Looking for Jane (37)
Angela wonders whether Tina has ever come across this organization in her academic life. Angela’s never even heard of it. After blowing on her first spoonful of soup, she picks up her cell phone and dials her wife’s number. Tina answers after two rings.
“Hey, T,” Angela says. “Got a question for you. Have you ever heard of something called the Jane Network?”
CHAPTER 12 Evelyn
OTTAWA | MAY 9, 1970
The city is plastered with green and black posters. They’ve gone up everywhere: pinned to bulletin boards in steamy coffee shops with mismatched chairs and chipped white mugs; pasted to store windows along Sparks Street and in the ByWard Market boutiques; taped to the backs of bathroom stall doors in the public libraries; stapled to telephone poles along all of Ottawa’s busiest streets.
It’s the first thing Evelyn notices when she emerges from the train station on Saturday morning. She steps into the weak spring sunlight, shifts her backpack to a more comfortable position on her shoulders, and walks toward the nearest telephone pole.
THE WOMEN ARE COMING, the posters declare. Underneath, the subtitle reads, The Abortion Caravan. Evelyn’s stomach does a little backflip. She lets her breath out in an audible sigh, releasing some of the tension in her chest. She can’t recall having felt this excited, nervous, and determined since the day she began medical school. It’s a similar feeling of exhilaration, another protest.
Nine years ago, Evelyn left St. Agnes’s a different woman. After all the trauma, after the crippling sense of helplessness, and lack of control over her own life, she vowed she would never again be in a position where she would have to rely on anyone else or feel as powerless as she had. She wasn’t interested in being a housewife, in starting over as if nothing had happened. She longed for a career that would ensure her independence. After convincing her family this was her only way forward, she applied and was accepted to medical school in Montreal.
She was one of only two women in the program, and things weren’t easy for either her or Marie. But on her very first day, she also met Tom, who sat next to her in their Introduction to Human Anatomy class. He was different from the other men, who viewed Evelyn and Marie with either suspicion, disdain, or uninhibited sexual interest. Tom became not only her best friend, but her roommate, too, along with Marie and one of Tom’s other friends. Despite a ripple of scandalized muttering from those who thought it inappropriate for unmarried women to be living with men, the arrangement worked well for Evelyn. Between having been deemed a “fallen” woman at such a young age and putting up with snide and cruel remarks from her male colleagues, she was past the point of caring much about other people’s muttering, anyway.
But her life changed when Marie came to her room one night to ask her for a favour. She needed an abortion, and she wanted Evelyn to come with her.
“I can’t give all this up,” she told Evelyn, as she paced back and forth along the tattered secondhand bedroom rug. “Not now. I’m here because I want to do something more with my life than my mother did. I can’t go back to being dependent on my parents. I can’t even bear the thought. And I could never give a baby up for adoption. It would ruin me.” She glanced at Evelyn through wet eyelashes. “I hope you don’t think me awful for it.”
Evelyn chewed her lip, then reached out, stopping Marie midstride. “I understand more than you can imagine, Marie.”
After witnessing the procedure from her vantage point at the top of Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s surgical table, where she held Marie’s hand and spoke soothingly, Evelyn became possessed by an idea, which became a dare, and eventually a plan. She called Dr. Morgentaler’s office to set up a meeting the following week, and told him exactly why she wanted to learn how to perform the abortion procedure. For the first time since she had left St. Agnes’s, she spoke openly to a stranger about what had gone on there.
“I never had a say in what happened to me,” she’d told the doctor. “I had no control. And watching you the other day, with Marie—if I had known the kind of pain I would feel, being forced to give up my child like that…” She shook her head. “I loved my daughter. I desperately wanted to keep her, and I wasn’t allowed to. But if things had been different, if I had gotten pregnant today and didn’t want to be, well, an abortion could save a woman from a life sentence of pain, couldn’t it?”
As she spoke the truth that drove her to his office, Dr. Morgentaler watched her from behind the thick glasses perched on his nose. Evelyn looked down at her lap, traced her finger along the scar at her wrist, faded to white now after so many years.
“I lost everything. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I don’t want other women to have to feel what I feel. I need them to at least have a choice. And I saw that potential when I came in with Marie.”
He was silent for a moment. Evelyn bit down hard on her fear and met his gaze, surprised by the kindness there.
“I understand, Miss Taylor,” he said quietly.
Evelyn felt a prickle at the corners of her eyes. “Forgive me, Dr. Morgentaler. Women aren’t permitted moments of weakness in the medical profession. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, please.” Dr. Morgentaler unlinked his fingers and leaned forward in his chair. “And listen to me carefully, Miss Taylor, because this is very important. Do not mistake your humanity for weakness. It is, unfortunately, a common misconception.”