At Sundance, Two Films Look at Abortion and the Jane Collective

Judith Arcana was 27 and recently separated from her husband when she began driving women surreptitiously for safe — but illegal — abortions. It was 1970. She was an out-of work teacher on the South Side Chicago and was spending her time counseling women in need.

“I don’t think we were crazy,” said Arcana, now 78. “I don’t think we were stupid. I think that we had found something that was so important, so useful in the lives of women and girls.”

“We were radicalized in the arena of women’s bodies,” she said. “We knew that what we were doing was good work in the world. And we knew that it was illegal.”

Arcana was a member of the Jane Collective, an eclectic, rotating group made up of women who provided safe abortions for thousands in Chicago between 1968-1973. Despite the law, abortions were still being performed by women. They were often performing abortions on themselves, and ended up in the hospital or paying the mob without any guarantee of survival.

Arcana and other women made it possible to call a number to speak with a woman who could provide a safer alternative during these years. Members of the collective provided counseling and arranged the procedures, which they eventually administered — 11,000 all told during that period. Arcana was arrested along with six other members of the group in 1972. They were each charged with 11 counts each of conspiracy to commit or abortion and could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years. Roe V. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision, saved them all.

Now, close to 50 years later, members of the collective are sharing their stories in a pair of movies at the Sundance Film Festival, which begins Thursday: the HBO documentary “The Janes”; and a fictionalized account titled “Call Jane,” starring Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver, and looking for distribution.

These movies debut at a critical time for abortion rights. In December, the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether a Mississippi law prohibiting abortion after 15 week gestation was legal. A decision is expected this summer. If the court rules in favor of the law, it would be contrary to Roe V. Wade, which declared abortion constitutionally protected and forbids states from banning the procedure prior to fetal viability (23-weeks).

Sundance filmmakers are openly pro-abortion rights, but they say they want their work show the complexity of the subject.

In “Call Jane,” Banks plays Joy, a mother and housewife who seeks out an illegal abortion after learning that her pregnancy is life-threatening — her attempt to secure one legally having been denied by an all-male hospital board. The movie’s director, Phyllis Nagy (whose credits include the screenplay for “Carol”), said she wished she could show it to the Supreme Court’s conservative justices. “I would sit there and say, ‘Now, talk to me,’ and it wouldn’t make any difference, probably,” she said. “But artists need to start having the kinds of political conversations with society that aren’t didactic,” she added. “Nothing else has worked.”

The makers of “The Janes” hope those with differing views will allow themselves a look at life before Roe v. Wade. “This is a glimpse at history; I don’t think it’s an advocacy film,” said Tia Lessin, who directed with Emma Pildes, whose father used to be married to Arcana. Arcana’s son, Daniel, is a producer on the film. Lessin added, “It’s a real life story about what happened and the lengths that women went to to have abortions and to enable other women to have abortions.”

“Do I hope that people’s takeaway will be ‘let’s not go back there’? Sure. It is my hope that it inspires people to have conversations. Love the film, hate the film,” she said before Pildes jumped in: “Talk about the issue.”

There are many topics to be discussed.

Heather Booth, now 76, was contacted by a friend who needed an abortion. She created the Jane Collective. Booth, who was active in civil rights movements, found a doctor willing and able to help her and passed the information on. “I made what I thought was a one-time arrangement,” she said in an interview. Soon another woman called. Another woman called. Booth was soon negotiating fees and learning about the procedures so she could help women. Booth, then a mother, was working on her graduate degree from the University of Chicago. She began to look for other people to help her meet the growing demand.

“I was working full time. The number of calls was increasing. It was certainly too much for one person,” she added.

Marie Leaner, now 80 years old, was raised Roman Catholic. She was taught that abortion was a sin. She ran a program for teenage mothers at a West Side Chicago community center. “I just thought it was atrocious that these women didn’t want to carry the babies but they felt this was their punishment for being in love or being sexually involved with someone,” she recalled. “I decided I wanted to do something about it.”

She gave up her apartment to facilitate the procedures and held the hands for those who came through. As one of the few Black women in the group, she said, “I knew that Black and brown people wouldn’t partake of the service if they couldn’t see themselves involved in it.”

Arcana still remembers the face of a 16 year-old girl who came to Arcana’s home with two friends, asking for her help. Arcana performed this procedure on Arcana’s living-room floor, even though she was already five and a half months pregnant. She stayed with her girl for the entire day, and then drove her home.

“She said to me, ‘But I want you to stop two blocks away from where I live, and I’ll get out there,’” Arcana recalled. “She touched my shoulder and she said, ‘Because you know,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do. Yes, I do.’ I let her out on that corner, and she went home to her parents. I have no idea what she said to them, but I will always remember that goodbye.”

The Janes’s story has been told before — in the 1995 book “The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service,” by Laura Kaplan; and in two films shown at festivals, “Jane: An Abortion Service,” a 1995 documentary, and the fictionalized “Ask for Jane” (2018) with Arcana as a consulting producer.

Arcana was shocked Sundance chose both of the new films to screen. It seemed like an obvious choice, according to festival organizers. “We felt that the two are kind of in conversation with each other,” said Kim Yutani, the director of programming, who also selected the French film “Happening,” an adaptation of the memoirist Annie Ernaux’s book recounting her own illegal abortion in France in the 1960s.

The films’ “presence in our program is more an indication of a moment in society than any agenda of the programming team,” the Sundance director Tabitha Jackson said. “If there is a statement to be made, it is the timeless one of ‘we follow the artists.’”

Nagy’s approach feels more personal. The director wasn’t interested in anything resembling homework or what she called “an elevated after-school special.” In her film, Joy spends less time fighting the system and more time fighting her circumstances as a married college graduate whose life has been reduced to the domestic tasks expected of a mother and a wife.

Yet Nagy doesn’t shy away from the gritty details of abortion. The first 40 minutes of the film are spent on Joy’s fruitless quest to secure one, and 10 more are dedicated to the procedure itself.

“I was really way more concerned with getting the medical facts correct,” said Nagy, who didn’t meet any of the Janes but did consult with a man who performed abortions back then. (The film’s screenwriters, Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi, shared early drafts with Arcana.) “You need to spend that time, I think, in order for people to get to know her. It is important to realize that this is putting women through a lot. This is not something you can easily look away from.”