Most of what I know is DIY and not necessarily Abortion (the professor I was doing research for actually asked me to stay away from abortion per se, for many reasons). The definitive book on the Women's Health Movement (which was international) is Into our Own Hands by Sandra Morgen. The Feminist Women's Health Center Movement is still around: http://www.fwhc.org/ and has a lot of info. This is a good historical summary of the Women's Health Movement: http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/women/html/wm_040300_womenshealth.htm.
Essentially, my understanding is that women traveled to states (this is the US I'm talking about) where is was legal/possible (like New York) or obtained illegal abortions where they lived. In Chicago the group "Jane" performed illegal abortions and did not have a single casualty. Basically, you could still get an abortion, but your access to one was determined by your race, class, and region. As a counterpoint, many minority women were being forcibly sterilized at this time and the fact that abortion rights became central to the feminist movement was a point of contention because while white women wanted the right to end pregnancies, other women were fighting for the right to keep pregnancies.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-02-20 01:54 pm (UTC)Essentially, my understanding is that women traveled to states (this is the US I'm talking about) where is was legal/possible (like New York) or obtained illegal abortions where they lived. In Chicago the group "Jane" performed illegal abortions and did not have a single casualty. Basically, you could still get an abortion, but your access to one was determined by your race, class, and region. As a counterpoint, many minority women were being forcibly sterilized at this time and the fact that abortion rights became central to the feminist movement was a point of contention because while white women wanted the right to end pregnancies, other women were fighting for the right to keep pregnancies.