The Janes: A Hidden Current of Intersectionality
The Janes (2022) is a documentary by Tia Lessin, which tells the story of an underground
network of women fighting against a system denying them autonomy - and the danger of taking
it for themselves. So what happens when a group of women fight a battle set up for their loss?
Starting in Chicago in 1968, a group of women corralled together when their friends and family
around them suffered from the lack of legal abortions. As the so-called “Janes” worked in spite
of the eyes of government, and despite confronting problems of patriarchy, they were able to
provide over 11,000 illegal abortions to women, until 1973, at which point Roe v. Wade put them
out of work. The Janes tells the story of women fighting a dangerous but winning battle against
a system constructed against them. While intersectionality is only briefly mentioned with the
acknowledgement of their indeliberate exclusion of black women in positions of power within
the Jane organization, it is nonetheless present in more places that they do not recognize in the
film. This oversight highlights the need for deeper exploration of the interconnected nature of
social categories in an otherwise great film and community.
To begin with, the film fails to mention the role of intersectionality in contributing to its
downfalls, and all its struggles. Although the term is often used in the context of intersectional
advocacy, intersectionality as a general term means “the interconnected nature of social
categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group,
regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.”
(Oxford) and thus also acts as an explanation for certain social phenomena, rather than just an
important strategy for social change. In essence, intersectionality is not just about how black
activists and feminists can raise one another up, but also about how and why a black woman
experiences a crossroads of oppression.
Although the film admits to excluding black women, I don’t believe a confession of guilt
equates to a riddance of guilt. The Janes admit black women often had an air of “difference”
when they entered the room, and attempted to treat them the same, and I believe the
documentary/ the organization should’ve researched in more depth as to why this feeling and
treatment occurred in the first place, and how it can affect black women’s access to abortions.
This same idea of intersectionality in regards to access to services is actually addressed in the
film under the role of class in making the “Clergy Consultation Service/ New York Abortion
Program” possible, as only high class women were able to fly to New York to utilize these
services. This same idea of limitations is not fully extended to the Black community within the
Janes Organization. For instance, the Janes admit that their organization was incredibly high
profile, and were just waiting for when, and not if, their operation was caught. For African
American women, who get incarcerated at twice the rate of white women (NAACP), this is a
much larger risk to take.
I think that this phenomenon has somewhat to do with a core idea in Peggy McIntosh’s
“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. That is, “describing white privilege
makes one newly accountable”. (McIntosh 3) I think that specifically for the Janes, although they
were not directly oppressing women, nor were they actively including and uplifting other sub
communities within that of women. To fully commit to knowing the problem would create
cognitive dissonance between knowing what’s right (equity) and only practicing true vision and
improvement for your own community. Thus, they likely did not want to acknowledge their
privilege and others' disprevelege because it would force them to take up an even larger task
than the large one they were already taking.
As much as intersectionality can help explain their downfalls, just as strongly is it
involved with the successes of the Janes. In the early years of their formation, one of the “Jane”s
mentions their illegal abortion requests being referred to Dr, T. R. M. Howard, who was both a
surgeon and an American civil rights leader. In a time in which much education was closed off
to women, it was often only progressive men who both had the medical education to perform
procedures such as abortion, and who were also willing to put their job and freedom on the line.
Furthermore, as another underrepresented demographic in both medicine and the medical field,
black doctors are put in a special position of (limited) power that allows them and encourages
them to uplift and advocate for all minorities and oppressed people in this field. Howard stands
as an example of this kind of activism as a long time civil rights activist, which intersected with
his medical philosophy - as he provided illegal abortions to multiple women until his arrest in
1964 and 1965 for providing abortions in Chicago. (Royster) By chasing medical equity,
Howard thus shows how people often considered not directly in the group of interest (women)
can nonetheless share similar experiences and provide support in pursuit of their own liberation.
As the Combahee River Collective states, “Although we are feminists and lesbians, we
feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white
women who are separatists demand.” (Combahee River Collective) This statement and idea
cannot be more true with the problem of abortion, as medical equity is a topic that has no room
for error. Even today, medical equity is not completely present that can lead to the reinforcement
of stereotypes and subsequent discrimination. For instance, Black and Asian populations are
actually directly discriminated against when using a spirometer to determine lung capacity. By
using this spirometer, these populations are often underdiagnosed for lung disease, including
things like COPD. (NCBI) On the flip side, women are almost universally understudied in
comparison to men on average. (NCBI) Overall, for being what should be such a scientific and
fact based industry, medicine is filled with bias, and it is only through intersectional advocacy of
medical equity and representation that all minority communities may experience progress.
Overall, the issues that the Janes battle are strongly related to a much larger story - bodily
autonomy, and the privacy between you and your personal business vs. the state’s interventions.
Although abortion is one of the largest and often most polarizing debates, this issue extends to
several marginalized groups and their issues - gay marriage rights, gender expression, and more.
For instance, pushing for trans rights is ultimately a push for the right to express oneself freely at
your discretion. As Emi Koyama states in her “Transfeminist Manifesto”, “the right to choose is
not exclusively a heterosexual issue nor a non-trans issue, as it is fundamentally about women
having the right to determine what they do with their own bodies”. Furthermore, Koyama states,
if “we [trans people] fear having to obtain underground hormones or traveling overseas for a sex
reassignment surgery, we should be able to identify with women who fear going back to the
unsafe underground abortions.” Koyama’s statements ring incredibly true to the work done by
the Jane Organization, and the movement they stood for. Roe v. Wade itself was the founder of
rights based on privacy, and its sad overturnal paints a target on cases such as Obergefell vs
Hodges, which created gay marriage rights across the US. Abortion is a movement that cannot
be disconnected from intersectionality, and thus, the movement for abortion rights (the very same
the Janes fought beside) should be viewed as an issue for all oppressed people - and in fact for all
of humankind.
Overall, while the documentary falls short in acknowledging the concept of
intersectionality, The Janes and the Jane Organization did a massive amount of good for the
women of Chicago, for the feminists of the world, and overall social activists. They proved that
even seemingly ordinary people - even those who are oppressed and disadvantaged, can do
extraordinary things. Ultimately, I believe the documentary and the group could benefit from
acknowledging intersectionality more than they did as it provides support to the movement as
well as a clearer and improved goal in social activism, but the documentary nonetheless serves as
an inspirational story of success and uprising. Still, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it also
serves as a harrowing reminder of the work that needs to be done and evidently CAN be done in
changing society for the better - even in seemingly impossible odds.
Citations
Braun, Lundy. “Race, Ethnicity and Lung Function: A Brief History.” Canadian Journal of
Respiratory Therapy : CJRT = Revue Canadienne de La Therapie Respiratoire : RCTR,
U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2015,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4631137/.
The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and
Eighties. Kitchen Table, 1986.
Koyama, Emi. The Transfeminist Manifesto. Emi Koyama, 2012.
McIntosh, Peggy. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Overground
Distribution, 2000.
NAACP. “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” NAACP, 4 Nov. 2022,
naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet#:~:text=The%20imprisonment%20rate%20
for%20African,judicially%20waived%20to%20criminal%20court.
“ORWH Notices of Funding Opportunities: Understanding Chronic Conditions
Understudied among Women (R01 and R21).” National Institutes of Health, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services,
orwh.od.nih.gov/in-the-spotlight/all-articles/orwh-notices-of-funding-opportunities-underst
anding-chronic-conditions-understudied-among-women-r01. Accessed 6 Feb. 2024.
Beito, David T.; Beito, Linda Royster (2018). T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights
Pioneer (First ed.). Oakland: Institute.