A Los Angeles mother of six, Carol Downer, is planning a January tour to 70 feminist centers across the country where she will teach women to perform abortions by using a kit made from ordinary items such as plastic tubing and canning jars.
In Chicago, women are talking about reviving an illegal abortion service called "Jane" which performed 11,000 abortions in the years before the Supreme Court legalized the procedure.
A Baltimore Quaker women's group is compiling a list of people willing to assist in an underground railroad that would transport women from states where abortion is restricted to states where it is more easily accessible.
These developments suggest that, while the majority of pro-choice advocates are still dedicated to keeping abortion legal, part of the population has a new strategy.
If Roe vs. Wade is overturned or further compromised, a coalition of religious activists, midwives, feminist health-care workers and others intends to take abortion underground.
"We're tired of men in federal and state government having control over women's bodies. We want to take control ourselves," said Mary Ellen McNish, associate executive director of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, and an organizer of the Quaker underground railroad.
The underground movement began to take shape in the months after the Supreme Court's July 3 Webster decision, which was interpreted as giving states the right to limit access to abortions. Independently, several groups came to the conclusion that they would help women obtain abortions whether or not it was legal and whether or not doctors were willing to perform the procedure.
The Quaker approach is to revive a concept from the days of slavery when Quakers and others operated "safe houses" for slaves escaping to the North. They plan to spirit women from states like Pennsylvania where a new law bans abortions after the 24th week of pregnancy to more liberal states like New York. Quakers may also be getting help in their project from the Unitarian Universalist Assn. whose president, William Schulz, recently said Unitarians would be "eager" to help transport women in the name of freedom of choice.
However, the bulk of underground activity is not in transportation. Most activists are working to free women from dependence on the medical profession by teaching alternative abortion techniques that can be performed by lay people. Among the possible methods are ancient herbal potions that trigger abortion, the French abortion pill RU 486 that might be available in this country in a few years, and a technique called menstrual extraction, which was invented by a San Diego elementary school teacher, Lorraine Rothman, in 1971.
Menstrual extraction involves suctioning the contents of the uterus. The technique should not be tried as a do-it-yourself operation, but is best performed by groups of women who have been trained in the method, Rothman said.
Underground sympathizers are dividing their time between promoting alternatives such as menstrual extraction and marching in pro-choice rallies. While preparing to go underground, they haven't given up on mainstream victory.
Rachel Atkins, spokeswoman for the Vermont Women's Health Center, expressed a common sentiment when she said, "I think it's important that we don't give up the battle for legal abortion. But, I think we also have to be prepared and aware and strategizing for a worst-case scenario."
Added Charlotte Taft, director of the Routh Street Women's Clinic in Dallas: "This is a good time to do the planning, before we see laws that make it impossible to even talk about abortion."
Taft and others believe that if alternatives to medical abortion are widely available, there is less chance restrictive legislation will be passed.
"It's an intelligent public relations ploy," said Peg Yorkin, West Coast chief of the Fund for the Feminist Majority. "It's saying, 'Listen, fellows, we've got these alternatives and we'll use them.' "
Some believe the potential for a successful underground abortion movement is greater now than it was in the years before the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion.
"There would be a lot more women involved this time around," said Jody Howard, one of the original members of the "Jane" abortion network. "The medical mystique (surrounding abortion) has broken down. Now women realize they can help each other this way."
While an underground movement would be facilitated by a wider range of support in the 1990s, Howard said, it would be hampered by aggressive anti-abortion forces that did not exist in the late '60s and early '70s.
Indeed, Andy Scholberg, assistant director of the Pro-Life Action League, is confident anti-abortionists could "crack" any underground system that developed. "They (the illegal abortionists) would always have to be wondering: 'Is this woman a plant?' " he said.
