Introduction
The women's health movement emerged from abortion reform activism in the late 1960s, becoming an important component of the second wave of feminism, and I am privileged to have been a part of it through my work at the Federation of Feminist Women's Health Centers (FFWHCs), an association of more than a dozen women's clinics based on the West Coast, with centers in Atlanta, Georgia, and Tallahassee, Florida, my hometown. The FFWHCs grew out of an abortion referral service in Los Angeles that was openly active before the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down in 1973. Two months after the decision, the group opened the first freestanding abortion clinic in the United States, opening others in the following five years. These clinics became part of a nationwide network of women-owned clinics and health information centers that flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. Carol Downer, founder and longtime CEO of the group, and Lorraine Rothman, founder of the Orange County FWHC in Santa Ana, California, true godmothers of the women's health movement, promoted the concept of self-empowerment and self-knowledge through the use of a personal plastic speculum, which made the vagina, previously a province solely of gynecologists, accessible to women themselves. I worked at the Tallahassee Feminist Women's Health Center, cofounded by my friend Lynn Heidelberg, and in 1977, and later was hired to edit a book on women's reproductive health, written by the FFWHCs. The project eventually yielded two books: A New View of a Woman's Body: An Illustrated Guide and How to Stay Out of the Gynecologist's Office, both published in 1981.The early editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves opened a tsunami of hitherto unavailable information about basic physiology and self-care, and provided sophisticated critiques of medical studies enabled women to make truly informed choices about the diagnosis and treatment of common conditions, from yeast infections to cancer. I benefited enormously from this information, and working as a lay health worker in the clinic in Los Angeles provided an even deeper level of knowledge and skills. Through my work on both the books and my work in the clinic, I gained new insights into abortion, birth control, vaginal health, sexuality, childbirth, donor insemination, hysterectomy, and the highly charged politics of women's health. As I talked to women about their health concerns, it was not only enormously gratifying to be able to provide information that was often desperately needed, but to offer these clinical services on a woman-to-woman basis. In the clinic, we provided in-depth information, and I noticed that clients were often relieved that we weren't gynecologists. We did most of our health care in groups, teaching breast self-exam, showing women our cervixes before we helped them see their own, and giving out plastic speculums as freely as other businesses distribute ballpoint pens. We taught our doctors how to perform abortions using the smallest possible instruments to minimize discomfort and allow the procedure to be done without anesthesia. We established a later abortion hospital program that served women from the western United States, Canada, and Mexico; taught ourselves to fit cervical caps; and started the first donor insemination program outside of a commercial sperm bank. We gave papers and workshops at conferences such as the National Women's Studies Association, the American Public Health Association, Planned Parenthood, and the National Abortion Federation. Staff members traveled to Mexico, Central America, Europe, and the Middle East to meet feminists who shared our concerns. And we published our books.
After leaving the FFWHCs, I moved to New York City and began writing books about women's health, including The Complete Cervical Cap Guide, and collaborating on books like Overcoming Bladder Disorders and A Woman's Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, RU-486. I also lectured at universities and women's groups across the country and spoke at sexuality conferences around the globe, including the First International Conference on Orgasm in New Delhi, and the World Congress of Sexology in Heidelberg, Yokohama, and Hong Kong.
