It’s also given me a more nuanced perspective on abortion. I’m still in my first trimester, which is the time frame when most abortions will take place. I know rationally that the being growing in my uterus is a cluster of cells, a fetus, but I call it my baby. My husband and I have even given it a nickname. Its organs are forming. Right now, it has fingers and toes and an upper lip. A heartbeat that I got to hear for the first time at six weeks’ gestation. I understand now more than ever why abortion is a deeply emotional issue that causes severe, often irreconcilable sociopolitical divisions. Why some will view the fetus as a life unto itself. But although my baby has a heartbeat and fingers and toes and an upper lip, it still resides inside my body.
My. Body.
I was fortunate to be in the position where becoming pregnant was very much a meticulously planned choice, but still I am so grateful that I live in a country where it’s my legal right to make the choice to remain pregnant each and every day, because our courts have determined that my body—and everything that’s happening inside it—belongs to me and only me.
Like many people, I’ve had a bit of a rough first trimester, symptom-wise, and I’ve expressed to loved ones on a number of occasions that sometimes I don’t feel like I’m in control of my own body anymore, and that’s a bit unnerving, even though this pregnancy is a wonderful thing for my husband and me, and this baby is so very wanted. So I can’t imagine being pregnant against my will, not having legal control over my own body with the right to end that pregnancy if I wanted to. The prospect is horrifying. And equally horrifying is the idea of being told—like the girls at the postwar maternity homes were—that I am not allowed to keep my own child; that my parents, the state, and the Church are together going to make the decision for me that I must relinquish a baby that I want to keep, regardless of my own desires.
And that’s why becoming pregnant for the first time has given me a deeper understanding of the power and importance of bodily autonomy, and perhaps why I feel more strongly about reproductive choice and abortion access than ever. Because I can now put myself in the shoes of the pregnant woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant. I can imagine how terrifying that could feel for her. This book and its messages are more real to me now than ever before.
So with that said, let me tell you a bit about how Looking for Jane and its story came to be.
THE JANE NETWORK
The Jane Network in this novel is a composite of the many underground abortion networks that existed in major cities around the world prior to the legalization of abortion in their respective jurisdictions. Without a doubt, many of these networks still exist today in jurisdictions where abortion remains illegal or inaccessible.
When I set out to undertake preliminary research for a novel about an underground abortion network and the history of reproductive rights access in my home country of Canada, I found some interesting things. Among them was a reference to an organization with the unofficial nickname “Jane” that was operating in Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s, prior to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. The Canadian abortion networks didn’t have a particular name, records almost certainly weren’t kept for security reasons, and thus the details were more difficult for me to research. But as I wrote the early draft of this novel, the name “Jane” became very much representative of the anonymous, everywoman nature of all these networks, and seemed the most fitting for a story that attempts to capture the breadth and depth of these remarkable initiatives. While I certainly paid deliberate homage to the “Chicago Janes” through the fictionalization of a real-life event （their volunteers actually did eat patient records in the back of a paddy wagon to hide the women’s identities from the police—cue applause）， the rest is borne of creative license based on facts I gathered about underground abortion networks through various research and interviews.
In the Canadian context, the legalization that came in 1988 with the groundbreaking R. v. Morgentaler Supreme Court decision arrived only after years of provincial court battles on Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s part, and I believe legalization would not have occurred as quickly without his determination and the efforts of those who worked closely with him. I will thank her again in my acknowledgments, but here I must extend particular gratitude to （in）famous feminist activist and fellow author Judy Rebick for taking the time to meet with me for an interview. Her recollections of Henry Morgentaler and her involvement in the Canadian abortion rights movement throughout the 1970s and 1980s helped mold my foundational ideas for the Janes’ story line. With that said, the scene where Evelyn interacts with Dr. Morgentaler in his Montreal office is entirely fictional.
However, the Abortion Caravan was indeed a real series of events that occurred in 1970. After a large protest on the lawn at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, these women delivered a symbolic coffin to Prime Minister Trudeau （senior）’s house, and chained themselves to the railings in the House of Commons to disrupt the proceedings and attract media attention to the issue of abortion access. The details of these events as depicted in the novel are my own creative products, though I drew inspiration for them from Judy Rebick’s Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution.
To all the “Janes,” near and far, past and present, who made and continue to make incredible sacrifices, risking arrest and bodily harm to help women access safe abortions, I thank you from the bottom of my bleeding feminist heart. The illegality of these organizations has meant that the vast majority of the participants’ true identities remain unknown, but I hope through this novel I have helped to give them a voice and honour them for their outstanding contribution to women’s and human rights history.
THE MATERNITY HOME SYSTEM
St. Agnes’s Home for Unwed Mothers is a product of my imagination. （St. Agnes is the patron saint of virgins, girls, and chastity, so it seemed fitting.） But, like the Jane Network, it is also intended to serve as a composite, representing the numerous maternity homes that existed in various countries—including Canada—in the postwar years. They were funded by the government and mainly run by churches, though a few were secular or nondenominational. In the years after World War II, there was a strong societal push for the expansion of the nuclear family. For those who were unable to have biological families of their own, adoption was an attractive option, and spurred a robust demand for white babies during these years. Mothers of colour were not often sent to these maternity homes, as babies of colour were considered less desirable or even unadoptable.
During my research on these institutions in Canada and the United States, I discovered some truly shocking facts from firsthand accounts of those who attended them as teenagers or young women. Few women reported having had any kind of positive experience at the homes （perhaps aside from the occasional forbidden friendships they forged within）， and most described their time at these institutions on a spectrum from moderately unpleasant to horrendously abusive, including systemic physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.
I regret to inform you that use of the term “inmates” by the administration, girls being coerced into signing adoption papers before they were allowed to hold their baby after birth （or before painkillers would be administered）， and being told their babies had died were not exaggerations on my part. They are appalling truths drawn from real eyewitness accounts I uncovered during my research. Girls were also often kept in the dark about the facts of their pregnancy or what to expect during the labour process, and many were left alone in hospital or dormitory beds to labour, unsupported, for hours at a time. I assure you I made a very deliberate decision not to exaggerate what girls might have thought, felt, and experienced at a place like St. Agnes’s in the 1960s.