Review: Looking for Jane by Heather Marshall

We see women's rights debated daily in the news. (How has this even become a debate?) We see people working hard to remove rights from fully half of the population, in accordance with nothing so much as their paternalistic ideas of what is right for everyone. (It goes without saying that they are incorrect on every front on which they might argue.) Any decision about pregnancy, abortion, adoption, or fertility treatments should be made by the woman whose body is the one in question. I trust her to make the best decision for herself and her future life. Anyone who doesn't should examine why not a little (a lot) closer. As we step backwards, closer to a time when women were not allowed to choose for themselves, a time that feels awfully, terribly like the present right about now, there will be more and more stories, fiction and non, reminding us of what we risk when we lose personal choice. Heather Marshall's novel Looking for Jane is one of these. It's a triple stranded narrative set in Canada in 2017, 1971, and 1980, about secrets, choices, women's bodily autonomy, and the brave network of women determined to ensure the government treated women as fully adult human beings capable of making their own decisions about their health and lives.

Angela Creighton, who manages an antiques and used bookstore, finds an unopened letter which was misdelivered to the shop almost 10 years prior. After reading the life-changing message inside it, she decides to find the intended recipient, partly as a way to distract her from the fertility problems she and her wife are currently experiencing. As Angela searches for the letter's addressee, she learns about the Jane Network, an underground network of women, including abortion providers, who offered safe procedures for women before abortion was legalized in Canada in 1988.

In addition to the search for the intended recipient of the letter, two other stories weave through the narrative as well. The first follows Dr. Evelyn Taylor, who, as a teenager, was sent to a Catholic maternity home for unwed mothers and forced to give up her baby. Having never recovered from the trauma of this, she trained as an ob/gyn and joins the Jane Network in order to offer other women more choice than she was ever given. The second is that of Nancy Mitchell, a woman raised in a family crippled by silence and secrets. When she finds herself pregnant two decades after Dr. Taylor's experiences, her choices are still very limited but she finds the Jane Network and Dr. Taylor. She joins the Janes herself to help the women who find themselves in the same situation she herself was in, always keeping her involvement a secret, even from those she loves the most.

The stories of these three women come together in ways that are perhaps not very surprising (except in one case) but Marshall's story of life for women without unfettered access to health care is increasingly important as our sovereignty over ourselves and our reproductive care is slashed, hacked, eroded and legislated against by a faux moralistic minority. Although the Jane Network and abortion are a significant piece of the books, Marshall also includes adoption and fertility struggles as they are also important choices for women to have. Marshall captures the shame of a society that judges women (and only women) for pregnancies out of wedlock. She touches on the great harm, both immediate and lifelong, done to young women without their consent by organizations purporting to be in their best interests. She brings the whispers out into the open, into the light of day. The story is engaging and fast paced and while the end might be a little tidy, it is a good and pertinent read.