Women's Health in Women's Hands

In 1973, feminists scored a victory for women’s reproductive rights in the courts with Roe v. Wade.  For almost 40 years, the courts have mostly upheld those rights.  Those same 40 years, state and federal legislatures have waged a relentless battle against these rights, mostly successful in withholding federal funding for abortion and forcing minors to get parental consent, but otherwise unable to bar abortion. 

Today, legislatures are scoring victories.  Clinics in Texas have been shut down, pending further court review of restrictive regulations.  So, the masses of women must cease to rely solely on the courts and abortion advocates fighting in the courts and doing lobbying in the state and federal capitols.  We must take the issue to the streets or to other mass protest methods.

Our protests must be focused and directed.  We need to identify the who, the what, the where and the when of these legislative attacks.

- Carol Downer

December Newsletter: Hyde Amendment, OC NWPC Report, and Next Meeting

Women's Health in Women's Hands

December Newsletter
http://eepurl.com/KSU4b

Women’s Health in Women’s Hands is a website by Carol Downer.  It features DIY Gynecology, with lots of woman-to-woman information about our reproductive and sexual anatomy, choices in the birth setting and breastfeeding, safe and effective birth control, abortion, menstruation, menopause, and menstrual extraction—told frankly from an independent woman’s point of view.

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To subscribe - email whwh@womenshealthinwomenshands.org

Newsletter Features:

Orange County National Women’s Political Caucus Gathering/Presentation (Report by Carol Downer)

IT’S TIME TO WAGE A OFFENSIVE WAR TO DEFEAT ANTI-CHOICE LEGISLATION! (Information by Carol Downer)

UNFINISHED BATTLE DISCUSSION GROUP in Los Angeles, CA (Note: Meeting postponed til January 11, 2014)

Midwives Alliance of North America 2013

WHY DO WE NEED A DISCUSSION AMONGST WOMEN'S HEALTH ACTIVISTS ABOUT THE NEED FOR A UNIFIED APPROACH TO WOMEN'S SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS?

By Carol Downer

I am attending the MANA conference this October 24-27 in Portland, Oregon.  I will be setting up an exhibit table, distributing flyers, displaying our books, selling speculums and talking to conference attendees.  I will have a display that draws attention to the main issues in women’s reproductive and sexual health and graphically shows that they are interrelated and inseparable from one another.

MANA is expecting between 300-500 conference attendees comprised of midwives, nurses, physicians, childbirth educators, doulas, parents, midwifery students, and childbirth advocates.  I hope that 300-400 attendees will pass by my booth and see the display which features an array of photos of women in childbirth, women having abortions, birth control methods, nursing babies and our books “A New View of a Woman’s Body” to create the image of the interrelatedness of these events in women’s lives.  I hope to to be able to have a meaningful interaction with at least one hundred people, and that many more will take one or more pamphlets or flyers to look at later.

I hope to get the conversation going around the need for pro-choice feminists to embrace the cause of natural childbirth and nursing and the corresponding need for midwives, doulas and other birth workers to wholeheartedly support women’s rights to sex education, birth control and abortion.

I also hope to learn more about the extent and the nature of the persecution of midwives.