Back Alley Abortion - The Birth of the Baby Boom

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Some coroners reported as early as 19 51 that he had seen 12 hundred women die in the course of his career. Women whoh'd gotten hurt by a back alley abortionist or by trying to induce a miscarriage, would often wind up in the emergency room because of an infection or hemorrhaging. Some felt justified in breaking the law to perform a safe abortion. A sociologist named carroll joffey gave them a name, doctors of conscience. After world war two, there was a shift. Men returned home and went back to work. Many women who'd been working stopped working. This was the so called baby boom.

In 1967, a very unlikely group of individuals gathered to quietly break the law and help facilitate abortions. They established a phone number. When you called it, 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 people access safe abortions in a time before it was legal. We first aired our conversations with some of them in 2017. And after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year, we decided to call some of them back.

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