Unknown Speaker 00:03 I looked over the list of people that were going to be in the workshop, parents and a lot of people in health care connection Unknown Speaker 00:10 so maybe Unknown Speaker 00:14 introduce ourselves and then I'll talk for a little bit I'm dying to talk a little bit try to keep it for you Unknown Speaker 00:54 My name is Dan Malloy, I wanted to help planner for a special project that a monetary hospital which is inherited either whether the project will happen or whether Unknown Speaker 01:12 it's yours, I'm writing my dissertation on federal Unknown Speaker 01:15 policy. My name is Eddie Bremen, and I'm retired from the house. Dining only and unwanted volunteers at St. Mark's. Unknown Speaker 02:14 And as I teach public health nutrition, Teachers College Columbia Unknown Speaker 02:18 comm Rob and Marcus Shavon. Unknown Speaker 02:26 Illustrator and social workers, Unknown Speaker 02:28 Emily Heilbrunn. I'm a law student. And I'm connected with the women's counseling project, Unknown Speaker 02:32 which is a full service. I'm Dr. Cohen. I'm also one of the volunteers at St. Mark clinic. And hopefully, we'll go to medical. As I said, I'm doing Unknown Speaker 02:47 and my background is is soc. I'm a sociologist, which probably will sneak out in the presentation to deal with more practical things, what was esoteric things. I'm also currently at Virginia Commonwealth University. So Jerry column last year in the same state, but I think you'll see a very different perspective. And I'm Unknown Speaker 03:21 abroad a little bit on that book. Little bit of background, actually, I should say that when I started to prepare to do this workshop, I'm so accustomed now to talking to groups in the south, which tend to be much less sophisticated in terms of issue. In my experience, they lives in the north, I'm from Chicago for habit contracts, that I started wondering if I was going to be just telling you everything that you already know. And that is probably going to be the case. But since I really don't have a feel for where to start with. With this group, I get very high expectations. Let me just talk a little bit about where I can where I have perceived in the past, the types of controller visa vie women's health and bodies coming from, I like very much to look at historical data, because for one thing, it's fascinating. And secondly, the parallels between what was going on, for example, during the 1800s, and what's going on now so similar. To talk a little bit about that. Let's talk a little bit about the women's healthcare, where we have tried to move in terms of gaining control of our bodies or hitting control of our bodies back to the owners. And then of course, we can't talk about women's health issues at all, I think today without talking some about the right. So I'll try to do that in about Unknown Speaker 04:45 15 or 20 minutes. Unknown Speaker 04:48 I am going to need that because I want to read a couple of things. You can actually, it certainly wasn't during the 1800s of that men starting started to attempt to people with Intel, dating all the way back to the time of the poverties medically that women's reproductive equipment dominated their experience. As a result, women or men have attempted to control women's reproduction and thus control their experience. And in the process of force control women's bodies, the properties and others that period like Plato and early physicians, for example, believe that women remain bear into law that is, did not get married and become sexually active, for me would wander around in her body and would push on other organs and would cause hysteria. hysteria is an interesting concept for women's health care, a concept that has been applied almost exclusively to women. But in other words, they believe that the woman's uterus sort of wandered around her body and lodged in the chest to cause palpitations of the heart and move down into her life like problems and so on. Note also the group word of hysteria of hysterectomy is is hysteria it more appropriately should be uterine ectomy. But really more hysterectomy comes from the idea of stereo. And the idea that women's reproductive organs somehow that their motions up physicians of this period attempted to contain and tame and control this animal and they in fact referred to it as an animal by application of sweetened prowl foul odors. In other words, they believe the uterus was attracted by sweet smelling things and repelled by bad odors. And some of the can read that as far as played on property. You will see for example, treatments like horse feeding lemon, mixtures of feces and frankincense. That would be of course, the uterus effect. And of course, they also believe that love and passion alleviated these conditions. And so of course, they advise women to marry. It's amazing, I think how little things have changed. As feminists, we know that it has been a long hard battle against the male medical establishment or control over our bodies and our reproduction. I want to give now a few more examples of the way that the male medical establishment has attempted to control women's bodies. It's true, both historically, and in contemporary medicine, that physicians and specifically OB guys have regarded the female reproductive equipment as dangerous, dysfunctional, and certainly useless outside of child bearing. And very prominent in the history of both obstetrics and gynecology has been a very aggressive, very aggressive surgical approach to these organs. During the 1800s, this ideology resulted in an epidemic of female castrations. Or at least, it has been referred to as epic as epidemic in proportion. statistics were kept very well during the 1800s. So I can't produce data. But it's described as epidemic of female castrations by physicians who have been referred to I think, appropriately by historians as vaginal architects, they were the old pelvic surgeons. Pelvic surgeons ultimately evolved into gynecologist It was during this period that the normal what we call the normal ovariectomy peaked in popularity, and was performed for a number of things including epilepsy, Nymphomaniac, and something called ovarian insanity. Ehrenreich in English referred to this phenomenon at the psychology of the ovary, a very rational theory to male physicians who believe that psychological disorders were a sign of a varying disease because the ovaries control the motion. So if you accept their original premise then theory is quite logical was that was logical to them. Unknown Speaker 09:25 At a time when Freud was beginning to talk about psychic causes for and I'm not defending for it by any stretch, but at least he was beginning to to give credit to psychic causes for emotional problems. obstetrician gynecologist are these. They really weren't. They weren't wedded yet one specialty but these old pelvic surgeons were contemporary gynecologist. were contributing their own unique therapy for ovarian insanity which was castration. Women who were ruling women didn't feel or didn't fit traditional male notions of female sex role and sexuality. Were given this operation as a form of social control. And if you read back into the old journals, medical journals, you will see there in startling and very honest rhetoric describe the way in which these positions gave or directory overacting these two women often at their husbands request. Because women were not too uppity, they weren't fulfilling their normal role. So, again, by controlling reproduction, medicine controls women's experience, I want to just give you a flavor of the kinds of things they were talking or saying about women during that period of time. In relation to this operation. This is from a Professor of Clinical gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania and 18 add to the disorders of menstrual life in which the ovaries have been successfully removed or fibroid tumors in the womb. Product pelvic peritonitis persistent override is overall ovarian epilepsy does not carry a metal Raja. To this list, there can be no doubt that some forms of insanity ought to be added. The relation which they bear to menstruation often is a very closely so close indeed with the term ovarian insanity with us divide define. Since the verdict of the profession is largely in favor of removal of the ovaries from medical many physical arrangements dependent upon menstruation. The same remedy should be tried for those metal arrangements, which plainly arise or seem to arise from the same source. The objections to such remedies when applied for mental diseases are in fact less valid than when resorted to for physical lesions, or in the first place, an insane woman is no more a member of the body politic than a criminal. Secondly, her death is always a relief to her dearest friends. Thirdly, even in the case of her recovery from mental disease, she is liable to transmit the taint of insanity to her children and our children's children for many generations. The removal therefore, the ovaries in such a case would tend to restore a woman to home into society, and it would at the same time effectively barred her from having insane offspring. From another physician writing in a similar a similar period of time, he says, row Hey Nanton these are all old gynecologist and others have blazed away and what do they tell us? They tell us castration pays. And of course they're funny. They tell us castration pays. The patients are improved, some of them pure, and that the moral sense of the patient is elevated that she becomes in they did use the word she that she become tractable, orderly, industrious, and clean and cleanliness. My own experience in this line has been most happy. So in other words, be curious if patients don't performing with operation at the same time, that the normal normal ovariectomy was popular during the 1800s. There was another operation which was not done to the same extent. But which was certainly done and many many of these kinds of operations were done. And that was the clitoris ectomy. This was done to women who were perceived or defined as the nymphomaniacs. Now of course, the whole idea of nymphomaniacs are interesting, and one can imagine how that would be defined, coming emerging from Victorian times when any kind of interest in in in insects at all, would be defined as unladylike, and could be a manifestation of the nymphomaniac. They also did this operation to women that were suspected of masturbating and found tracks of wealth in the Proceedings of the New York Women's Hospital, which is still here, but it's called something else now. Do you know it? Unknown Speaker 13:56 Was it was it was a hospital, very interesting. opened back in the 1800s by JC Marion Sims, doesn't I believe there's a statue in Central Park is when he was the father of gynecology. He was the one who discovered how to close their skull vaginal fistula, experimenting largely enslaved women in the south, performing on one slave woman anarcho alone over 40 attempts and this was before the days of anesthesia. All of those operations done without anesthesia. What he did is he would travel around to what slave owners in the south and ask them if they had any cases of women who had this particular affliction, which was often a result of the misuse of obstetrical forceps, which we've just discovered and physicians were not very sophisticated with them. It will cause a tear in the lining between the uterus and the bladder it will cause a constant slippage, a seepage of urine, which was Make the slave women useless both as producers and as reproducers. He became very interested in that and he started traveling around and he gathered about 20 slave women in a what was called the backwoods hospital, and very experimented over and over and over again on an attempt to close the vesicle vaginal fistula. Operating, as I said, on some women, as many as 20 and 30 times in operations that he himself described is so painful that only a woman could afford them. And this was all before anesthesia. Anyway, J Farah, Marian since got a very, very bad case of diarrhea, which he thought was threatening his life. And he thought that it was coming from the water in the south. So I moved up to New York. And in New York, for a period of time was for some reason, not accepted into the medical community. There's like it's there's always been a north south thing. And Northern physicians were sort of reluctant to open them up. Anyway, he reasoned that New York could be an incredible, he could get an incredible supply of women to continue with surgical experiments on because of all the immigrant women that were flooding into New York. And he opened up the New York Women's Hospital, where he gave free health care, in return, of course, for experimentation. He is has been called the father of gynecology, there are a number of other kinds of things that he did, he was very interested in infertility. And he was obsessed by the idea that there were women who couldn't get pregnant. He had some very novel treatments for that. One service that he performed was to go to the homes of women who were expected to experience pain on importance and therefore would not agreed to have sexual relations with their husbands force may become pregnant and he will give them ether in their home so their husband could impregnate them. He also had coffee at a gadget they called the Digital guillotine. He thought was the reason women couldn't get pregnant was because the cervix was closed. And this was the device that he used, which would open up the cervix, making it easier for the sperm. Well, anyway, there's a statutory in Central Park. Way Marion, since there's a statue to him to the J. Marion Sims here in New York, I believe, in Central Park, considered to be one of the greatest amount of medicine. At any rate, he opened the New York Women's Hospital. I diverge off on J Marion soon. But I am si s, I am F. No F as in Sam, Sims, J. Marion. The New York Women's Hospital published its proceedings for a number of years, and you can find these in medical school basements, very dusty. You can see I found numerous write ups or Well, and I know exactly what what they're not. They're not research papers, but just sort of ramblings on by physicians about the kinds of treatment that they gave. And I found a number of examples of a number of papers in there of physicians who talk about women in their practice whom they suspect of masturbating. And then they talk about other types of the sort of sequelae to that, which is that there they are, you know, hail and there, they have all kinds of things that are supposed to be all connected with masturbation. And what they would do is they would get nurses to watch these women at night. And I mean, I swear to you that this is right in those medical journal, they would get, they would get nurses to spy on these women at night, and if they were caught masturbating, they were then given clitoral ectomy, Unknown Speaker 18:57 which of course effectively ended their masturbation, I can assure you. So that operation was also fairly common. During the in fact, both the normal ovariectomy and put a recommend were done as late as 1920. There were reports of that being done as late as 19 point but since my class who's receiving we're talking about upperclassmen and how could you do that by Unknown Speaker 19:20 force? You said I don't want it Unknown Speaker 19:24 that's very interesting. why don't women today say I want a hysterectomy physicians are the medical experts clinically you're probably your own race. You you like that? Unknown Speaker 19:36 I can see but not that direct to me. But then I was interested in masturbating. I wouldn't want to lose the Unknown Speaker 19:42 husbands often have what is their wife's health care? And it was often Yeah, the husband That's right. It was control women's was off to the men to the doctor. I am still you know Made speech. It remains to be true. I can't tell you in doing the research for my book I spent three years doing because of an observation and to residency programs in obstetrics and gynecology. Probably should have said this at the beginning. Anyway, I spent hundreds of hours in labor and delivery rooms and surgical suites in the clinics, in classrooms. And then I interviewed each one of the residents. After I had been there for about a year. I can't tell you how many times I was in, in the labor room, and I heard physicians talking about slowing up the tide pz Artemi, the police the husband, I mean, there has been a there has been a consistent strain. And it's again, well, you know, what are the pediatric? Well, it's a cot in the in the vaginal lining that is made routinely in the United States, which creates a larger opening for the fetus to pass. And once your baby in the United States has 10 and a half pounds. Well, in other countries, women's will be just fine without the PTM midwives have been doing deliveries for centuries. Okay, what were you referring to Unknown Speaker 21:22 about the PCs? Well, I Unknown Speaker 21:23 mean, I heard I have heard physicians and labor rules numerous times. I know Charlie, he'll like this. Unknown Speaker 21:31 Tonight. Unknown Speaker 21:32 Yeah, so we're contemporary gynecologist continue to believe that no uterus is good news. The normal ovariectomy a lot of people would argue has been replaced by the hysterectomy, the leading form of surgery for women. Today, the practice of performing hysterectomy is for purpose of sterilization. And for purposes, Cancer Prevention has resulted in 24% increase in the operation between 1970 and 1975. Estimates now are by the way, this is not my estimate, but it's one that's widely quoted. estimate is now that 50% of all women will have hysterectomy by the time they reach the age of 65. It's estimated that between 20 and 40% of these operations are unnecessary. Once again, let me give you a little flavor for the way the hysterectomy is talked about among physicians. This comes from a gynecologist by the name of JB Skelton Unknown Speaker 22:46 wanting to 40% or 50%, Unknown Speaker 22:50 not 20 to 40% of all hysterectomies that are done right now. Yeah, are considered unnecessary. I don't know where to get different statistics depending on which study you look at, but it is somewhere between 20 and 40%. That still means maybe about a third of women who need to know they will have his need and some will need it. Right? Half of them women have well not need it right. Unknown Speaker 23:19 But a third of all, probably me and get you going as Unknown Speaker 23:25 well. I'm not saying that there was never a reason for doing hysterectomy. And I certainly would never say that. But the idea of substituting a hysterectomy for tubal ligation, which is widespread practice is in, in my humble opinion. The worst thing that can be done for women's health. hysterectomy is major operation. There is a mortality rate connected with this operation, as is there a mortality rate connected with any operation that's done under general anesthesia. That would be avoided if a tubal ligation was I'm sorry that I don't understand Unknown Speaker 24:01 how a tube can Unknown Speaker 24:08 being done for purposes of sterilization now, okay, removing the uterus as opposed to tying the tubes is necessary. Unknown Speaker 24:22 When you're giving a finger of unnecessary death means they're being used for sterilization. Unknown Speaker 24:27 They're being done for sterilization or they're being done prophylactically to prevent as a cancer prevented, that is you have no path followed. But you may someday develop it. By the way you might be interested to know the same kind of treatment is now being suggested. And prophylactic mastectomies are now being talked about and offered to women as a preventive for cancer. You know, mastectomy is yet to take Now, I don't mean to be flippant about this, but I've been in medical circles for a long time in medical journals and books. I have never anywhere ever seen the suggestion that males receive prophylactic prospect prostate, prostate operations, that inner male reproductive organ D removed prophylactically. This comes from a gynecologist by the name of JD Skelton. And he this is a speech he made to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in about 1973. But the time has come for us as members of this college to recognize and recommend prophylactic elective total hysterectomy and bilateral assaulting over ectomy that remains removing everything uterus tubes ovaries, okay, thus creating artificial menopause. Reducing the amount of estrogen after completion of childbearing is proper preventive medicine and obstetrics and gynecology. What benefits are derived from this operation? One, it almost completely eliminates the occurrence of that feared killer of women cancer of the uterus and ovaries. Of course, you may never get it if you too, it assures women of absolute voluntary sterilization. Three, it reduces the performance of multiple gynecological operations each carrying summers. It relieves women of unpleasant and uncomfortable monthly bleeding. Five allow smooth maintenance therapy with feminizing hormones eliminate eliminating fathers to cyclical variations, tensions and emotionally altered states which affect a woman's world and which also cause cancer of the endometrium and grass. So it decreases the frequency of unpleasant humiliating pelvic exams and tests and allows better utilization of available health personnel facilities in time. All of this can be achieved with one single operation. Seldom in life we receive so little to gain so much. This is I have to look in the back room. It's about 70 to 70 degrees. Yep, no, no, this is in the audio digestive obstetrics and gynecology, sante that you can get it in any organic honey. Unknown Speaker 27:13 I mean, for example, textbooks that are written 1215 years ago may still be in youth audio tape thing? Unknown Speaker 27:20 No, this is this. This is a journal only it's an audio as opposed to a frill printed journal. And it was the paper was delivered in 1973. And it was done before Unknown Speaker 27:29 well, with medical students beginning training from this. I don't understand. Somebody wrote it and put it down on tape. Now somebody hears that it was how many people have access to it would learn from it. For example, in a medical textbook that's written 50 years ago and students are still learning from it. It's it's as effective now as it was 50 years ago when it was written. What I'm trying to find is the impact and significance of that statement. How many people train from it, learn from it, use it. Unknown Speaker 27:55 I'm just using it as a example of the way that hysterectomy for women is press currently perceived within that profession. The textbook most frequently in use for students in OB GYN is Novak's textbook of gynecology. And in the most recent edition, the authors of that textbook make a strong statement that hysterectomy should be used for purposes of sterilization. And that's the most frequently used textbook and Unknown Speaker 28:24 correct me if I'm wrong, but just to bring this up today's first residential restaurant stone efficient specialty organization referred to the fact that the biggest problem for the profession was not the big C cancer but the big Consumers also argued that all this pure beyond that was his presidential address to all fellows must have been some names of some of the women I have I always have hysterectomy. Well, isn't necessary. Of course. I mean, Unknown Speaker 29:26 as you you're trying to have all your teeth pulled, because you're 60 Yeah. Unknown Speaker 29:33 ever talk about male menopause. That was I found a book on male menopause blogger and it was hidden on your way in two copies of the whole book. Very enlightening. Unknown Speaker 29:48 Very, very well, you know, back in about 19 Second 1973. I did a study I did content analysis involving any textbooks for what they have to say about it. female sex role and sexuality Pauline Barton some of you may know her name. And I did that article. It's called the Funny Thing Happened on the Way the orifice. What we found was that these books are filled with advice to physicians on how to direct their female patients visa vie their sexuality and their sex role. Much of the based on that information is, I think the last textbook I looked at because I did it in 73 was in 73, young after Masters and Johnson has been around yet not one single textbook for example, mentioned Masters and Johnson. They were still giving information about the vaginal versus the clitoral orgasms, and advising physicians that clitoral orgasms were the immature response and that they had. I also found statements in the textbooks like 98% of women are frigid. Nowhere I know where did it say where that came from. Of course, it isn't accurate anyway. But I mean, just that kind of that kind of thing. And always a chapter on, on advice, marital advice, telling a woman essentially to give her sexual drive to her husbands. And I remember one quote in particular, if she realizes after a couple of months or years that this isn't possible, she should come to her gynecologist to find out what her problem is. I've got interested so I just did a sort of cursory study of Urology textbooks, and nowhere not in one single textbook, did I see one more about what the male role should be? What his role in marriage should be, was a strictly medical tax, but in the gynecology textbooks, a lot of information or misinformation about women and their sexuality and their sex role. And of course, all of it covers additional kinds of terms. Okay, moving away from gynecology and looking at childbirth for a few minutes before we can move away. Can Unknown Speaker 31:56 I question when women gynecologist are trained? And I don't know how many there are? So not many? Not many. Okay. I mean, are there attitudes different to the present? different points of view? I think that women still go to their doctors for this kind of advice. I think even social workers and guidance counselors and therapists, those are the doctors for this kind of advice. And if they need advice, and they need counseling, who are they going to go to as well? There are more alternatives nowadays. But those alternatives are not within easy access to all women, certainly not if they're living out of large metropolitan centers. And I'm not so sure that calling back on their own feelings or their own advice is the basic medical self help and consumerism. I think it's important in tempering the professional power. But I'm not so sure that the taking vitamins as you see fit and doing other kinds of things, as a consumer sees fit on what basis does. Is it judgment? Unknown Speaker 32:59 So, I'm asked Well, let me let me just say that I don't know of any large, systematic study. First of all, it's very difficult to study physicians, because if you want to study them, for example, by sending a questionnaire Forget it, they will never return it to you can only really the only way to do it is to sort of to do the way I did, which is to spend three years of my life, you know, hospital following them around. And now you would be very, I think that I know, for example, I can't probably do that kind of research again. Because after writing this book, nobody. I mean, I'm doing research right now, and I personally could write this. So I really find that more easy, I find that easier to deal with. But in my sample, there were a small percentage of women, they were basically foreign than in other words, they were not winning from the United States. In the countries in which they came from, it wasn't unusual to have a female impact women more than majority in that profession in their countries. The countries where women don't allow me to examine their genitals in many countries. So we got an Easter, Luna, Russia on live in physicians. So anyway, they were Latin Americans. If they were not either feminists in a sense of the American sort of feminism, what I noticed with them and and again, this is impressionistic, I didn't sample wasn't big enough, is that they had much more empathy for women in childbirth, than their male counterparts did, especially if they had given birth themselves. In other words, when I systematically asked residents how painful they felt childbirth was the sort of average kind of response I got was that it's sort of like a bad case of diarrhea. I think that most women who've had babies know that it's more than diarrhea. They really don't believe that. You see, throughout history, there's been this psychosomatic explanation For, for women's problems that is known as menstrual cramps are on your hand, or pain is on your head that the female residents knew it wasn't in your head. And they were much more empathetic to women childbirth. However, at the same time, they would be just as willing to remove a healthy uterus as their male counterparts. I think that the professional socialization in medical school in to get through that institution means that you have to do certain things. By the time you come out, you are a rubber stamp, you've been taught that ideology and that's the way you emerge. Now, I don't mean to say that women physicians can't make change and habit nature. And we're talking about five years later now because I did my fieldwork between 1974 and 7677. But the biggest difference between the males and females that I found in my study was in childbirth, and I found that the female residents were every bit as willing as their male counterparts to move uteruses that were healthy, because they needed the experience, but it's been done a residency, did you lose? Yes, I just wanted to say that I was maybe 30 years ago, the patient of a woman gynecologist who would be Unknown Speaker 36:19 an acceptable feminist today, She's Unknown Speaker 36:22 the lady that I'm sure as long since dead, but of course, but she did exist 30 Unknown Speaker 36:27 years ago. Right? Well, there are always exceptions. You know, but but I'm talking about in general. And and I'm not saying that the young poor I have a friend Jane Westerman. Do who's just finished a longitudinal study of female medical students, she does find this to be different. She didn't follow them into residency. I mean, there is a there is a real change in mental medical students as well. Idealistic patient oriented to a merging a very different kind of product as a result of that socialization experience. In that paper that I referred to a few minutes ago, Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the orifice, Pauline and I wrote to all the publishers of textbooks that were currently in use, objecting to the material in it and in no bats. Textbook, the one I mentioned as being one most frequently viewed, the publisher wrote back and said, well, hahaha, the material that you're objecting to was written by a woman, Georgiana secret, Jones. And it was, it was incredibly sexist. She told women that they should follow their husbands lead, and she reminded them that they should be a little bit sexually active. The exact quote was something like it's unsatisfactory to take a tone deaf person to a concert. So you should be a little bit active, but you should allow your husband sex drives to control. I'm moving away from the issue of servant surgery, and it's childbirth for a few minutes. For the past 100 or so years, in contrast to all of history before that is still in many countries, male physicians have also controlled childbirth in the United States. In order to eliminate women, midwives, the granny midwives and childbirth, male physicians had to convince women but also the medical community that childbirth was not a natural process, but rather was a form of serious serious illness, which required the expertise of surgeons in their instruments. And of course, this whole philosophy was facilitated by the invention sometime in the 1700s of the obstetrical forceps, a surgical instrument, which midwives when in fact, the forceps were kept the secret for a long time, one family controlled them and made a lot of money because they could use this mysterious tool in complicated pregnancies. But at any rate, four sets whenever you find it was. And it was through the use of these kinds of tools that early obstetricians called male men named midwives they referred to during the meeting hundreds attempted to present not only to American women, but as I said to the medical community as well, that in fact, they were a necessary part of childbirth, that childbirth in fact wasn't natural. It was a form of illness, that women when they were pregnant, in fact, being forced into the sex roll. Critics of 19th century obstetrics argue that much of the operative interference during this period of time in history, in fact, was aimed at convincing women that forceps and other types of surgical maneuvers were in fact necessary. In other words, the more you did them, the more it looks like they weren't necessarily to do and there were a number of really gruesome kinds of instruments. I again I'm not saying And then it was always unnecessary in childbirth during that point in history could be very frightening if you had a blockage or if you had, you know, if you had a fetus that was lying and transverse position couldn't be brought through, but there were instruments like craniotomy in which I'm trying to think of a craniotomy is is what was done, in which the fetal skull was crushed in utero. And that extracted that way that was when the lay whether a lot of there's a lot of material in the old journals, which suggests that a lot of the operative interference just like today, was relatively unnecessary. But it was a way of convincing people that in fact, all of this was necessary. Today, of course, we still have surgically oriented childbirth. At the same time that many women are requesting. We're demanding more natural births, the medical profession has given us routine routine Peasy ostomy whether you need it or not, I have seen women being delivered have their 10th child being given an a Pz Artemi. Unknown Speaker 41:11 Baby could shoot out like it was on a slide given in a PCI me. They have given us drugs, they've given us forced labor, the Towson stimulation, they've given us the fetal monitor. And they have given us a rate of cesarean section, then increased 156% between 1968 and 1977. Because I just finished with this one. The concessions have been Lamaze are Prepared Childbirth, and recently birthing centers. And I think that's very interesting political kind of thing to look at. The all of a sudden the idea of it even more recently, a couple of physicians now are getting birthing stools, allowing women to deliver now in a position, which is favorable to gravity instead of for the past 100 years, we've had to labor in a position that was unfavorable for gravity. But also recently, this idea of birthing centers, when I began to appear that women were going to move out of the hospital and into the home to have their babies, physicians have never been able to control I mean, have always controlled the best in a hospital setting, have very little control at home. And so the idea now is desperately trying to keep birth within the hospital. And the whole idea of birthing centers as a response to that movement of women into home birth. Unknown Speaker 42:34 What you'd like to ask me, you Unknown Speaker 42:35 don't have to answer it now. But I would like to address at some point being the human little medical education or background, the time to ask questions, not when you're planning your back on the on the delivery, or when you're in pain, or a half an hour before surgery, or even when you're visiting a surgeon's office and are in a panic and only hear half of what the doctor is saying anyway. I besides reading some books, and not having much basis for judgment. When you ask your doctor, are you sure? And he says yes, I'm sure. And you go to another doctor who says yes, I'm sure one of you will turn into the women in the medical profession that is controlled by men who are not paid to have been trained to believe that this is in your best interest, right? And really are as sure as they can be. And where a lot of this gets into play is where people do men or women did not have sure cure. People try all kinds of alternatives and have all kinds of doubts, when there is not a sure cure for anything. Which is why medical self help groups also grow up and why there is alternatives in what people would call quackery, or chiropractic or something like anything like that. Well, I want to pick a fight here and drop everything I said. What's your question? Yeah, no, I think that's fine. Unknown Speaker 44:01 Talk a little bit about the women's health movement and the options and alternatives available. Go ahead. Unknown Speaker 44:06 I just feel like I'd like to make a point about making chiropractic strike. Information about the transition from birth to a more natural in terms of gravity way to women giving birth, weight competition, Unknown Speaker 44:26 all that came that came along with obstetricians. In other words, is it eminently easier for them to have a woman laying in the bottom position which is flat on her back and her wages girl than it is to have a woman crouching down? I think a lot of what's going on in American childbirth, I think I would agree is that male physicians have tried to make birth more, more predictable and controllable. The whole life The idea of giving birth in a surgical suite, the idea of planned childbirth, I mean, you make an appointment to have your baby on Monday morning, and I will give you Pitocin stimulation, I will, I will stimulate you with Pitocin. But now the problem with Pitocin is that that causes very, very strong contractions. And it, in fact causes fetal distress. That is the woman's contractions become so strong that it starts affecting the fetal heartbeat fetus, which means that the amniotic sac has to be ruptured very early on in the labor process, which means that the fetus is basically laboring, or going through the birth process, without the cushion of amniotic fluid. So that in fact, in many cases, and Calero Garcia, who is head of the World Health Organization section on people in internal medicine has been arguing for years, that the fetal monitoring equipment itself is causing the fetal distress that it set out to detect. And so all of these things laboring in the wrong position, using drugs, giving a PCR using the person that creates the fetal monitoring equipment all the time to make more control more predictable and controllable. Physicians have been in fact creating many of the problems that women now experienced in childbirth. There's data to suggest that it affects the fetus in in unhealthy kinds of ways as well. By the physicians refusing to wash their hands. The history of conception sterilization and bortion in this country has been a little bit different, rather than being things that have been imposed upon when they were withheld by a profession that believed that women central purpose was in reproduction and mother but I don't know how many of you remember or the medical professionals bought strenuously against the idea of birth control, opposed abortion to the hilt, until they figured out how much money they could make from an illegal they change their mind. But at any rate, a great deal of resistance to these things because of the idea that woman's traditional role was motherhood and reproduction. We ultimately gained access to these rights. But we could have gained access to these rights through physicians. In other words, again, they were not something that we controlled, we were able to obtain them through physicians. But along with the good, we got potentially dangerous oral contraceptives, we got inadequately tested IDs and caused all kinds of problems for women. We got forced sterilization on women who, because of their class or minority status, are considered undesirable, reproduce reproducers. And it's very sorry that the medical profession has to learn because we are currently fighting a tremendous battle over Depo Provera. Some of you may know about it, a known carcinogen, which is being pushed in this country, and in fact, it's being used in third world countries as a form of contraception. I think that women's health has also been controlled by physicians and by the industrial health complex through the use of drugs. menopausal women are told that the Fountain of Youth resides in a bottle of estrogen pills, but they are not told about the increased dangers of endometrial cancer and breast cancer. Women who think they're too heavy and attractive to men are given speed, and unhappy or nervous or depressed. Women are given tranquilizers and sleeping pills a nation of women who gave us these pills, and ever seen drug company advertisements about middle aged women. We are seldom in vive to change the things in our lives that are causing the emotional problems. I think that the use of pills as a opiate Unknown Speaker 49:21 prevents women from looking at the structures in society which cause the oppression, the powerlessness, the dependency and thus causes with many of our problems. From these examples, which are oh my goodness, from these examples, which are going on much too long, I think that it's fair, that the medical profession has exercised formal and informal control over women's health a number of different ways. First of all, with the authority of medical license, physicians have had the power to promote theories about female health and sexuality and sex role constructed on the basis of a combination of Class sex and professional interests based on these constructions that have the power to implement their therapies, or their solutions, which are most often antagonistic ideologically to the position of feminists, and often not in the best interest of women's health, but they are often in the best interest of their professional goals. Since they are the society official experts on women's health, they also control knowledge enough they can keep alternative theories in therapies for implementation. For example, you may be aware of the very long legal battle to get the warning labels on bottles of oral contraceptives and and estrogen replacement therapy. The medical profession arguing against putting those warning warnings on the Bible's arguing that they prefer to tell their patients about these dangers themselves, as opposed to putting it on the label. Another way in which the medical profession has controlled women's health has been through the power of the state in which they have tried to maintain a monopoly on women's health care by controlling alternatives to male dominated health care. The AMA, obviously is very powerful, and controls most legislation affecting health care. During the 1800s, the medical profession was successful, almost totally eliminating midwives. Now we're seeing a resurgence in return of midwives. But the medical establishment continues to control them by making it almost impossible for nurse practitioners and nurse midwives to work autonomously. That is without a physician, nurse practitioners or nurse midwives cannot prescribe pills, and in almost every, in fact, I'm not aware of the single state in which they can receive third party payments. That means that they have got to work with the physician. In many states, they can't deliver babies in my own state, Virginia, there are no midwives that are nurse practitioners and OB GYN because they are not allowed to deliver legally not allowed to deliver babies. But this idea that they cannot receive third party payments, that is that insurance companies cannot reimburse a nurse practitioner or nurse midwife directly. It has to be done through physician means that these these health care providers cannot practice autonomously without a physician. The medical profession has also been successful in keeping birds out of a home in the hospital where they were better able to control in my state, I was telling somebody at lunch, women are afraid to do self examination because they're afraid they'll be arrested for practicing medicine without a license. Not quite that bad in New York. And it wasn't that bad in Chicago, where I came from. But in Virginia, that's what that's the semanas clinics there don't do them because they're afraid to perhaps one of the most important forms of control is that physicians practice on a day to day basis and privacy and free from outside control. As a sociologist, that's something that I focus on in my book. As such, they exert tremendous power over their patients feelings about self, about role about sexuality, and about what good health care means. Where do you as she raised the question, where do you go for alternative explanations and theories? And who do you believe, especially when the official expert, and the official line is on? Theories are constructed Unknown Speaker 53:44 all along? Unknown Speaker 53:48 So I think that the primary issues confronting feminists held back to this in the late 60s was how to stop some of these harmful trends in OB GYN in psychiatry, and how to give women's bodies back to their owners. This is very difficult to do for a number of reasons. Let me just be very quick here. sociologically, medicine is the prototype of a physician of a profession. More than any other group. Medicine has been successful in achieving autonomy and almost absolutely free from regulation outside its own community. This apparently means that only physicians are in a position to monitor physicians behaviors and performance. And as such, they for they formed an exclusive club with enormous power to influence healthcare politics. Another problem is that more than any other profession, medicine is practiced in private, thus reducing reducing the observability of physicians behavior. Laws practice to a large degree in a courtroom. Teaching is practiced in classroom medicine is practiced in an office in privacy, no observability so that it makes it difficult to know what's going on. And finally, medical knowledge has become sufficiently technological. So that many consumers of medical services really do lack the knowledge and expertise to make X, they have the expertise necessary to evaluate their physicians competence. Now, it doesn't have to be that way. And I think that we have cases of planned ignorance. But at any rate, many consumers do lack the knowledge to make to make informed decisions. All of this means that regulation of the medical profession and many of the decisions affecting women's health care remains internal in the hands of physicians. The problem is that first they do not every piece of research I'm aware of indicates that they do not monitor each other behavior. In fact, it would be considered unprofessional to do so how many physicians have you ever heard of had their medical licenses taken away? Usually, they're not almost never taken away. They may be suspended for things like alcoholism, but rarely for practice kind of. Second, in many cases, the types of things that we as consumers or as feminists may question are actually consistent with the norms of the profession. And so like prophylactic hysterectomy, and so under those types of conditions, there's no reason to expect control or monitoring from within the profession. Because in fact, from their perspective, there's nothing wrong with these kinds of practices. Feminists in the Women's Health Movement have responded to these problems in women's health care in a number of ways. First, by challenging medical authority, cool redistribution of knowledge from the exclusive domain of physicians to women themselves. I think today, no matter where you live, no matter what community you live in, you, if you look for it can find groups of feminists who self education kinds of activities. In large cities like New York, you obviously have more resources available. But even if you live in a rural area, there are numerous publications in very good books like our bodies ourselves, which you can use to become more familiar with yourself and your healthcare. Another response to the problems in the male dominated profession has been to opt out of the system, preferring self help clinics where routine care for women is shifted from these experts to the women themselves. And finally, the women's health movement, of course, is in full force into the arena of health politics, and has taken an active role in something to influence health legislation and public policy. And in fact, it's been effective, some of the battles that have been bought, and by no means are those battles over that had to do with things like drugs like depo provera, arguing for barrier versus invasive forms of birth control, and cervical cap, regulation of sterilization abuse, retaining the abortion is an inalienable right of all women, opposition to the elimination of public funds to support abortion and so on. Feminists like me, and I think that if I were running my book today, I would write the last chapter. Because I argue in that book very strongly that consumers have to be involved in healthcare at every level. Unknown Speaker 58:38 The problem is, and the thing that was there two and a half years ago when I wrote it, but is today, much more clearly in place, is the feminists are not the only consumers trying to change society and trying to gain control of women's bodies. In fact, the right is posing a very serious threat to sell the rights that we have fought for and gained. And they are becoming a more and more influential group in gaining control over women's reproduction, ultimately will control when it's experience, we're back from poverty. Ah, there are a number of human life amendments. I'm sure most of you know this, but I'll just be very brief about it. There are a number of human life amendments pending in Congress and in the Senate, which are an alternative to the strategy in the Constitutional Convention. One bill sponsored by Helms and Gordon specifies that life begins at the moment of fertilization rather than at the moment of conception, as that is when the ages were planted in the womb, as other bills specify, that would make abortion illegal. In other words, those bills that specify why begins at conception would make abortion illegal. The Helms and Gordon Bill specify I think that the government has the legal duty to protect the aid from the moment of sperm enters the ovum. And in fact, would not only make abortion illegal but would make all estrogen based pills and IUDs illegal. At the same time, there has been an effort to make amniocentesis illegal, because amniocentesis might lead to an abortion. The extent to which this argument is being used is perhaps exemplified by an example in my state. Some of you may be maybe know about or heard about this in vitro fertilization clinic that is exist in Norfolk, Virginia, the right to life group there is attempting to have the state legislature change is attempting to make the state legislature force all institutions doing research, to open their committees on the conduct of human research to the community, because they feel that we're doing the current that we're doing in research. That is against their principles. And the issue seems to come from the Norfolk clinic. Now, what are they worried about? When they perform this in vitro fertilization, they extract three eggs and then they take the healthiest one and they fertilize that egg. And the right to left group is is too vague, because they're not fertilized enough Unknown Speaker 1:01:21 to lay down. The population Unknown Speaker 1:01:31 I was contacted last week or week before last the hearings on these bills currently going on in Washington. I was asked to testify and I couldn't because I've been out of town all week. The issue is not abortion, yes or no. The issue is when does life start? Does it start at the moment of conception? Does it start at the moment of fertilization? In other words, where are we going to cut the line? Is it going to be just abortion? That's illegal? Is it going to be contraception? In other Unknown Speaker 1:02:06 words, you i, the whole, this whole so called movement is anti sexual. He's totally hypocritical. And all of this that you're talking about is just just thrown in our faces to confuse us. Unknown Speaker 1:02:21 Yeah. I'm confused. I always assumed that fertilization and conception were the same. What is the difference? Unknown Speaker 1:02:28 It makes, it depends on if they if they define human life as being as beginning when the album is implanted in the womb, or at the moment of fertilization. If it's the moment of fertilization, it makes birth control pills and IUDs. If it's simply if it's implantation in the womb, that just makes abortion illegal. It's technical. But Do y'all know who held Unknown Speaker 1:02:54 that birth control prevents ovulation? Unknown Speaker 1:02:58 That so that depends on the kind of, Unknown Speaker 1:03:00 so that there wouldn't be any further. But I mean, the pill, the birth control pill. So if that Unknown Speaker 1:03:10 bill, so there wouldn't be any indoor bill would make birth control. For certain forms of birth control. Illegal, it just depends on technically how you define the other bills, most of the other bills would make abortion illegal, this bill goes one step further, and would make some forms of birth control illegal. And one bill pending gets the right up to the states. So if you're in a state like Virginia, you know, your abortion is not gonna be legal. If you're perhaps in another state, it will be Unknown Speaker 1:03:41 done. So it's an insight into. Unknown Speaker 1:03:43 I mean, it strikes me from what I know about strategy, that they've gone way to one point so that they can get something that not that far. Stephanie, do you have any insight about what the strategy is is going on? That's where I wanted to open the discussion. I just wanted to say that. Once again, women are meeting a challenge by a group who wishes to control their reproduction and less their experience, and ultimately, of course, control their bodies. And then the question really is where do you go from here? It seems sometimes the more militant feminist becomes, the harder the right works more reactionary, they become what in what direction? Should women concerned about their health being moving another way is is an effective strategy to align with the medical profession which has, throughout history made decisions which have not been a women's best interest? Do you rely on liberal reformers, politicians and just hope that when the issues get too hot, they won't withdraw? Because of the controversy? The whole problem over abortion is Obviously diverting attention away from things like era, which is going to slip by us in two years. Should we be separatists? Should we return to underground clinics or underground? abortions? How many women are going to start using hangers again? That's it. That's all I have to know. Talk to each other. I want to take a short break first, or do you want to do Unknown Speaker 1:05:31 after three o'clock? Unknown Speaker 1:05:33 Or three minute teams? Unknown Speaker 1:05:35 We can do it. We have a half hour break. I just want to know who's the publisher? Unknown Speaker 1:05:43 Oh, Houghton Mifflin. I would like to Unknown Speaker 1:05:46 speak to current issue, the issue of abortion and era because I Unknown Speaker 1:05:51 think maybe we'll just take a minute or two. Okay. And then we'll close by some people want to? Well, I came in like I hope that Unknown Speaker 1:06:11 you know, please. You talk about abortion, taking away the right to legal abortion, to birth control. And I have been very upset about what I've been hearing recently about how we have to prepare ourselves for law is passed. And I live out in eastern renown. And I got together with a couple of young women who felt very younger than I, in their 20s and 30s, who felt very strongly that abortion was really the new gritty. I mean, this was the right to abortion was were with a woman, not a feminist, not an overt because she's a feminist, but she's not associated with any feminist group and has told me that she had told me that she could not identify them. So I have been in feminism in the American movement since 1968. controlling inflammation in Italy in the late 50s, early 60s, I consider myself you know, between the first and the second wave together with her and wrote something, which I'm hoping will make a grassroots movement and for the sake of the children was a petition movement. And what and I don't want to look we're trying to do is to get everybody, every woman that you can to sign that and we'll discuss ways and means if you let me read you these two paragraphs first and then maybe you can give me some input on what to do with this because I feel we have to take steps right now. I mean, things are very bad and we have to get on board. Okay. For the sake of the children, we are women who care we are women of all ages, backgrounds and economic levels. We have careers in the home and outside the home. We are single married or divorced. We believe in responsibility to life. We believe that no child should be unloved no child unwanted no child I'm parented no child on fed, no child on doctors. We see abortion as unnecessary right for every woman, not one, but they take lightly when necessary as a backup method, a last resort whose women do get pregnant when they don't want to, because of sexual violence, lack of information. And because of the imperfection and unavailability of present day means of birth control. We call for universal education about contraception and more funds for birth control research. They spend billions per defense and not one cent for child care. They can put a man on the moon but they haven't developed a foolproof practical method of birth control. We do not want to force women to bring into the world children that cannot take care of children should not be born to punish their parents. And by the same token children should not be punished for the act of the parents. This is the unwanted or unloved job. Children are beaut beautiful creatures bring a child into the world without caring for it creates a pattern of irresponsibility children the future of this country. The quality of their childhood determines the quality of the nation's future. We will not vote for any political figure for any office from the local to the national level. If she did not respect the Supreme Court's decision in Roe vs. Wade 1973. Protecting the legality of abortion as a private decision to be made by the woman concerned. We will not vote for anyone who wants to pass a law or a constitutional amendment reversing that decision and denying the right a woman's right to choose what steps are to be taken about her body and the contents they're in for the sake of the children. And then it's got name, address, city state and our ID A position could be the basis for a grassroots movement that you roll up the signatures that you get two copies made, I explained that I didn't want to spend any money collect money, because you start collecting money and create a bureaucratic superstructure, and you create an administration, and you get lost in the whole power thing. But if, for example, everybody who, you know, take a cab, you've got enough to distribute, now, because I can't spend money on it. But if I start just treating it like a chain letter, so that you get a copy of it, and Xerox it, two or three times, pass one on, get it filled out and send one copy to me, and the other copy your congressman and the reason or woman are sending it. And the reason I want the copy sent to me, is because I want to roll up the names and get them into the light and on record, the Library of Congress, get 500,000 women, men and women, we get you know, this is what the Moral Majority has done to take. And I want to take it back from them and get it back to the sponsor in July because there are so nakedly hypocritical, they don't care. And I don't know you give me your Unknown Speaker 1:11:18 complete name and address is written out. The other thing, I'm with you, but I would say the question that is being asked, but somebody else might like to hit those children, you don't want them? What is your answers? That was what I had? Unknown Speaker 1:11:33 You know, my answer to that is adopted children. And Betty Jean looked in his book, and I have known adopted children who have gone through an identity crisis reset, will be away like a sack of garbage. So my answer to that is, they will always be enough children to be adopted, because we have a very imperfect world, they don't like women. So I mean, the mother suffers and the child suffers, Unknown Speaker 1:11:58 because when you're carrying a child, your body chemistry, is that loving is going to be rejecting in Unknown Speaker 1:12:05 there somewhere. Unknown Speaker 1:12:07 I'm with you, because I don't know, I think we really have understated the linkage of chemistry. They're just learning about hormones and how the physical and the mental are tied together. Unknown Speaker 1:12:21 In response, also to the issue, the senator trying to bring the barriers of adoption. Want, there's a lot of information on the types of laws that are going to citizens, for children, what they are finding the same idea of women's health, there is state control, and there is other types of controls going along, there are a lot of barriers against the documentary. In other words, setting children up in situations where they can't, where parents who want or foster parents who want to adopt their children have to go through a lot of barriers, because it is it is lucrative to the welfare system and to various other systems to keep those children moving around. In other words, they're being paid a certain amount of money by the government to keep those children from not being adopted. So you have to start, like thinking about all of the political implications is that, as this woman said, there will be plenty. And there's also a question of, you know, when those children be able to be adopted, you know, with the, with the height of child abuse, yeah, I had a, they had a natal center, and they said that even the fact that those children have to stay in the hospital week that I forgot the statistic, but a lot of us ended up being obese because they are like feeling that their father was born. intervals and why create a lot of Unknown Speaker 1:14:03 mail, we have had abortion available and readily available for a number of years and then to child abuse. And I would not like to link that with the right to abortion, because these people, many of these women did not opt for abortion, many teenage pregnancies not ended abortion because the mother chooses to have the baby. So I wouldn't like those kind of things. Unknown Speaker 1:14:26 I mean, I think the point is sort of covered in this past a paragraph where we say that that the quality of their childhood determines the quality of the nation's future and that unwanted unloved children grow up to be I mean, the implication I don't want to blame women. You know, I don't want to blame women in anywhere online. This kind of subjected this to a lot of criticism and it was edited to a certain degree so that we would not come down on women in terms of child abuse because an awful lot of child abuse Much more child abuse, I think is caused by the stepfather who comes in and you know, takes over and the woman is passive and honest, and not able to defend a child more than directly, you know, we always hear about the mother attacking the child. What I know, statistically is that it is an estranged man who has been brutalized by our culture. And there's so much reeducation to do I mean, there's until we get to kind of a culture where society where children born and everybody, you know, the child of one is the child of an African song where we've got adoption is what doesn't have to be formal adoption, because people just pitch in whether you call many women mothers. Thank you for what you're doing. What I want. Give me I have a couple of these give me give me your name. Please, my I'm just getting what I can't bear with going on to take, take some steps. And Unknown Speaker 1:16:11 there's one thing that I kind of feel like, this somehow seems a little bit talking about adoption and child abuse seem a little bit off the course to me, because it seems like that really sidesteps the whole issue of what we're talking about is like just a fundamental personal right to have an abortion and to decide whether you're gonna be pregnant or not. I don't think it has anything to do with whether you're, if you're not happy about being pregnant, and your hormones may affect your child and good children mean a Unknown Speaker 1:16:33 good I think what she's saying, but what I was going to suggest is there's something to be gained by how choosing the pro choice in terms of children, because I've never been anything but this woman has a right to make up for that. In my day, when we were fighting in the legislature to get state funds for Medicare, Medicaid abortions. Unknown Speaker 1:17:02 The local Unknown Speaker 1:17:04 pro choice groups wanted to use the argument strictly financial argument that either you pay for an abortion or you pay welfare for the next 18 years, because they believe the end justifies the means I could not talk those words out of my mouth. As long as the issue, the issue is that women should have control over their bodies. Unknown Speaker 1:17:26 They should have. I mean, this is the criticism of this paper. And I understand that, but I feel that the issue that I'm bringing up is a valid issue. I mean, that doesn't deny I don't say that women shouldn't have control over their own bodies. But I would like to start a movement for the sake of the children, because I think that they're gonna have co opted? Are you saying that right now? With what, but I know what I'm trying to bring? Unknown Speaker 1:17:58 Yes, but I don't think it's important Unknown Speaker 1:18:00 to our particular discussion. I'm wondering Unknown Speaker 1:18:06 if the women's movement in some way could not align itself at some level with the powers that be, for example, the key to Medicaid, and I think the key to third party reimbursement, insurance of any kind, it's always doctors, and doctors have found that abortion can be a mutual benefit to the patient and the doctor, I don't, I don't want to demean the doctors, and the motor and the drug codons. Now, I know that and many levels of women have suffered at the hands of doctors and the AMA and the drug companies. But these are the powers that be and I'm wondering if we could not align ourselves at some level with them. Because we do have access to when we do speak to women, we do control or influence, we at least can influence votes, we can actually see each other and I'm wondering if we could get into the center of power instead of always being on the fringes and outside. Unknown Speaker 1:19:06 I'd like to make your circles in response to your petition and linking the cause of women. What's always happening is that women's historically women's health care has been especially with turn on health care issues around pregnancy and link to children. And the only reason you wanted to give a woman prenatal care and the whole justification for the original maternal child health programs was that you have a healthy child. And in some ways, one of the important things that has come out of the women's movement has been able to save women for their own rights, to have the rights in terms of their own health and their own. Whether it's abortion, whether it's prenatal care and issues around labor and delivery. There were a few other comments I just wanted to make to go back to some of the political issues. One is and I haven't been able to track this down totally given the change in the abortion laws outside of the major cities. on where you have the big clinics in states where you have Medicaid still funding abortion, it looks like somewhere between a third and a half of all abortions are already being done by women's health centers, and that they really practically stopped all abortion outside of the state, large cities, kind of off the eastern west coast, Unknown Speaker 1:20:19 when you say, Do you mean that Unknown Speaker 1:20:20 hospitals do not Unknown Speaker 1:20:22 take a state like New Hampshire, one, which is doing about 2000 abortions a year now 1000 are being done in the Women's Health Center and about 1000 are being done in some other some other hospital facility in terms of numbers. So in terms of talking about what might happen, in terms of that technology, I think those states are going to point the way that feminists, clinics and women are going to take care of the technology will take it underground, for strength, and you can see it already. Unknown Speaker 1:20:53 When you say that's, that's the approach, that's what worried that's what I that's what worried me that the idea of accepting that this is going to get passed that we have to get beyond not admitted. Unknown Speaker 1:21:07 I just wanted to make a statement to kind of point out that a lot has been passed. I mean, very few states. Once you're outside in New York, Massachusetts, California, Washington, DC, abortion isn't available on that you can see already what numbers are down, and who was doing the abortions are being done with the one that that was just one point. The other thing I want to talk about is that I think we have to deal, a little war with the complexity of the politics around birth control abortion, which is that the right of abortion was always one of the courts. It's always been a court battle, it's very rarely won through the legislature. And what we want in the courts really wasn't a feminist victory, it was a victory for the medical professional, they had the right to determine whether or not a woman needed an abortion, that that's what, Wade versus roe. So remember that it's also remember the birth control always had. And I think it's where I see the right, getting into problems. Where control was always a very weird Alliance, all through the 60s and 70s, a kind of was some women's groups, population control, people got linked to the welfare issue. It's gotten linked to health issues, that the only way that child spacing is necessary for women's health. I mean, it's been linked to all kinds of groups for left and right. And nobody the rights are gonna get itself. I mean, caught up in some ways when they go in for birth control sales or want to go into welfare rolls. I mean, they're, they're really going to have to Forster Unknown Speaker 1:22:35 know, that these laws are going to hold up constitutionally. And he's I understand that most of them are so vaguely was worded, that they all kind of stops, to the people who put the right in, you can't tell what's going to happen to the Supreme Court. It's true, they keep going right. But even even within that context, they are still lawyers. And as I read, most of these laws that are around are worded in ways that just can't hold that just cannot be sustained. legally. So I think it is believed that they are kind of they have a propaganda bullying effect in their SOPs, to the right wing voters who put people like Reagan, in writing really give a damn about anything, obviously. I mean, he doesn't care where we get to support so that Unknown Speaker 1:23:31 the Supreme Court bothers me a lot. I mean, I think the most significant thing about Reagan Administration is that, that the majority of the court is probably going in or a good number of them are going to be retiring during his administration. And let us not forget the plank in the Republican platform that pro family, pro life people because why some Supreme Court? I think that that's, that is ratably dangerous. Unknown Speaker 1:23:57 I think the whole you know, I think the whole situation that we're in is dangerous. I don't believe that the means justifies the end, I believe the means becomes the end. And I really wanted to open this to discussion, because I don't feel that that talking about the sake of the children eliminates women's control over their own bodies. I think it was a kind of a multi level approach myself. I don't think it's an anti feminist approach. Unknown Speaker 1:24:29 I was just curious about addressing the issue in terms of what you were saying or someone was saying about aligning with certain economic groups that have power and the economics in terms of the fact that a lot of women are worried about. feminists have mentioned that that that is birthing the home birthing in the hospitals and the nurse midwives not being able to get the record payments that the hospital is bringing in. And yet the that can't be done is the fact that these types of attitudes in other words that women are giving birth are squatting like the US. Or, or the dangers of repeated monitors are coming into the public eye and women's health is bringing these issues into the public eye and trying to change legislation on that level and trying to instead of denigrating the fact that, oh, my god, the medical profession is taking over National Birth. It's sort of like you have to play the things that we've gained with the things, the potential dangers of that being in that realm. And how do you, in other words, go to a drug company and say, Listen, we've got this data, this is what's going on, it's to your advantage, that, that you change the type of technology or whatever it is, how do is that how women are going to actually get things changed in terms of going to those those very heavy hours. And not not necessarily supporting them, but in trying to integrate their attitudes with yet and change in some way? I don't know. It's like, because of the last bout of capitalism, Unknown Speaker 1:26:17 when you don't buy it. I was gonna say, I only specified the only thing that affected me is when he bought it. But and I've been wondering if was the man the only thing that's going to affect them relative to this whole? Women having choice is not helping. people resolve their disarmament, and that they just said, It's time now for the women's to say no intercourse. I bet you could get. It if we decide we want to use it. Unknown Speaker 1:27:17 In a different area? No, I just don't believe in that. choices that have been made in childbirth. And childbirth is a good example, because it's a declining market. And if you look at any hospitals, statistics on the number of births, they have declined, and the technological invent intervention has been increasing as the gross decline. But you do have a low income women notice for years you exercise power with your feet and women walking and walking away from that kind of book. It's a one way exercise. When you set birth centers, I'm assuming that you mean the kind that are in hospital. But yes, there are a midwife run birth centers that women have gone to in our home birth organizations and groups. And that's a small number. But technical compression, like it's bigger than it is, number one. Number two, it seems to me that just eavesdropping on the conferences, within departments, symptoms, metrics and gynecology. They often obstetricians in particular feel feel pressure when it's exercise. And if every woman who came to them, in fact interview them and said to them, what's your percentage of cesarean births? Do do deliveries, overhead tech or any women know enough to ask a series of questions. I'm not I mean, probably they would get the same kind of delivery, but it would apply pressure to a profession that has not had to deal with that pressure. And from my experience, seems to be the same as yours. Women residents aren't making a difference we're practicing exactly as men that company structure of their training and of the hospital hotel is too compelling for that to change in some way. There are ways that women can walk with their feet, or with their voices, you know, and just let it be known that they know what's going Unknown Speaker 1:29:08 on we are into the medical training itself and I'm a mother just died, was very upset about the lack of gerontology and the doctors knew and she's going to give her first money to having lecture courses net for nurses and so forth who are in the know all this, but for doctors and medical schools, and how do you get to where I mean that's where it begins with guys training. guys and gals, I want to say even today something about most doctors in training, get about 30 hours of nutrition Unknown Speaker 1:29:52 I'll tell you what they learned they learned what's on the Unknown Speaker 1:29:55 USDA. Unknown Speaker 1:29:57 No no good the their examination I think was on the board. And the traditionally things like information about female sexuality and the person and things like that and certainly how to be any kind of bedside manner. interactional skills are not things. It may interest you in the two residency programs I sit next to them right those in the two programs that I studied, neither one of them had any kind of course material on female sexuality. When I asked residents if they expected to do sexual counseling, they all said yes, when I asked them, where they learned, where they got the skill and the knowledge to do it, the answer is I swear to you range from Playboy magazine to the Israeli army. Only one resident out of over 50 had even had it had not a single resident not over 50 had ever even read masters of Johnson level or anything else like trophy, and only one knew who they were and that's because he saw him on TV