Women's health movement in the United States
The environmental and anti-nuclear movements, like the WHM, oppose militarism, critique corporations and government agencies, express the need to protect humans and the environment from hazards, and stress the importance of Nothing About Us Without Us.
[9] Rather than simply desiring legal equality, members believed that the moral and social climate in the United States needed to change.
[citation needed] By attending CR groups, women around the United States participated in "a process in which the sharing of personal stories led to a "click"--a sudden recognition that sexism lay at the root of their struggles.
They discussed topics such as illegal abortions, rape, negative experiences with doctors during childbirth and gynecologist visits, sexuality, birth control, and other aspects of women's health.
Anthropologist Sandra Morgen argues that there are four founding events of the WHM: the workshop and research that led to the writing of Our Bodies, Ourselves in Boston, the founding of the underground abortion service by the Jane Collective in Chicago, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman's self-help gynecology in Los Angeles, and Barbara Seaman's (New York) and Belita Cowan's (Ann Arbor) work to expose the health risks of the oral contraceptive pill and diethylstilbestrol.
While still heading the Society for Humane Abortion, Maginnis set-up another organization in 1966 to carry on an underground feminist health referral system.
Together, the Army of Three (Maginnis, Gurner, and Lana Phelan) planned and executed civil disobedience actions in the late 1960s in order to overturn abortion laws in California.
In 1968, after multiple bouts of handing out pamphlets with information about contraception and sexually transmitted infections (which was illegal under San Francisco's Municipal Ordinance 188), Maginnis was arrested.
[27] Cowan brought together a group of female former patients at the University of Michigan’s student health center and organized Advocates for Medical Information.
[28][29] This group aimed to educate women in the side effects of the DES pill and to oppose the use of it at the University Hospital and other health centers in the country.
When the birth control pill came on the market in 1960, Barbara Seaman was writing columns for women's magazines such as Brides and the Ladies' Home Journal.
[37] The collective was started by activists in the women's liberation movement in an effort to address the increasing number of unsafe abortions being performed by untrained providers.
The collective originated in 1969 with University of Chicago student Heather Booth, who helped her friend's sister find an abortion provider.
"[41] As a result of this goal, they spent the summer researching topics they were interested in and began teaching a course titled after the workshop, based on what they had learned and written about.
They used rhetoric that avoided describing the female reproductive system as passive, unproductive, helpless, or powerless, unlike any doctor or book at the time.
Their writing was so sought after that they started selling their research as a 35-cent, 136-page booklet called Women and Their Bodies, published in 1970 by the New England Free Press.
Karman let them observe several abortions and an IUD insertion, during which Downer saw a woman's cervix for the first time and was "amazed"[44] at how close and accessible it was.
On April 7, 1971, a group of women (including Downer) interested in starting their own abortion clinic met at Everywoman's Bookstore in Venice, California.
"[44] Downer then laid down on a table in the room and performed her own cervical examination in front of all the women, who were initially surprised but then crowded around her, observing her cervix.
From the extensive mailing list collected during these demonstrations, Downer and Rothman began a national tour, going to 23 cities in the United States to teach women the new technique.
[49] In 1974, Belita Cowan, Barbara Seaman, Phyllis Chesler, Mary Howell, and Alice Wolfson established the National Women's Health Network.
She attended numerous meetings of medical professionals, interrupting presentations, questioning conclusions, and speaking against the prevalent practices of one-step breast cancer surgery and radical mastectomy.
[52][53] The center's establishment was motivated in part by Kushner's desire to promote patient self-help and mutual support, thus displacing the medical profession and the American Cancer Society from their roles as information "gatekeepers".
[54] In spite of her unpopularity with the mainstream medical profession, Kushner's work was well received in the public and won increasing respect in official circles.
In June 1977, she was the only lay member appointed to a ten-member National Institutes of Health (NIH) panel that evaluated treatment options for primary breast cancer.
[55][53] Additionally, Kushner convinced her fellow panel members to include a statement calling for an end to the one-step surgical procedure.
[58] According to this study, one third of physician daughters reported experiencing a form of gender discrimination in medical school, field training, and the work environment.
A sharp increase of women in the medical field led to developments in doctor patient relationships, changes in terminology, and theory.
Kline says that "to ensure that young brides were ready for the wedding night, they [doctors] used the pelvic exam as a form of sex instruction.
[61] Tanfer Emin Tunc argues that the Army of Three, the Jane collective, and Downer and Rothman's menstrual extraction technique have contributed to abortion technology in America.
