REVIEWED BY AISLINN O’KEEFFE

engage in a sustained campaign of civil disobedience, providing around 30 abortions per day in the homes of members and supporters. Of the 11,000 abortions that were carried out through Jane, there were no fatalities.

In 1972, the Chicago homicide department raided one of the Collective’s apartments looking for a male doctor. Upon finding that it was the members of Jane who were providing abortions, seven members were arrested and charged with 11 counts of abortion and conspirary to commit abortion. Each woman faced up to a maximum of a 110-year prison sentence, with 1–10 years possible on each count. After the Supreme Court ruled on roe v. Wade, which legalised abortion in the US, all charges were dropped against the “Abortion 7” and the Jane Collective disbanded.

While Jane disbanded, issues of inaccessibility still existed particularly for those in rural areas, and systemic racism within the medical establishment meant that, then and now, maternal mortality rates for Black women are almost twice as high as for white women. Significantly, right-wing fundementalist groups began their decades-long lobby to overturn roe.

As members of Jane note in the documentary, their

Nothing Compares

Directed by Kathryn Ferguson

Showtime Documentary Films, 2022

reviewed by Aislinn O’Keeffe

nothing compares opens with a young Sinead O’Connor in 1992, supporting Bob Dylan in concert, in front of a roaring audience – with half the audience cheering, the other half booing. Weeks of demonisation and mockery by the media had done its job and O’Connor was now a pariah and the butt of a cruel joke to many.

A couple of weeks earlier, Sinead had torn up a photo of Pope John Paul II on live television in protest of the cover-up of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. This brave act of resistance epitomises the authenticity and uncompromising nature of O’Connor’s principles. Principles for which, as many warned or threatened, she would face consequences. These consequences came in the shape of a campaign of vilification and mockery by the mainstream press which left the young artist isolated and overwhelmed by sadness. Unsurprisingly, the Catholic Church did not face any official consequences for its actions, though it has lost critical public support in recent years. O’Connor has been unofficially vindicated.

The artist’s immense talent and incredible vocals, at times a whisper at others a roar of defiance, carry the work was a “drop in the ocean” when it came to meeting the demand for abortion care. Their impact through their campaign of civil disobedience spanned much further, revealing the inherent cruelty of abortion bans. Tia Lessin, one of the directors of the film said, “We show really clearly in the film what happens when abortion is legal in one state and not legal in another… We saw who’s able to make the trip and who gets left behind. It’s very cut and dried. It’s along racial lines, it’s along economic lines – we saw it then and we’re seeing it right now, and we will see it on steroids in the coming years. ”

The fight for bodily autonomy – including free and readily accessible abortion and gender affirming healthcare – must be interwoven with an anticapitalist and socialist perspective that fights the inequality, class division, sexism and racism of the system at its root. right now, our siblings in the US in Socialist Alternative have been energetically seeking to build an urgent fightback against the ravages of roe’s defeat, advocating for a mass working-class struggle for abortion rights and access, spearheading protests, and helping to win any and every mechanism for increased abortion rights possible.n

viewer through the art and interior world of probably the greatest musical artist that Ireland has produced. Often absent from the capitalist media, but amply utilised here, the artist’s own voice guides us on a journey through her oeuvre and her influences both personal and political, both of which are never quite separate. As second wave feminists have pointed out the personal is political.