Click here to see a lovely diagram, entitled “Republican Guide to the Female Body,” posted by Nerve (an online magazine). This is, in visual form, the exact opposite of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” It’s a guide written by men for women, with misinformation and lies, designed to make women feel anxious, guilty and confused about their physicality, natural bodily functions, and health needs. The Republican Party, and especially the men quoted in this diagram, represent powerful forces that seek to diminish women’s control of their bodies. What most bothers me about these powerful forces is that they are all male; the banishment of midwives (documented by Ehreinreich & English in For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women) is just one way an all male group – doctors – began to take over women’s health through medicalization. (Though thankfully female doctors are much more prevalent today, they are still underrepresented and indeed, there is a growing gender gap in physician pay.)
Sandra Morgen, in her book Into Our Own Hands, gives us a specific example of a situation in which women were bewilderingly excluded from a women’s health issue. In January 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson organized Senate hearings on the safety of oral contraceptives in response to a book by Barbara Seaman: The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill. Even though Seaman had worked with Nelson’s staff to organize the hearings, she was not invited to speak – and neither were any women who had been harmed by the Pill. The one female to testify was a physician who echoed the usual condescending, paternalistic, and judgmental attitudes of physicians toward educating women about the dangers of birth control. In response to this remarkable oversight, Seaman, with other women’s health advocates, formed the National Women’s Health Network (NWHN), to “monitor Federal health agencies and ensure that the voice of a national women’s health movement would be heard on Capitol Hill.” NWHN played a part in convincing the FDA, in 1977, “to enforce the regulation that companies inform patients of drug dangers through package inserts” (Morgen).
The “Nelson Pill Hearings” immediately brought to mind the hearing on contraceptive coverage held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform earlier this year. The first two lineups of witnesses consisted of five men.
Photo Credit: Jon Oakley
The men who decide if you can have birth control.
(for a photo of the actual men, click here.)
As Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, asked: “Where are the women?” Democrats had tried to invite another witness, a young woman named Sandra Fluke, to testify, but were blocked by Republicans. So they held their own hearing to allow Sandra to speak. Though Fluke did not have the medical expertise that Seaman did, and the women’s health issue was different, Fluke’s emotional investment led to a similar resistance to male control of women’s bodies. Indeed, over the following weeks Fluke would come under attack from conservatives for taking the stand and testifying about the need for her school’s insurance to cover birth control; most famously, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh called her a slut. In an encouraging sign of continued resistance, 26 advertisers ultimately bailed on Limbaugh’s show.
Yet most disturbing is that this happened in the first place: 42 years after the Nelson Pill Hearings, our political leaders – who American men and women elect to office, think that it’s appropriate to have only men testify about a women’s health issue. This idea is as archaic as those statues.
Leave a Reply