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Before Roe v. Wade, desperate women used coat hangers, Coke

bottles, Clorox, and sticks in attempted abortions

Nicole Einbinder May 28, 2019, 6:47 AM

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Protesting women led by the Bread and Roses group march along Beacon Street in Boston demanding rights to
abortion and equality in work opportunities and conditions, March 8, 1970.
Photo by Don Preston/The Boston
Globe via Getty Images

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In the decades prior to the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade in 1973,
women went to extreme measures to access abortions.
 While some, typically those who were wealthier, could convince licensed doctors to
perform the procedure, many women had no choice but to partake in illegal
abortions. In those illicit situations, the quality of care was extremely uneven and
could lead to disastrous consequences.

Other women resorted to self-abortions, the most notable tactic being coat
hanger-induced abortions. Those who could afford the cost traveled to cities and
states where abortion was legal.

Since the start of 2019, states across the US have brought forth extreme anti-
abortion measures as part of a concerted effort to overturn Roe v. Wade.

In the decades since the passage of Roe, anti-abortion groups and lawmakers have
pursued a strategy of slowly chipping away at abortion access, with the procedure
already not accessible to scores of women across the US.

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During the eight-hour car ride from Ohio to New York, they rode in absolute silence.

The year was 1971 and Pamela Mason, an 18-year-old freshman at Ohio State
University in Columbus, Ohio, had just found out she was pregnant. She knew that
she and her boyfriend had been careless, but she also knew she wasn't ready to be a
mother. The moment she realized her period was late, she felt like she was going to
pass out.

When
H Oshe
M Efirst
PA G called
E up her boyfriend to tell him the news, he immediately hung up.
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Half an hour later, her phone rang.

"What do you want to do?" he asked her. Her answer was easy: "I want to have an
abortion."

Mason's unplanned pregnancy occurred two years prior to the landmark Supreme
Court decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the US and granted women a

constitutional right to the procedure. At that time, abortions were heavily restricted
in her state.

"I never thought 'Oh, well, we can have the baby,'" Mason, now 65 and an
administrative assistant living in New Jersey, told INSIDER. "It was strictly I am
getting an abortion. That was the only option for me."

That meant driving 500 miles away in a 1967 green Chevy Impala to New York City,
where abortions were legal. And, Mason thought at the time, that distance was
doable.

Women created underground networks to help each other access safe

abortions

In the decades prior to Roe, there were several ways in which women could try to have
an abortion.

Some women, typically those who were wealthier and with "contacts," could convince
licensed doctors to perform the procedure as a matter of conscience — or profit —
said Carol Sanger, a law professor at Columbia University and author of the book
"About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in the 21st Century." But, not all doctors
were so willing because the penalties fell on the doctor performing the abortion.

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In many cases, women had no choice but to partake in illegal abortions to terminate
their pregnancies. Some worked with organizations and underground abortion
networks, like the Chicago-based group "Jane," or the Clergy Consultation Service,
made up of religious leaders nationwide, which had been created to help women
navigate the abortion landscape and safely access the procedure. Many of the female
members of "Jane" learned how to perform the procedures themselves, at one point
performing abortions four days a week and serving as many as 10 woman a day.

But, others weren't as lucky.

"The situation pre-Roe was that the rich people did okay because they could pay to get
a proper legal abortion. Some people were savvy enough to contact organizations like
'Jane' or the Clergy," Sanger said, adding, "for ordinary women, they would just go by
word of mouth and take their chances because they wouldn't want to be pregnant."

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A young woman holds a sign demanding a woman's right to abortion at a demonstration in Madison, Wis., April
20, 1971.
AP Photo

Leslie Reagan, a professor of history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

and author of the book "When Abortion Was a Crime", said that illegal abortions
became more clandestine as a result of tough enforcement by police and prosecutors.
Doctors could be penalized with fines or jail sentences that varied by state. In those

illicit situations, the quality of care was extremely uneven and could have disastrous
consequences.

Sometimes, if there were complications after an illegal abortion, women had no

choice but to rush to emergency rooms, only to be harassed by hospital staff and
police with probing questions about who performed the procedure. "Most people
would be taken care of by doctors, but some of those people died in the emergency
rooms," Reagan said.

Other women resorted to self-abortions, the most notable tactic being a coat hanger-
induced  abortion. But, according to Reagan, desperate women were willing to try
anything: "people went to the drug store and they got orange sticks. They also used
medical things, like catheters which are rubber covered wires so they are stiff... they
used pens, cotton, pencils, a list of things," she said. "There were people who tried to
use Coke bottles, tried to use Clorox... there were these pills that were sold and they
were told to put them in their vagina, and they just burned through the tissue."

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Women protesting abortion laws, Dec. 9, 1969.
Photo by Joe Runci/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Many women, who could afford the cost, traveled elsewhere to have the procedure,
with underground abortion networks helping them navigate the journey and offering
details — like how to travel safely or tips on not getting ripped off. For women on the
East Coast, Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, were a popular destination, while
those on the West Coast traveled to Mexico and Japan.

The story of "Miss Sherri"

One of the most high-profile cases of a woman trying to travel abroad for an abortion
was that of Sherri Finkbine, a 30-year-old television host known as "Miss Sherri" on
the children's show "Romper Room." In the spring of 1962, Finkbine, a pregnant
mother of four living in Arizona, took pills her husband had brought her following a
business trip to England, to curb her morning sickness. She later discovered the pills
contained thalidomide, which could cause severe birth defects. Finkbine decided to
terminate her pregnancy.

But it wouldn't be that easy. Hoping to warn other women about the drug, Finkbine
shared her story with a local reporter, asking for anonymity. But her identity was
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exposed, unleashing a firestorm over her decision to have an abortion. She requested
a therapeutic abortion before a three-man board at a Phoenix hospital, but was
denied.

View of pregnant American television show host Sherri Chessen Finkbine (known as Miss Sherri on 'Romper
Room') sits with her children during her ongoing legal case to seek a medically prescribed abortion, Phoenix,
Arizona, August 1962.
Photo by J. R. Eyerman/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

In the early 1960s, when Finkbine requested an abortion, 44 states, including

Arizona, only allowed abortion if it endangered the women's life. Women who were
caught going to an abortion doctor were often required to appear in court.

"Women were in a difficult position at times because they were still being hauled into
court and having to give testimony and sometimes being examined to support the
case against an abortion provider," Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State
H O M Ewho
University PA Ghas
E written extensively about the history of abortion and Roe v.Subscribe
Wade,
told INSIDER.
Raids on abortion providers' offices — and subsequently women being brought to
court to testify against them — became common in the 1940s and 1950s as a way to
enforce abortion laws, Reagan wrote in her book "When Abortion Was a Crime."
Women could be posed questions about their abortion provider, the procedure, and
their sexual encounters. When a Chicago woman who had an abortion refused to

testify about the procedure in 1949, she was ordered to six months in jail for contempt
of court.

A 22-year-old woman sits in a Los Angeles jail following an abortion arrest.

Photo by Los Angeles Examiner/USC
Libraries/Corbis via Getty Images

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After Finkbine's name became public, the death threats started, and the FBI even
stationed themselves at her home as a safety measure. Eventually, she went to
Sweden to have the abortion.

Eight years later, in 1970, New York legalized the procedure and, according to Sanger,
became "a mecca for performing abortions." In the years before Roe, three other
states, Hawaii, Washington, and Alaska, passed similar laws. But, unlike New York,

those states required women seeking an abortion to have already lived in the state for
a certain period of time.

Women, like Mason, flocked to New York for the procedure.

To scrape together the money for an abortion, she stole discarded soda
bottles

At Ohio State in the 1960s, it was known among the student body that Planned
Parenthood was the place to go for birth control and information about reproductive
health services. Mason took a bus from campus to Planned Parenthood, where she
was immediately referred to a clinic in Manhattan. She called to schedule an
appointment and was told the procedure was $150, in addition to travel costs.

For Mason and her boyfriend, money was tight; she only had around $50 in the bank
at the time. To scrape together the funds, she stole discarded glass soda bottles from
her neighbor, which could be sold for around a nickel. Her best friend swiped bottles
from her mom to contribute to the cause.

They set out on a Saturday night in the clunky Chevy Impala and, as Mason recalls,
her boyfriend barely spoke to her throughout the whirlwind trip. "I was pretty
devastated by his reaction to kind of just treat it like it was my fault, that was the
message
H O MIEwasPA getting,"
GE she said. "I was just trying to keep my mind on the mission,
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basically, that I'm doing this because I want to and, regardless of how he is going to
behave, I'm not going to pull the car over."
 , g g p

When Mason arrived to New York City she was immediately enthralled by the throngs
of people and traffic consuming the city. "Wow, this is some place," she thought to
herself. Her boyfriend dropped her off at the clinic and whisked away to find parking.
She was all alone.

1972: Members of the New York women's Liberation Army demonstrate on a street corner to demand abortion
rights.
Photo by Peter Keegan/Keystone/Getty Images

At the clinic, she was so nervous she could barely speak. While explaining the
procedure, a concerned counselor paused to ask, "are you OK?"

"I want
HOM it to be G
E PA over,"
E Mason replied. Subscribe

The abortion was painful but was quickly over. She'll never forget the kindness
exuded by clinic staff.

Almost five decades later, she feels immense relief that New York City was only 500
miles away from Columbus. "If I lived in Kansas or Missouri at the time, I don't want
to think what would have happened to me," Mason said. "I was geographically lucky."

A string of abortion laws have recently passed, aimed at putting Roe V.

Wade on the line

In early May of this year, Alabama lawmakers sent shockwaves across the country by
passing the country's most restrictive abortion law. The law effectively bans abortions
in the state, unless it poses a "serious health risk" to the mother, and doesn't include
exceptions for survivors of rape or incest. Doctors who perform the procedure could
face up to 99 years in prison.

And Alabama isn't alone: various states have passed measures recently to restrict
abortion access. Earlier this month, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a so-called
"heartbeat bill" that bans the procedure after a heartbeat is detected, typically around
five to six weeks and before many women know they are pregnant. In mid-May,
legislators in Missouri's State Senate also passed a bill to ban abortions after eight
weeks, with no exemptions for rape or incest. Since the start of 2019, states like Utah,
Arkansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi, have brought forth extreme anti-abortion
measures, part of a concerted effort to overturn Roe v. Wade.

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Anti-abortion activists from around the US gather in Washington, DC January 19, 2018 for the annual "March for
Life."
EVA HAMBACH/AFP/Getty Images

None of the recently passed abortion bans have formally gone into effect, and groups
like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights
intend to challenge the measures.

Mason says she couldn't believe it when Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973. She was still
enrolled at Ohio State and immediately began volunteering at the state's first abortion
clinic. At that time, the clinic was the only one in the region — and the phone was
constantly ringing with women not just from Ohio, but the surrounding five states as
well.

Eventually, she was offered a full-time job.

"We sometimes had to turn away more people than we could help because of the large
demand," she said about her time working at the clinic. "I wish these lawmakers
understood the need, and the demand, for safe, legal abortions."

In the
H Odecades since
M E PA G E the passage of Roe, anti-abortion groups and lawmakers have
Subscribe

pursued a strategy of slowly chipping away at abortion access, imposing measures

such as required waiting periods, mandated counseling, and strict requirements on
 q gp , g, q
abortion clinics and providers, to make it more difficult for women to access the
procedure. Federal laws, like the Hyde Amendment, also block federal Medicaid
funds from being used to pay for abortions.

Since Roe was decided, states have introduced more than 1,200 abortion restrictions,
with more than a third of those enacted since 2010, according to the Guttmacher

Institute, a leading research and policy organization on reproductive health. 

"Many women today, particularly in the Midwest and the South, have been living in
environments where, frankly, Roe is already not a reality for them, and losing Roe
would of course make the barriers to accessing abortion that much worse," said
Rachel Sussman, National Director of State Policy and Advocacy at Planned
Parenthood Federation of America. "It is going to have a disproportionate impact on
people who are already facing systematic barriers to accessing healthcare, so women
living in rural communities, women living in poverty, people of color are going to face
these barriers."

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Activists dressed as characters from "The Handmaid's Tale" chant in the Texas Capitol Rotunda as they protest
SB8, a bill that would require health care facilities, including hospitals and abortion clinics, to bury or cremate
any fetal remains whether from abortion, miscarriage or stillbirth, and they would be banned from donating
aborted fetal tissue to medical researchers, Tuesday, May 23, 2017, in Austin.
AP Photo/Eric Gay

Going forward, Sussman said it is imperative for those who support women's
reproductive health to reach out to their state's elected officials about the importance
of safe, legal abortions.

For women like Mason, who benefited from the procedure, that message is more
critical now than ever.

"The trauma for me was driving 20 hours. It wasn't the abortion or the aftermath or
thinking 'what had I done?'" Mason said about her experience. "I am so grateful to the
people in New York City who made this totally petrified 18 year old feel like it's going
to be OK, and to get back to Ohio in one piece and to go to school on Monday."

Mason is grateful she had access to an abortion when so many others didn't. "When I
look back on the trajectory of my life, all the things I've done throughout my adult life
were only possible because I was able to terminate my pregnancy, so just all around
it's a lot of gratitude."

Read more:

All the celebrities who are boycotting states that have signed anti-abortion bills

'A vanishingly small number' of women have abortions in the third trimester. Here's
whyHmost
O M EofPA G E do it. Subscribe
them

P t i G i d Ut h th 't f b ti l i th i t t
Prosecutors in Georgia and Utah say they won't enforce abortion laws in their states

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 More:
Abortion
Roe v Wade
Sherri Finkbine
Planned Parenthood

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