In the 1950s and 1960s, major city hospitals in the United States admitted as many as 20 to 30 women a day for complications from illegal or self-induced abortions. Wealthy women could potentially fly to a country where abortion was legal, but poor and young women were faced with unimaginable fear, desperation, and judgment. Doctors would tell young women things like "You tramps like to break the rules, but when you get caught you all come crawling for help in the same way." If a woman was able to find an abortion provider, the abortion was likely to be expensive, unsterile, and sometimes even done with the patient blindfolded.

The reality of life before the legalization of abortion is what makes the story of Jane so legendary. Jane was a group of extraordinary women who, as member Judith Arcana states, were “afforded the ability to do righteous work in the world and have that work be useful." From 1968 to 1973 they helped a estimated 11,000 women receive safe abortions back when the procedure was illegal and often deadly, with the death rate for women of color receiving abortions significantly higher than that of white women.

“Jane” started with 19-year-old Heather Booth and a University of Chicago dorm phone. In 1965, Heather had helped a friend’s sister find a safe doctor to perform an abortion. Like with a viral word-of-mouth tweet, word spread that Heather was someone who knew an abortion doctor, and a few weeks later, someone else asked her for help. “I was living in a dormitory,” Heather explained in the documentary Jane: An Abortion Service, “so I told people to call and ask for Jane.”

Teen Vogue spoke to a woman who experienced a life-threatening pregnancy when abortion was illegal. We will call her Ann to preserve her anonymity. “I was 19 years old,” Ann says, “and completely desperate. It’s hard for people to image how horrible it was then and how desperate we were.” She explained the complications of her pregnancy, and the lack of access to appropriate, life-saving medical care. “The placenta was probably detached from my uterus; I just kept bleeding and bleeding. I would go to the emergency room, where every time they’d pack me with lamb's wool and put me in the abortion ward. They should have given me an abortion to save my life, but they wouldn’t. Then one day I saw in the student newspaper a newspaper: 'Pregnant, need help? Call Jane.'"

“If it hadn’t been for Jane, I would have died,” she says.

By 1968, Heather was receiving so many phone calls she realized that organization was needed, so she formed a group. In the early years of Jane, the women counseled, raised funds, screened underground abortion providers, and helped procure abortions for women who needed them in Chicago. The abortions were safe, but not always ideal.

“It was terrifying,” Ann says. “I had to stand on a corner, wearing a red sweater so they’d know who I was. It takes a huge leap of faith to trust that you can get a medical procedure outside a medical office. I can’t describe how scary it was. A Jane picked me up in a car and blindfolded me. I was taken to what seemed like a motel room. The doctor made fun of me. There was no anesthetic; it really hurt. I remained blindfolded for the whole abortion.”

In 1971, the Janes learned to do the abortions themselves. They were able to lower costs, and provide compassionate care for the women who saw them. It is estimated that they helped more than 11,000 women get abortions.