The NWHN researched and lobbied federal agencies on such issues as AIDS, reproductive rights, breast cancer, older women's health, and new contraceptive technologies.
[2] The NWHN was founded in late 1975 as the National Women's Health Lobby by Barbara Seaman, Alice Wolfson, Belita Cowan, Mary Howell, and Phyllis Chesler.
The protest was planned for those days because two scientific studies done on the risks of estrogenic drugs were about to be published in The New England Journal of Medicine and inside the building, the FDA was going to be holding hearings on the risks of DES (diethylstilbestrol)--formerly prescribed to pregnant women in order to prevent miscarriages and other complications, by 1971 DES had been found to cause a rare cancer, clear-cell adenocarcinoma of the vagina, in women and girls exposed to the drug in utero—and whether to mandate patient packaging inserts for estrogen replacement therapy drugs prescribed to menopausal women.
[6] Speakers included Jim Luggen, a widower whose late wife had died of a pulmonary embolism caused by the oral birth control she was taking; Mary Daly, a radical feminist theologian and philosopher; a DES daughter Sherry Leibowitz; and Barbara Seaman.
[6] Participants carried signs reading "Feed Estrogen to the Rats at the FDA" and "Women's Health, Not Drug Company Wealth".
Content consisted of independently researched articles on current events, health policy, awareness campaigns, informational topics, and medical updates.
Articles in the Women's Health Activist spoke out against many government actions including the FDA's re-approval of silicone gel breast implants.