V360 Seizing Our Bodies

by Claudia Dreifus

Book Overview

The Politics of Women's Health. All Americans suffer from the organization of the medical system, but women, by virtue of their reproductive systems, suffer more; obstetrics-gynecology is staffed by a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394723600
• ISBN13: 9780394723600
• Release Date: December 1977
• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Length: 321 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

We've come a long way?and the struggle is not over yet!

The title brings an absurd picture to mind, but the subject matter is far from absurd. This book contains essays about current conditions and past history, including some famous ones, such as Ellen Frankfort's "Vaginal Politics," as well as "The Epidemic in Unneccessary Hysterectomy," "Sterilizing the Poor," "A Case of Corporate Malpractice" (the Dalkon Shield), and "The Theft of Childbirth." The book points out that women have also had to struggle to become doctors and care for each other, and still often end up in obstetrics or psychiatry. I've often wondered, myself, why having good manual dexterity makes women "good at embroidery" and not "good at surgery."Until women demanded change, their health care was neglected and their diseases were marginalized. Even now, in the Year of our Lord 2003, women receive less aggressive treatment and are thus more likely to die after a heart attack or stroke. They are also less likely to receive chemotherapy when they have cancer. This book is not obsolete!Here's a tiny sample from "Abortion: This Piece is for Remembrance," by Claudie Dreifus: "I keep thinking about how in 1976 Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, ordering the end of Medicaid payments for abortion. For a week or so-before a federal court ruled this new statute discriminatory-inner-city hospitals were flooded with emergencies of a kind they had not seen since the days before the 1973 Supreme Court Decision: perforated uteruses, uterine hemorrhaging, self-induced death. Someone should tell Mr. Califano a few facts of life: women always have, always will, abort pregnancies they cannot afford to bring to term. The question is safety and sanity. The question is a woman's right to live her own life."That reminds me how, in the late 1980s, Canada tried to make abortion illegal again. Such a law was passed in Parliament and referred to our upper house, the Senate. In the week after it was passed, something unheard-of happened: a 20-year-old student at the University of Waterloo, Yvonne J., bled to death in her room after trying to perform an abortion on herself. Luckily, the law was defeated in the Canadian Senate. It isn't about whether women will have abortions: it's about whether we'll die having them. So the book has quite a resonance for me.Of course, that's only one chapter. The book is not all about abortion: there's quite a nice little essay about the number of clitoridectomies (female castrations) done to women in the late 1800s to make them "tractable, orderly, industrious, and cleanly" and to improve their morals. If you are seriously interested in the history of women's health in the U.S., this book will not disappoint you. It is well written and powerful.