THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Martha Scott
“My Small Amount of Activism Made a Whole Lot of Difference. It was Short Lived, Illegal and Intense.”
Women’s health, specifically reproductive rights advocate. Original member of Jane: The Abortion Counseling Service.
Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, April 2023
Photo. Formed in 1965, Jane was an underground network in Chicago that counseled and helped women who wanted to have abortions. From left: Martha Scott, Jeanne Galatzer-Levy, Abby Parisers, Sheila Smith and Madeline Schwenk were among the seven members of Jane arrested in 1972 (Courtesy of Martha Scott).
More About Martha:
- 50 years after her arrest, Jane member who stayed in Hyde Park discusses abortion rights, Aaron Gettinger, May 10, 2022
- Code Names and Secret Lives: How a Radical Underground Network Helped Women Get Abortions Before They Were Legal by Clara Bingham, April 17, 2019
- Chicago’s Forgotten Pro-Choice Warriors. Fifty years ago, women who wanted abortions didn’t have many choices — until an underground network of Chicago women gave them another one, by Marcia Froelke Coburn, illustration by Martin O’Neill, Chicago Magazine, March 19, 2019
- Before ‘Roe v. Wade,’ The Women of ‘Jane’ Provided Abortions For The Women Of Chicago, by Nellie Gilles, Sarah Kramer, Joe Richman January 19, 2018
- The Janes
- Jane: An Abortion Service, Chicago Women’s Liberation Union Herstory Project
- The Jane Collective on Wikipedia
- Martha Scott papers regarding Jane: The Abortion Counseling Service, Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History