Then and now, Chicago was “a town where people did stuff.” It got things done, stirred up trouble, made no little plans. That, says one of the underground abortion providers interviewed in the distressingly pertinent new documentary “The Janes,” premiering Wednesday, was the “beauty” of the place.
The word “beauty” sounds jarring in this context, and the movie knows it. “The Janes” directors Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes are well aware of how documentaries about our recent past have a way of anticipating our near future. In 2022, a majority of U.S. citizens still support abortion rights. But with the 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court ruling likely heading for its undoing this summer, in dozens of states the recriminalizing of that right may take us straight back to 1968 and before.
In 1968, a group of mostly white, mostly middle-class Chicago women formed the Jane Collective, with the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union stepping in to help a year later. At the time abortion was illegal in 30 states, including Illinois, and permitted in limited circumstances in the other 20. Jane operated a Hyde Park home called the Front, with counseling provided to pregnant women. From there, women were driven to an apartment called the Place, where the procedures were performed by a man with shadowy underworld connections identified in the documentary only as “Mike.” (For Jane, he went by the handle “Dr. Kaplan” even though he wasn’t one.)
