Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open

Historian Hume (Interventions for Women) offers a vibrant account of the largely underground history of women’s abortion clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area. She focuses on Women’s Choice, an independent abortion clinic that spearheaded the feminist “self-help” movement from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Beginning when abortion was still illegal, the “self-help” movement comprised radical feminists who taught ordinary women how to perform gynecological services (including menstrual extraction, which can be classified as a type of abortion) at home. Hume follows the clinic as the original five founders developed the Del-Em menstrual extraction kit, taught women how to perform cervix exams, established a network of clinics after the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision to legalize abortion, started the first sperm bank in the country to serve single women and lesbians, and developed a defense network against anti-abortion crusaders. The operation’s decline began in the mid-1980s as the clinics faced property damage and new laws regulating abortion providers. Hume’s “snowball research” method—interviewing activists who introduced her to more activists—gives her narrative a lively and conversational feel as she coaxes this secretive network, which for decades defied laws restricting abortion and the practice of medicine, to divulge its history. The result is a revelatory new perspective on the fight for women’s bodily autonomy. (Nov.)