Non-profit abortion services like the CCS would pre-research the logistics so that women could easily make their own arrangements for flights, hotels, and medical services. They would secure discounts for impoverished abortion-seekers and sometimes get medical fees waived altogether. On the other hand, for-profit abortion services functioned like a travel agency and charged a referral/service fee, which ranged from modest to exorbitant.

Protestant and Jewish religious leaders in the United States, who had been steering women to safe abortion providers for years, quickly tapped into the expanding trans-Atlantic abortion network. The Clergy Consultation Service, for example, carefully vetted British abortion providers for quality of medical care and overall hospitality. After experiencing difficulties with other providers, they directed hundreds of their clients to Dr David Sopher, a Bombay-born physician who had earned patients’ regard for his attentive bedside manner and his slow and careful methods.⁠

Sopher began providing abortions, not for money, which he later described as a fringe benefit, but in response to patients’ needs. “If something needed to be done and could be done safely and legally, then I would do it,” he stated about abortion. Whereas some British physicians openly bragged about charging high fees to international travellers, Sopher maintained a fixed rate: $385 up to the 13th week of pregnancy; $425 up to the 16th week; $525 up to the 19th week; and $725 up to the 24th week. For patients who could not afford to pay, he would provide his services for free.

Soon, women counselled by clergy from across the United States began flying to London to get abortions at the Lady Margaret Nursing Home, an old English mansion where Dr Sopher worked. But getting abortion-seekers from the United States to London – especially those who were inexperienced travellers – was not straightforward. In an era when information was all analogue, abortion travel was logistically demanding. Consequently, an essential aspect of the CCS’s pastoral care was helping travellers navigate potential pitfalls.

To that end, the CCS and other clergy taught women how to get a passport and a travel visa, where to purchase airline tickets, where to pick up luggage upon arrival, which flights to take, where to exchange money (and at what rate), and where to stay overnight. They also advised women on what to say to, and how to pay, the doctor; what to expect during the procedure; and how to care for themselves before, during and after their abortions. These tips oriented inexperienced travellers to English culture, de-stigmatised and explained medical procedures, and lessened their clients’ stress and fears.

But – perhaps most importantly – this guidance saved women precious time at a moment when acquiring basic information about getting an abortion and travelling to get one could take weeks or even months to ascertain. With this medical procedure, time was of the essence – so practical advice was a game-changer.

The CCS’s advice to abortion-seekers often emulated the style of American travel guidebooks, offering tips to make the trip comfortable while conveying American assumptions about food and hospitality. The CCS’s multipage guides to London, for example, repeatedly griped about British food even as they suggested certain restaurants to travellers. The Lansing Michigan CCS version of this book bluntly explained, “Salads and coffee are to be avoided in England as they are usually poor” and described Wimpy Bars as “an English version of the Big Boy, but worse.”⁠ The same guide also bitterly complained about British heating practices and advised packing extra sweaters. These culinary and clothing tips, however, were hardly the most important advice clergy offered abortion-seekers – the real danger was the difficult men they might encounter while travelling.

Clergy worried about male border officials humiliating women with probing or insensitive questions. To that end, clergy supplied ready-made answers to appease “a blunt or insensitive official”⁠ in the UK who might crudely enquire about their unwanted pregnancies and motivations for abortions. They advised travellers to simply tell customs officials that they were travelling to England “‘for emergency’ (personal reasons/family gathering), ‘limited’ vacation time abroad, study leave, or any other response which adequately indicates the need for haste.”

Listen: Mary Fissell talks about women’s reproductive health in early modern Europe and America on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. She discusses how women dealt with their periods, theories about fertility, ideas about the female body and the childbirth process

But border officials were only the first obstacle. CCS clergy emphasised that women had to be especially cautious around London’s taxis drivers. Numerous women had reported encounters with cabbies who received commissions for diverting patients to rival abortion providers. Dr David Sopher wrote to American clergy and warned of how taxi drivers operated. One cab driver, he stated, told a patient that Sopher’s clinic had been burnt down. In another instance, when Sopher’s staff confronted a taxi driver who was attempting to redirect a patient, the cabbie reportedly told them that money motivated his dishonesty: “We too have to make a living and we get no joy from you,”⁠ he reportedly exclaimed.

Dr Sopher’s warning prompted the Los Angeles CCS to alert abortion-travellers about “Taxicab banditry”⁠ and for the New York City CCS to “warn women in the counseling session against believing any cab driver who claimed that Dr. Sopher was on vacation, arrested, or dead.”⁠ The big takeaway, clergy explained to travellers, was: “Do not talk to taxi drivers about the purpose of your trip.⁠” The British press also reported this malfeasance, prompting the Secretary for Social Services to pursue the matter during an a 1969 inquiry into the “mass immigration” of abortion-seekers from around the world.

Most abortion-seekers were able to easily surmount these obstacles because of clergy guidance. On a practical level, women guided by clergy to Dr Sopher and other providers came prepared for what awaited them. “I must say,” Dr Sopher recalled, “that the ones who came to me from the Clergy Consultation Service, they were all very confident, never had the slightest doubt about what was going to go on, they were briefed … knew the background, knew the safety factors and so on. They were much easier to deal with than anybody who just came off the street, so to speak.”

One discerning traveller described the medical treatment there as excellent. But, she commented, the Lady Margaret was “furnished with what I would call Good Will rejects”. For this grateful patient, the furniture was the greatest of her complaints. She, like so many others who had been advised by clergy, walked into Dr Sopher’s office without incident to receive world-class medical treatment.

Through clergy counselling, abortion-seekers arrived in London buoyed by expectations of competent and compassionate medical treatment. This, at a moment when women were being denied abortions for unwanted pregnancies at home. As such, finding professional and compassionate care abroad left an impression. “I would have never been able to understand why a young, healthy, married woman, with two children would not want to carry and have a third child once the pregnancy occurred; especially if there is love and understanding in such a home,” wrote one woman to a clergyman. “But it happened to me.” Like so many others, this woman had to travel at great cost and over several days to undergo a surgery that often took less than 15 minutes to perform.