Film Review: Call Jane
Movie stars Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver of legendary underground abortion service
I recently watched Call Jane, a fascinating depiction of an underground abortion service that operated out of Chicago in the late 1960s.
Several women began an underground abortion service called Jane in Chicago in 1969.
A woman who needed an abortion called its number and spoke to a counselor to talk about her medical history. Once cleared, the counselor provided a date, time, and address to arrive at before Jane's members took her to the location of the abortion. They’d check on the patient after the abortion was done.
It’s the second movie dealing with the group in the last year. In 2022, HBO released The Janes, a documentary about them. The new fictional film stars Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver as providers and counselors for abortions.
Banks plays Joy, who is the main character of the film. It starts with her pregnancy, which is terminated with the help of a clandestine group of women. From there, she begins her own involvement with Jane.
In real life, Jane was busted by detectives who tapped their phones and listened to their conversations. Jane members heard people talking in the background while they waited for a dial tone. When the women partook in protests, cops photographed them one day in 1972, the women expected a maintenance man to come in and change their screens. When the doorbell rang, several cops in trench coats stormed in. They arrested seven people.
They had an arraignment a month later. People knew them as the “Abortion 7.”
Members of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union wore pins that advocated for their release. Everyone was waiting for Roe v. Wade to be decided. No one wanted to testify against Jane. Their lawyer Joanne Wolfson decided to postpone all hearings until after Roe was decided.
I was fortunate enough to have conversations with several of Jane’s members in the last few years. Their story will appear in my forthcoming book. The film shows the transition the service had during its tenure from helping primarily white women to those from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.
For those who want to explore the group further, there is a terrific book written by Laura Kaplan called The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Abortion Service.
Call Jane is available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV among other options.