Willa Jewitt ’26

This past February, I had the opportunity to travel to Boston, through the Evalyn Clark Memorial Travel Fellowship, to visit the Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library, since the library’s focus is on archiving documents about and written by American women. My thesis is centered around the Society for Humane Abortion (SHA), an organization that existed from 1962–1976, and explores how both the SHA and the American state used women’s bodies as sites to develop their ideas of resistance and control.

A major part of the SHA was their transnational abortion network that connected American women to Mexican abortion providers, and they had every woman that traveled to Mexico for an abortion write an evaluation of their experience. In the archive at the Schlesinger there are hundreds of these evaluations, and while at the archive I focused on reading these sources. I had six different boxes to peruse, and each of those boxes had hundreds of folders, with each folder containing hundreds of documents. This extensive collection was a little intimidating at first, but since I knew the specific parts of the organization I wanted to look at, it was easier to organize and sort the documents. The women wrote about their emotional and physical journeys for the abortion procedure, and being able to read these women’s stories was such a rewarding experience. These sources are a key aspect of my thesis and having the opportunity to access so many primary sources at once was amazing.

Another part of the archive that I explored was microfilm of old newspapers about the SHA and abortions in Mexico. By working with microfilm I gained an appreciation for all of the care that goes into preserving these documents. Being in the archive brings you closer to the history, and seeing the documents in person allows for a greater understanding of connections between the sources. I encourage every history major to apply to the Clark Fellowship—the experience will allow you to gain new understandings and perspectives on your research!