“Dido Hasper: Dido was my dear friend for over 35 years; I am grandmother to her two children, Carmen and Joe. When I first met Dido, she and the other women in the collective were in their mid-twenties. Their clinic in Chico was popular with the women in the University community from the start. Dido emerged as a talented and wise leader, utterly without pretension. She had a great capacity to enjoy life. Under her guidance, the clinic survived attacks from anti-abortionist picketers, anti-abortion attacks from the government and lack of support by local physicians, and expanded into other Northern California areas. In fact, the clinic enjoys support of the entire Chico community.”
Lorraine Rothman: In our early days when we were a small group that could meet in our living rooms, Lorraine gained the respect of the group, because she was well-organized and brought a lot of enterprise, ingenuity and humor to our group efforts. Like many radical women’s liberation groups at that time, we were totally collective, meaning that we were leaderless, because it was considered oppressive to have a leader. I felt that our group was at a critical juncture where we could decide to perfect our skills at menstrual extraction and start an underground abortion service, or we could spread the ideas of self-help and menstrual extraction to other groups. So, it was with great trepidation that, after we had been meeting for a couple of months, I announced that I thought I should be the leader of the group because I felt that I had a vision of where we wanted to go as a group, which was to put our energies into starting a self-help movement. There was an awkward silence while people looked around the room at each other. Frankly, I think that the others probably thought that if we needed a leader at all, it should be Lorraine, because of her obvious leadership abilities. At last, Lorraine spoke up. She said, “I think that we need a leader, and I think it should be Carol. I like where she’s taking us.” The matter was settled. Throughout our long association, Lorraine and I had mutual respect and affection, and most importantly, we shared the same vision.
Barbara Seaman: Lorraine and I met Barbara Seaman at the 1985 Conference on Women and Health in Boston. Barbara was the keynote speaker. She was an established Eastern movement star. She had written two major books, “Free and Female” and “The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill”. We were a couple of housewives from the West Coast who knew nothing of the publishing world or the national health bureaucrats or national TV talk show hosts that Barbara knew on a first-name basis. When we sat down to have tea with her at the restaurant in the conference center, she welcomed us, showing a genuine interest in us as individuals, plying us with questions, such as, “How many children do you have?” “You’re both still married?” “How did you get the idea to tour the country with your speculums? She introduced us to her young daughter, Sheyla, who was accompanying her. By the time we had drunk our tea, we were friends with Barbara. Whenever we came to Washington, we stayed at her apartment.
Barbara extended this same warmth and affection to all the women in the women’s health movement. She was generally recruiting us to a project or sharing her ideas about something we should all do together. They were very good projects and she was successful in accomplishing most of them.
...The only committee that seemed at all relevant to my situation was the abortion rights committee. Lana Phelan, a striking blond woman in her late forties was its chair. She gave her report in ringing tones. I was impressed...I went up to Lana Phelan to ask her about the abortion rights committee. She first answered my accusatory question very forthrightly, without a trace of apology “Honey, you work with whoever will work with you. Heavens knows that any of us can get pregnant and often do, so that puts us pretty much in the same boat, don’t you think?”
Excerpt from “How did you get involved in the Women’s Movement?”
To contact us:
2250 Fair Park Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Phone : 323-960-5026
Fax: 323-960-5026
E-Mail: womenshealthinwomenshands@womenshealthinwomenshands.org
Home | Self-Help | Anatomy | How To Stay Out of Gynecologists | Birth Control | Abortion | Menstrual Extraction | Carol’s Website | History | Library | Archives | Related Links | Contributions | Call To Action | Contact Us |