Author’s Note

Dear Reader,

When people ask me, “So what’s your book about?,” my first inclination is always to say “Abortion.” But it isn’t. Looking for Jane is about motherhood. About wanting to be a mother and not wanting to be a mother, and all the gray areas in between. It’s about the lengths to which women will go to end a pregnancy, and to become pregnant. And, as Nancy says, that razor-thin edge where many people find themselves hovering at some point in their lives, right between the terror of getting pregnant by accident and the terror of not getting pregnant when you want to. But most importantly, it’s about women supporting one another through their individual choices and the outcomes of those choices.

I wrote the first draft of Looking for Jane before my husband and I had even begun trying to start our family. I was pregnant throughout the editing process, and was the mother of a young baby when the book was released in Canada and the U.K. I undertook a lot of research and conducted interviews about individual experiences with pregnancy and childbirth to ensure this story rings true, but the fact that I became pregnant during the editing process ended up being quite a gift, because it gave me a more nuanced perspective on abortion. I recall thinking, during the first trimester, that this was the time frame in which most abortions take place. I knew rationally that the being growing in my uterus was a cluster of cells, a fetus, but I called it my baby. My husband and I even gave it a nickname. Its organs were forming. It had fingers and toes and an upper lip. A heartbeat that I got to hear for the first time at six weeks’ gestation. Now that I’ve experienced a pregnancy, I understand more than ever why abortion is a deeply emotional issue that causes severe, irreconcilable sociopolitical divisions. Why some will view the fetus as a life unto itself. But although my baby had a heartbeat and fingers and toes and an upper lip, it still resided inside my body.

My. Body.

Like many people, I had a really rough time with my pregnancy, and I expressed to loved ones on a number of occasions that sometimes I didn’t feel like I was in control of my own body anymore. That was a bit unnerving, even though my pregnancy was a wonderful thing for my husband and me, and my baby was so very, very wanted. So I couldn’t imagine being pregnant against my will; not having legal control over my own body with the right to end that pregnancy if I wanted to. The prospect was horrifying. And equally horrifying was the idea of being told—like the girls at the postwar maternity homes were—that I was not allowed to keep my child; that my parents, the state, and the Church were together going to make the decision for me that I must relinquish a baby that I want to keep, regardless of my own desires.

And that’s why my pregnancy gave me a deeper understanding of the power and critical importance of bodily autonomy, and perhaps why I feel more strongly about reproductive choice and abortion access than ever. Because I can now put myself in the shoes of the pregnant person who doesn’t want to be pregnant. I can imagine how terrifying that could feel for them. Now that I’m a mother, this book and its messages are more real to me than ever before.

So with that said, let me tell you a little bit about how Looking for Jane and its story came to be.

THE MATERNITY HOME SYSTEM

St. Agnes’s Home for Unwed Mothers is itself a product of my imagination. (St. Agnes is the patron saint of virgins, girls, and chastity, so it seemed fitting in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way.) But it’s intended to serve as a composite, representing the countless maternity homes that existed in various countries—including Canada and the United States—in the postwar years. In Canada, they were funded by the government and mainly run by churches and the Salvation Army. A handful were nondenominational. In the U.S., they were primarily operated by the Florence Crittenton Association of America, the Salvation Army, and Catholic charities. In the years after World War II, there was a strong societal push for the expansion of the nuclear family. For those who were unable to have biological families of their own, adoption was an attractive option, and spurred a robust demand for white babies during these years. Mothers of color were not often sent to these maternity homes, as babies of color were considered less desirable or even unadoptable.

During my research on these institutions in Canada and the United States, I discovered some truly shocking facts from firsthand accounts of those who attended them as teenagers or young women. Few women reported having had any kind of positive experience at the homes (perhaps aside from the occasional forbidden friendships they forged within), and most described their time at these institutions on a spectrum from moderately unpleasant to horrendously abusive, including systemic physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse.

I regret to inform you that use of the term “inmates” by the administration, girls being coerced into signing adoption papers before they were allowed to hold their baby after birth (or before painkillers would be administered), and being told their babies had died were not exaggerations on my part. They are appalling truths drawn from real eyewitness accounts I uncovered during my research. Girls were also often kept in the dark about the facts of their pregnancy or what to expect during the labor and delivery process, and many were left alone in hospital or dormitory beds to labor, unsupported, for hours at a time. Women described having bags put over their heads so they wouldn’t see the baby emerge, and nurses refusing to allow them to hold their babies at all before they were taken away. The system was humiliating, punitive, and violent. I assure you I made a very deliberate decision not to exaggerate or sugar-coat what girls might have thought, felt, and experienced at a place like St. Agnes’s in the 1960s.

These women’s descriptions of their feelings about the adoption, how it impacted their mental health at the time and for decades afterward—including crippling depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, inability to form meaningful relationships, fear of having more children or having those children taken away from them, and suicide attempts—and their desperation to locate their lost children in later years were some of the most powerful accounts I have ever read as a student of history. I tried to weave many of them into Maggie/Evelyn’s thoughts and emotions about being forcibly separated from Jane/Nancy.

I extend sincere gratitude (along with my deepest condolences) to the women who have, over time, shared their heartbreaking experiences with interested researchers. I could not have brought this story to life without your bravery and willingness to relive your trauma.

But now, dear reader, I will ask you to hold my beer as I climb up onto my soap box. Because these women deserve more than my thanks.

They deserve justice.

According to Statistics Canada, between 1945 and 1971, almost 600,000 babies were born to unmarried mothers, their births recorded as “illegitimate.” Researcher Valerie Andrews has estimated that over 300,000 mothers in Canada alone were forced or coerced into giving their babies up for adoption within the postwar era maternity home system (in the United States, that number is likely significantly higher). These programs were funded by the federal government.

In late 2017, Canada’s Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology undertook a study of the postwar maternity home program. The committee heard from witnesses who gave testimony regarding the irreparable psychological and emotional damage they suffered as a result of this system. Of the several religious organizations (including Catholic, Anglican, United, and Presbyterian churches, and the Salvation Army) that delivered these programs on behalf of the government, only the United Church agreed to participate in the Senate’s study and admit any responsibility whatsoever.

Based on the results of the study, in July 2018 the committee put forth a recommendation to the Government of Canada that it should publicly acknowledge that this practice took place, and issue a formal apology to the women and children who were deeply traumatized and whose lives were forever changed by the maternity home system. The Australian federal government extended an unconditional apology to survivors of its maternity homes in 2013, as did the government of Ireland in 2021.

As of the time of writing, no such apology or reparation proposal has been offered by the Government of Canada. This is a government that has (as it should) issued formal apologies to various groups that have suffered appalling treatment at the hands of—or by willful blindness of—the Canadian government throughout its severely blemished history. Yet it has inexplicably ignored the very straightforward recommendations from its own Senate committee to issue a similar apology to those impacted by the maternity home system. This is beyond shameful.

THE JANE NETWORK

Like St. Agnes’s, the Jane Network in this novel is also a composite of the many underground abortion networks that existed in major cities around the world prior to the legalization or decriminalization of abortion in their respective jurisdictions. Without a doubt, many of these types of networks still exist today in jurisdictions where abortion remains illegal or inaccessible.

When I set out to undertake preliminary research for a novel about an underground abortion network and the history of reproductive rights access in my home country of Canada, I found some interesting things. Among them was a reference to an organization called the Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation that had the unofficial nickname of “Jane.” It operated in Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s, prior to Roe v. Wade (HBO released a documentary on the Janes in June 2022, and public awareness of their history has grown enormously in recent years). The Canadian abortion networks didn’t have a particular name, records almost certainly weren’t kept for security reasons, and thus the details were more difficult for me to research. But as I wrote the early draft of this novel, the name “Jane” became very much representative of the anonymous, everywoman nature of all these networks, and seemed the most fitting for a story that attempts to capture the breadth and depth of these remarkable, life-saving organizations. While I certainly paid deliberate homage to the “Chicago Janes” through the fictionalization of a real life event (their volunteers actually did eat patient records in the back of a paddy wagon to hide the women’s identities from police—cue applause), the rest is borne of creative license based on facts I gathered about illegal and underground abortion initiatives through various research and interviews.

In the Canadian context, the legalization that came in 1988 with the groundbreaking R. v. Morgentaler Supreme Court decision arrived only after years of provincial court battles on Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s part, and I believe legalization would not have occurred as quickly without his courageous determination and the efforts of those who worked closely with him. I will thank her again in my acknowledgments, but I must extend particular thanks to (in)famous feminist activist and fellow author Judy Rebick for taking the time to meet with me for an interview. Her recollections of Henry Morgentaler and her involvement in the Canadian abortion rights movement throughout the 1970s and 1980s helped mold my foundational ideas for the Janes’ storyline. With that said, the scene where Evelyn interacts with Dr. Morgentaler in his Montreal office is entirely fictional.

However, the Abortion Caravan was indeed a real series of events that occurred in 1970. After a large protest on the lawn at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, these women delivered a symbolic coffin to Prime Minister Trudeau (senior)’s house, and chained themselves to the railings in the House of Commons to disrupt the proceedings and attract media attention to the issue of abortion access. The details of these events as depicted in the novel are my own creative products, though I drew inspiration for them from Judy Rebick’s Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution.

To all the “Janes,” near and far, past and present, who made and continue to make incredible sacrifices, risking arrest and bodily harm to help people access safe abortions, I thank you from the bottom of my bleeding feminist heart. The illegality of these organizations has meant that the vast majority of the participants’ true identities remain unknown, but I hope through this novel I have helped to give them a voice and honor them for their outstanding contribution to women’s and human rights history.

THE FALL OF ROE

I write this section of the Author’s Note from a place of cautious comfort, as a Canadian living in a country where—given the differences in our governmental and legal framework—access to abortion services covered by public health insurance would appear to be, for the time being, reasonably secure. With that said, inequitable access and government funding are still issues we contend with here, and I think Canadians should remain hyper-vigilant in the defense of abortion rights. But the threat we might feel tugging occasionally at our shirt collars is nothing compared to the literal war currently being waged in America against women and pregnant people.

When news of the leaked Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade hit my social media feed late in the evening back in May 2022, my initial reaction was to burst into tears of despair. But that feeling quickly turned into a searing rage I’ve rarely experienced. It was toxic, and overwhelming. I didn’t know where to put it. It took me a long time to get to sleep that night. Over the following days, I heard from countless readers in Canada who told me “I saw the news from the U.S., and I can’t stop thinking about your book.” Neither could I. Looking for Jane is, purportedly, historical fiction, at least for those of us in my home country of Canada. However, I know that for people in many countries around the world (including Brazil, where Jane has also been published), the fight for reproductive rights and the systematic stripping away of safe reproductive health care is a present reality.

Reproductive rights and abortion access have been the subjects of perpetual so-called “controversy” (I don’t actually consider them controversial, because they are essential) for decades, and the politicization of pregnant bodies will seemingly never stop. But when I wrote the first draft of Looking for Jane in 2019, I could not have predicted it would be this horrifyingly relevant in 2023. And its increasing relevance continues to enrage me. I never dreamed that most of the U.S. would end up right back where women like Evelyn, Alice, and Nancy started decades ago, working underground (or sideways, or in the shadows), and fighting for the fundamental right to determine what happens to their own bodies.

I’m writing this on the hot and sunny afternoon of June 25, 2022, the day after women and pregnant people in America were reduced to something less than human. Despicably, you were also reduced to something less than assault rifles. There are few words adequate enough to describe the dehumanization that has occurred for at least half of the American population.

It is my belief that people inherently own the rights to their own bodies. Period. Full stop. I believe anyone should be able to access safe medical care to terminate a pregnancy at any time, for any reason at all. No conditions, no questions asked. Because when abortion access comes with conditions and is limited to specific—and often horrific—circumstances like rape or incest, it suggests that a woman does not inherently own the rights to her own body, as men do, but that something horrific must happen to her in order for her to gain access to those rights.

In the aftermath of Roe being overturned, I’ve thought a lot about the women who were so instrumental in the fight for reproductive justice in the years prior to 1973. In every country where underground abortion networks exist(ed), I can only imagine how it must feel to see your years of hard work and dedication, your passion, blood, sweat, and tears disappear in the blink of an eye because a select few in power hold radical religious beliefs that (allegedly) dictate forced birth at all costs.

My grief and rage run deeper than I can express, and my heart bleeds for you all. But I believe the only course of action going forward is to keep fighting like hell at the political level, and for women and pregnant people to support one another in every way possible. For those who can afford to, please donate generously to organizations that help patients access safe reproductive medical care, particularly so that those who are forced to travel far from home can afford to do so without debilitating financial strain. Keep spreading the word about resources and organizations offering safe and financially viable birth control and abortion options. And whatever you do, do not give up this fight. I know you won’t, but I still need to say it.

People around the world stand with you in solidarity. I hope that between the time I write this note and the time the book is published, that things have already started to look brighter for America. Reason and humanity and compassion might eventually choke out the hate and extremism, but in the meantime: Stay optimistic, stay angry, and stay safe.