By 19 72, the clergy consultation service was operating in more than 600 locations across the country. The next year, when rove wade granted women the constitutional right to have an abortion, some clergy shifted their focus to making sure women had access to contraception. Do we have any numbers about how many women were served? In some ways it's impossible to know for sure exactly how many women obtained an abortion through the c c s. I would say conservatively, they helped upward of a quarter of a million women.
In 1967, a very unlikely group of individuals gathered to help women quietly break the law and obtain an abortion. The first step was to call a phone number. A recording of a woman's voice would tell you what to do next.
Who was behind this number? The Clergy Consultation Service, an underground network of ministers and rabbis who wanted to help women access safe abortions. Today, they call themselves the Religious Consultation for Reproductive Choice.
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