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I'm Finley schaef a retired Methodist Minister it's Reverend I practiced in four churches
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in New York City for 40 years and a woman that I didn't know and was not a member of my church came to see me
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in my office I can still see her sitting there and she told me that her husband raped their daughter a teenage girl
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and the daughter became pregnant and did I know where she could her daughter could get an abortion and I
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didn't I did not know what to do or what to say uh I didn't know I couldn't help her and
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she left before the 1970s it was very hard to get a legal abortion in this country
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different states even different hospitals had different rules rules that kept shifting over time
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but for the most part you could not get an abortion unless you were going to die
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Connecticut was the first state to criminalize the procedure in 1821 and state by state the rest of the country
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followed suit In 1902 the Journal of the American Medical Association endorsed a popular
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practice among doctors they'd refuse to treat a woman suffering from abortion complications until she quote confessed
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to Breaking the Law wealthy women would leave the country and fly to Japan where abortion was
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legal but a woman without the resources to fly around the world had to find another way some tried to induce a
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miscarriage on their own most Methods at the time were incredibly dangerous the other option was to pay
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someone to help them quietly maybe a doctor but maybe not oftentimes women would be given
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instructions like meet me at X Street Corner this is Gillian Frank historian of sexuality and religion at Princeton
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and then they would get in a car be blindfolded get up on the table sometimes we put in stirrups and have
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the procedure performed on them with the blindfold on never see the doctor's face
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and sometimes the procedure would work but often it would mutilate a woman it would leave her they would leave her
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without an abortion and take her money some women would find themselves sexually assaulted by the person
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offering the abortion whether they were skilled or unskilled first of all she had to have a password
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to get into the place where the abortion was going to happen she was met by a man
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with a mask on Reverend Barbara gerlock is talking about a friend who got an underground abortion in New York city so
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she couldn't even see the face of the man who was providing the abortion and was sent off
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with nothing um so there was it was just very dangerous I mean the numbers of women who were dying you know
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some coroner is reported as early as 1951 that he had seen 1200 women die in the course of his career and this this
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was a national I mean they said National implications women were dying because of these what were called back
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alley or Backstreet abortions women who'd gotten hurt by a back alley abortionist or by trying to induce a
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miscarriage would often wind up in the emergency room because of an infection or hemorrhaging
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as doctors were confronted with the reality of the situation some felt justified in breaking the law to perform
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a safe abortion a sociologist named Carol joffy gave them a name doctors of conscience
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but then after World War II there was a shift men returned home and went back to
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work many women who'd been working stopped working a record number of babies were born this was the so-called
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baby boom and what many employers would do is that they would fire women after they became pregnant to enforce these
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norms and this is called pronatals and this sort of idea that everyone should have children and this is pushing the
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baby boom families were having three and four children in quick succession birth
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control wasn't easy to get abstinence was encouraged illegal abortions increased and so did the number of
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deaths and injuries in order to get a safe abortion some pregnant women would go to a
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psychiatrist and say they were going to kill themselves a handbook even circulated to teach women how to fake a
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suicide attempt and if they were convincing enough a psychiatrist might refer them for an abortion
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in 1962 a psychiatrist named Sydney boulter wrote an essay in the American Journal of Psychiatry warning doctors to
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stay out of it he wrote we know that women's main role here on Earth is to conceive deliver and raise children
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foreign it's an amazing chapter Leviticus 19. it's called the Holiness code in the
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whole Bible it's in the middle of all these rules about priests and what they should do ritually Rabbi Harold kudan of
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Glencoe Illinois and it talks about how we should act in terms of others the stranger the Widow the orphan
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one of the most famous is love your neighbor as yourself but I thought today that not the most important sentence the
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most important sentence is do not stand idly by the blood of your brother we cannot be idle when our neighbor is in
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distress we just never questioned the fact that motherhood should be a free choice a
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woman shouldn't be compelled to become a mother if she didn't want to be we had pastoral confidentiality we could
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talk to women in a way that our conversations were privileged and I thought well this is something that I
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can do I can help women a number of clergy and a number of congregations began to see abortion
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as a choice that women should make it was a difficult Choice one that she should struggle with but they believe
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that you know we need to prioritize the people who are already living and that there are higher laws
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that need to be followed because the consequences will be tragic for women and their families otherwise they
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decided to take matters into their own hands secretly and women seeking an abortion found help in a very unlikely
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place rabbis and ministers all over the country formed an underground network of
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doctors willing to provide safe abortions they call themselves the clergy consultation service and in 1967 they
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got to work I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music] the clergy consultation service was
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helmed by Howard Moody senior minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York he held secret meetings in church
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basements and traveled around the country to meet with clergy in their homes and explain the plan
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they also needed to get the word out to women so in May of 1967 they issued a public statement parts of it were
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published on the front page of the New York Times they wrote We believe it's our religious
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duty to give Aid and assistance to all women with problem pregnancies and they listed a phone number women
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could call and that phone number was hitched up to an electronic answering device and the tape on the machine would
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have a woman's voice recorded on it and it would simply tell them the names and phone numbers and times in which a
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clergy was available for counseling and it would give them different locations I
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would say for example if you were calling in New York they would say Okay so-and-so is available in the Bronx
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so-and-so is available in Brooklyn so and so is available in Manhattan and then the woman would call that Minister
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a rabbi directly to make an appointment to see that person in their office and so when a woman came in she would have
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to get a note in advance saying that she was pregnant and how far along and then
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she would come to the office a clergy would sit down with her and they would review options do you want to continue
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with being pregnant and have the baby and keep the baby do you want to adopt the baby out or do you want to have an
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abortion and if they chose abortion and most women came in knowing they wanted abortions and choosing this the clergy
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would have a list of providers ready and they would help women plant every detail
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of their trip the trips would never be in the same state or city in which they met with the
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clergy and the reason they did this was their lawyers had advised them saying if
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you send them over state lines it makes prosecution more difficult if you send them out of the country it makes it even
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more so were they putting themselves in an illegal threat so some states made it illegal to even
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talk about or give abortion information or referral information like Florida and
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so it wasn't just giving an abortion but talking about abortion giving abortion information
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that made this a criminal Enterprise and so clergy felt that they were taking great risks they worried that their
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phones were being tapped they would say don't say the word abortion over the phone they would say use the word
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problem pregnancy and they were worried with good reason that they were being surveyed by police
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or district attorneys the network grew quickly and they started getting calls from clergy all
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over the country some wanted their names on the list but others weren't so open it depended on
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the congregation and it depended upon their location somewhere wide open and so senior ministers often would do this
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for example in Unitarian congregations with the full knowledge and support of their congregations other clergy did it
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covertly kept their heads down did the referrals and some paid the price some ministers were fired from their posts
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never to work as a minister again there's a couple cases in Iowa where ministers were fired because their
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congregation felt that they were doing practices that were unethical or immoral and that they didn't agree with
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but you know for the most part I I believe that most congregations had some Inkling
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the Book of James speaks of religion being represented by the the care of the orphans and the widows and their
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afflictions [Music] unwanted unintended pregnancies and affliction uh it was a natural call in my sense to
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engage in this kind of of work I did this is Reverend Robert Hayer he was a pastor in Cleveland Ohio in 1969
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when he helped an Ohio woman visit a doctor in Massachusetts for an abortion my attorney
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had said that you aren't breaking the law at that time the doctors were and they
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were taking a great risk ready for them that they were taking willing to take such a risk but he said
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you know what you're doing is a kind of at the edge but you're not actually in violation of the law talking to council
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leaves foreign but it did work out that way for me up to Ohio the lot of cramping she pulled over and went
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into a police station she ended up telling the police the whole story including the names of both
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the doctor and Reverend hair I answered the phone call by the bedside at 6 30 or 7 in the morning one day it
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was Associated Press wanting confirmation that I had been criminally indicted in Massachusetts
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I had never heard of this uh do you know what to do about it but I could hear the Checker tapes running uh
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in the background what were you being charged with I was charged with aiding and abetting a criminal abortion
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Reverend Hare fought the indictment for years all the way up to the state supreme court until the case was
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eventually dismissed how did the CCS know that the doctors they were working with were trustworthy
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they would send female members of the CCS or their assistants to pose as pregnant women
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Gillian Frank and interview and investigate the doctors they would check out where the clinic was they would see
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if it was in a safe part of town they would check out this sterility of the instruments they would even be up on the
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table right before the procedure was about to be performed before they revealed their identity and so that was
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the initial assessment but that spot assessment was followed up by inviting each and every female client who they
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helped to write a review of the abortion provider was he kind did he charge you what he
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said he was going to charge you did he have sterile instruments assess everything tell us everything and there
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are these long detailed letters from women who took them up on this and so if there was a negative report if something
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funny was going on they would get a call from the clergy and basically because the clergy were this Mass referral
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system they had economic Leverage they convinced doctors to reduce their fees and sometimes to wave them all
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together individual clergy reported using discretionary funds to help women make trips out of the country rabbis in
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New England remember congregants pitching in to offset costs the clergy were able to find so many
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doctors who did such good jobs and so many medical providers because sometimes they used non-licensed Physicians who
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also did fantastic jobs and how many women came away not only unharmed but feeling that the procedure was safe
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quick efficient and affordable after a few years the clergy consultation service had operations all over the
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country in some places there were Roman Catholic priests or nuns in the group many of the branches are helping
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hundreds and hundreds of people per week it's a profound amount of people that are coming to them for help
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the numbers of women coming to them made them more confident about what they were
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doing they applied pressure to hospitals and lawmakers and wrote into newspapers
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arguing that the law was not and never had been enforceable they wrote the public debate on abortion laws is
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escalating it is not important any longer to play a numbers game about illegal abortions we
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do not believe in statistical morality they argued that abortion laws disproportionately hurt poor women
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especially women of color writing quote the present law by the way in which it circumvented is highly discriminatory
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allowing remedy only for those who have access to money and private doctors and private hospitals
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because clergy were respectable because they had a lot of social status because the meetings they have can be
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seen as privileged and not subject to Legal scrutiny they're in a perfect position to help women on the ground but
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also to create a mechanism to challenge abortion laws and so from there it snowballs in 1970 New York repealed its
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criminal abortion law and the clergy consultation service could send women to New York for legal abortions okay what
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we did at Stevens and this was true of women in all around the state particularly the women in
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Stevens when the dorm opened at 5 30 we would take them to St Louis Reverend William Kirby was a university chaplain
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first at Stevens College in Columbia Missouri and then later at Princeton they would get on an American Airlines
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flight to Dobbs Ferry in New York Dobbs Ferry would have a limousine waiting for
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them at LaGuardia and take them to Dobbs Ferry we had trained the Dobbs Ferry staff and doctors we had a nurse on our
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staff who would go to the clinics and train doctors the woman would be there and get it get the abortion fairly
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quickly and then have a couple of hours to see if she was not going to Hemorrhage then they would take her back
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to the plane she would be on the five o'clock American Airlines flight back to St Louis Carr would pick her up and
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she'd be back in the dormitory within the same day by 10 30. and subsequently we sent our nurse American Airlines
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allowed us to teach the flight attendants on that five o'clock flight back to from
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LaGuardia to St Louis that they may have a woman there who had had an abortion and might be hemorrhaging and she taught
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them what to do so how many women would you say you supervise or oversaw putting on that
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flight I I estimated myself at 3 000 and and we were I I I I don't know the answer to
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that question thank you frankly I told my secretary when the cops come call my lawyer first and my wife second
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the legislature in Jefferson City Missouri called me before a senate hearing because if you in in Missouri if
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you even pointed toward the airplane and suggested abortion you were guilty I took the Fifth Amendment many times
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that night why don't you think more people know about ccs and what happened we kept no records
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we weren't taunting the police and so nobody knew about us except people who wanted an abortion and
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the women knew about us in the community [Music] by 1972 the clergy consultation service
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was operating in more than 600 locations across the country the next year when Roe v Wade granted
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women the constitutional right to have an abortion some clergy shifted their focus to making sure women had access to
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contraception others went back to normal life leading their congregations do we have any numbers about how many
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women were served in some ways it's impossible to know for sure exactly how many women obtained an
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abortion through the ccs and so it depends how you do the math I would say conservatively they helped upward of a
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quarter of a million women and I think that because they kept such poor records or they would destroy
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records out of necessity we don't really have the exact number how did you hear about this
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I discovered them by accident I was looking at the legislative records and I'm looking at these debates in the
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newspaper articles and I keep seeing mention of the clergy consultation service and I was so surprised I said
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this doesn't make sense this doesn't sync up with any of the stories I've heard I thought naively at the time that
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religious folk were conservative and opposed abortion and that abortion rights activists were secular and it
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turns out that this story is much more complicated [Applause] this past May the surviving members of
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the clergy consultation service met at Judson Memorial Church in New York City to Mark the 50th anniversary of their
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formation they came from all over the country most of them had never met in person before
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there was a church service open to the public and the clergy consultation members said in the first two rows and
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stood up to be recognized one by one as their names were called [Music] foreign [Music]
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[Laughter] Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob Byers Julian Alexander makes
00:21:35
original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at thisiscriminal.com you can find us and
00:21:42
say hi on Facebook and Twitter criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina public radio
00:21:49
wunc we're a proud member of radiotopia from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around shows like radio Diaries
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a show which tells extraordinary stories of ordinary life in their latest episode they tell the
00:22:05
story of one of the darkest periods in Mexico's history in 1968 Mexico City Was preparing to host the Olympics and the
00:22:14
government was hoping to show off the new modern Mexico but for months student protests had taken over the streets and
00:22:21
the government wanted them gone we heard some shots we didn't know where they came from and seconds later
00:22:30
how do you say in English all help programs somebody said they were not real bullets
00:22:43
these are only blanks don't be scared don't be scared be calm but they were not nice the troops have
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moved in it started off as a peaceful demonstration the Army was circling this Plaza called
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the pleasure to three cultures they were holding a peaceful rally but now the troops have come and you can hear what
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it sounds like go listen radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight foundation and special thanks to
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00:23:24
[Music] RX