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The year was 1976. Abortion had recently been legalized, the groundbreaking book "Our Bodies, Ourselves" had been published, and the women's movement was winning exciting victories. Against this backdrop, a group of Atlanta women realized their dissatisfaction with the health care options and information available to other women and themselves.
"We deserve better!" they said. And thus, they founded Atlanta's Feminist Women's Health Center. The "founding mothers" recognized that the existing medical system's beliefs and practices were based primarily on male assumptions of what was "best" for women. In the new center they created, they changed those norms.
Atlanta's feminist clinic started with self-help groups that allowed women to ask frank questions about their bodies. Our founding mothers were inspired by a powerful idea -- to reclaim knowledge about their own body by learning from each other and ourselves through self-help. "Self-help" is the ability to understand, care for, and make one's own decision about health care.
Self-help was a cornerstone concept of the women's health movement that spread from the west coast to the east coast. It began in 1970 with two activists, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman. After seeing a glimpse of a friend's cervix during a routine gynecologist's visit, Carol was completely bowled over. "It was such a shock to see how simple and accessible our anatomy is. I realized that if women just had some basic information about their bodies, they could take care of themselves."
It was only several years prior, that safe and legal abortions were not available for most American women. Women with access to limited resources or information at that time sought "back alley" abortions, most risking their fertility, health, or lives. On the other hand, affluent women had access to legal abortions at hospitals, which cost thousands of dollars. In many of these cases, certifications from two doctors were required to proved that the pregnancy caused the woman physical or mental harm, or that she had been raped. Most women did not even know which doctors perform abortion, legally or illegally, or where to go for help.
Women's health activists sought to provide women seeking abortion the information and referrals they needed. Shortly after the U. S. Supreme Court announced its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (Doe was Roe's companion case from Georgia, represented by Margie Pitts Hames) legalizing the right to choose for women to choose the outcome of their pregnancy, Carol and Lorraine founded the first feminist clinic, the Los Angeles Feminist Women's Health Center and began providing safe and legal abortions. Other activists soon opened feminist centers in other parts of California, as well as Iowa, Florida, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington . . .and here in Atlanta, Georgia.
The early feminist clinics had an enormous impact on the way that women's health care is now delivered. They completely revamped abortion techniques to make them safer and gentler for women. They institutionalized the practice of informed consent and unbiased counseling, and made sure that women had complete, uncensored information about their options.