History book reexamines Los Angeles activists who flouted antiabortion laws and groups
Feminist Angela Hume's new work will be released in the middle of November
A soon-to-be-released book depicts a group that provided underground abortions and resisted attempts to close abortion clinics open throughout decades.
Angela Hume, a feminist historian, wrote Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law and Fought to Keep Clinics Open, which will be released on Nov. 14.
According to its synopsis, Deep Care follows generations of activists and clinicians who orbited the Women’s Choice Clinic in Oakland from the early 1970s until 2010 as they worked underground and above-ground.
The book looks at the West Coast Sisters, which came together in 1971 to develop the self-help clinic concept. They practiced cervical self-exam. They met at bookstores, in people’s houses, and eventually in the Los Angeles Women’s Center on South Crenshaw Boulevard. It also served as an abortion referral service, connecting women with providers.
Hume later tells the story of the Army Of Three-Patricia Maginnis, Rowena Gurner, and Lana Phelan, who founded the Society for Human Abortion Laws/Association to Repeal Abortion Laws (SHA/ARAL). It was the precursor to NARAL. The group helped thousands of women get abortions and taught others how to perform them. The SHA was the aboveground advocacy part of their effort. ARAL was the component that focused on abortion referral and illegal activities.
SHA/ARAL was based on the attempt to challenge abortion laws through court. If police arrested someone in the group, then lawyers for the defendant would challenge the laws as unconstitutional because it violated their free speech rights to distribute information.
Another topic that the book delved into was self-help clinics. It was an act of resistance to the heterosexual nuclear family and women's dependence on men. One of the interview subjects defined self-help clinic as a process that sometimes happened at a health center but also traveled beyond it. People share information, produce new knowledge, and transform the social order.
Later on in the text, Hume tells the accounts of Byllye Avery and Loretta Ross. These two trailblazing feminists were significant figures in developing the reproductive justice philosophy. I’ve written about those two before in the newsletter. Their inclusion in Hume’s book was sensible and good editorial decision-making by Hume.