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Women's Health in
Women's Hands
Remaking the World with a
Feminist Vision
Seated Woman w/Visible Uterus
WOMEN'S HEALTH IN WOMEN'S HANDS
A New View of a Woman's Body
The self-help branch of the women's health movement started in 1971 in Los Angeles, California.
A woman in Northern California looked at her cervix with a speculum, hand mirror and a digital camera! She has posted a beautiful collection of her and other women's cervixes on the My Beautiful Cervix Project web site. Click on photo to see.
Women's sexuality has been repressed by law and custom. It is our human right to experience joy from physical pleasure and intimacy. Knowing about our bodies' healthy functioning helps us to attain our rights. Drawing by Suzann Gage.
National women's organizations brought together an estimated 1.15 Million women to protest the gradual erosion of abortion rights over the thirty years since Roe v. Wade. Click on photo for Abortion Speak-Out Campaign.
March For Women's Lives, 2004
The Chico Feminist Women's Health Specialists in California was started by 9 women in 1975. Today, now the Women's Health Specialists, despite anti-abortion violence, state harassment, opposition from local anti-abortion doctors, it's grown to 4 clinics in Northern California. The WHS travels internationally to spread self-help. Click on photo of FWHC for more.
Eight staff members of Women's Health Specialists in Redding California sends their greetings to you to say, "Happiness is Knowing Your Own Cervix!"
Our Reproduction & Sexuality
We show how to do vaginal self-examination by yourself or with others. This woman is seeing her cervix for the first time with friends.
We are BREAKING THE TABOO of looking at our and each other's genitals, respecting OUR gender and body diversity and honoring each woman's experiences.
We now have a COMPLETELY NEW BODY OF KNOWLEDGE about our healthy body's functions and CELEBRATE our right to sexual pleasure.
We 1) INVENTED menstrual extraction, 2) REDEFINED the clitoris, 3) INFLUENCED non-traumatic, respectful abortion care in the United States, and 4) HUMANIZED adoption practices.
We continue to EXPOSE and OPPOSE 1) dangerous drugs and devices for birth control or HPV prevention and hormone replacement "therapy" 2) myths of menopause, and 3) brutal obstetrical practices. We EDUCATE about the motives and practices of population control forces; we daily FACE DOWN the anti-abortion forces.
The woman receiving the Menstrual Extraction" controls the procedure. She inserts her speculum, then after another member of the group inserts the sterile cannula and crimps or pinches the tubing between the collection jar and the cannula, she pumps the syringe to build up a vacuum. The other members attend her, listening for her reactions and instructions. Click on "Our Periods" to learn about why and how women sometimes extract their menstrual periods.
As Access Slides, Feminists Need to
"Extract " From Our Self-Help Past
(By Carol Downer)
[Originally published in On The Issues Magazine]
If working in the abortion movement for over 40 years qualifies me to gaze into my crystal ball to see the future for abortion rights in the United States, here goes.
Prediction Number One: I see the Supreme Court continuing to interpret Roe v. Wade in a way that will make abortion, especially later abortion, more expensive, less convenient to access and more humiliating, but I do not see the court reversing Roe v. Wade outright. I see clinics closing down due to restrictive regulations and lack of doctors, especially in areas far from an urban center. This lack of access will mostly affect young women and poor women of color. But, as was the case before the decision in Roe v. Wade, the majority of unwillingly pregnant women will continue to get abortions, no matter how far they have to travel or no matter how great the cost or risk.
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