Photo: @revclubchi
When abortion is illegal, women die. The pre-Roe Septic Abortions Ward at the hospital was filled with 15-20 women each day. A doctor who worked in the ward wrote, "I saw chemical burns, as well as perforations of the bladder, vagina, uterus, and rectum. Some women came in with overwhelming infections or in septic shock," and some died.
The Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights call for protests on March 8 International Women’s Day was read to open the speak-out. Photo: @revclubchi
Photo: @revclubchi
We read, with the permission of the author, a 2019 op-ed by a retired MD who worked on the ward as a medical student.
Testimony at the March 3 speak-out in front of Stroger Hospital:
When I was 20 years old and I was living in the state of California, it was illegal to get an abortion. The only way you could get an abortion was if you went before a state board and actually pleaded your case.
Now I was alone. I was afraid. I was coming from a Catholic family and my friends. And the thought of being pregnant at that particular time in the early ’70s was tantamount to social suicide. Or you got sent to a home for unwed mothers. That’s what they did to women. Or you were driven into the back alleys.
Now as it came to be, I was able to go before the California State Board to actually speak my case. But to do that, you had to proclaim yourself ”crazy” and that you were going to commit suicide. This was deeply disturbing and humiliating. I had to face 10 men who looked at me like I was scum. Like I was trash. That I should be thrown away for daring to decide what my fate was going to be. So after grueling hours of cross-examination and explaining that I would take my life, they agreed to allow me to have an abortion.
Now in those days, abortions were done in hospitals. They took you in. They put you under anesthetic. On my way into the operating room, a nurse continually talked to me saying, “You are killing babies. I’m here to save babies.”
I was so outraged! I was a bit delusional at the time because I was under anesthetics, but I said back to her, “Fuck off! I’m deciding what direction my life is going to go in.”
At the end, I would say to everyone: Here we are, almost 50 years later, still fighting for the right for women to determine their own destiny.
Not the church. Not the state. Women will decide our fate. Abortion on Demand Without Apology! Break the Chains! Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!
Photos of women who have died from botched abortions were prominently displayed at the speak-out as we chanted their names. Photo: @revclubchi
Surrounded by a group of men and women building for International Women's Day, three women testified to being forced into the back alleys with dangerous, life-threatening, degrading and shaming experiences in seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies, including rape, prior to Roe v. Wade. They declared they would not allow future generations of young girls and women to suffer this experience. We won't go back and we won't surrender! Abortion on demand without apology! Photo: @revclubchi
Photo: @revclubchi
Two Days Later
Abortion on Demand & Without Apology
Abortion on Demand & Without Apology
The North Halsted neighborhood in Chicago echoed with chants of “Abortion on Demand & Without Apology” on Saturday, March 5, marking International Women's Day with an event built by a broad coalition of groups initiated by Chicago for Abortion Rights and including Refuse Fascism Chicago Chapter. Revolution Club Chicago represented with their banner and “Forced Motherhood Is Female Enslavement” t-shirts. The warm spring day drew people into the streets and their balconies, and marchers were buoyed by the overwhelmingly supportive responses: horns blaring, hands grabbing flyers, lots of “thank you's.” But organizers challenged people to “get in the streets” because that's the only way we'll save the right to abortion. Hundreds of flyers for Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights IWD action in Chicago on March 8 were distributed, names collected, and a lively invitation to everyone to come out on March 8 was part of the closing rally.