A '70s bible and its ongoing evolution

In 1969, the year that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a dozen women attending a conference in Boston sat down and began one of the most significant earthbound discoveries of the 20th century -- the importance of teaching women about their bodies. By the following year, the group put out a booklet titled ''Women and Their Bodies," a radical primer on women's health.

In the next two years, the group, by then incorporated as the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, had changed the name of its groundbreaking book to the more familiar ''Our Bodies, Ourselves." Famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for explaining the ins and outs of birth control, lesbianism, access to abortion, and childbirth, the book went through several revisions. It hit the bestseller list in 1979, partially because it was a mainstay of college dorm rooms.

This spring, 35 years after its original publication, ''Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era" (Touchstone, paperback, $24), has arrived, the book's eighth edition. Executive director Judy Norsigian talked about what's new (including a website at www.ourbodiesourselves.org) and what's not in women's health.

Q: Why was the time right for a new edition?

A: We believe we should do a new edition every five or six years. We hardly get it out on that schedule. Resources are too thin. Brigham and Women's Hospital came along and gave us an unrestricted grant, and we got support from the Boston University School of Public Health.

Q: The readership you have today is much more empowered than it was 35 years ago. Women are more knowledgeable and have more expectations for their health care dollars. How has this -- if at all -- changed your mission?

A: Yes, our readership is better equipped to ask questions, to get answers. But our readership is still a minority of university women. . . . We don't get that much mass media coverage. We're a very critical book and critical of the pharmaceutical industry.

As far as our mission, particulars change. Before, unnecessary cesareans were a problem. Now, elective cesareans are a problem. I think we are going to find a significant [disease rate] attached to them. . . . The medicalization of menopause, Viagra-like drugs for women are coming down the pike. . . . The same thing is happening with SSRIs [antidepressants]. There's a tremendous amount of overuse. Also, safer sex, navigating health care, and gender and identity [issues] -- these are all new.

Q: What other audiences do you want to reach?

A: We want all women reading the book. . . . I had the most wonderful story told me. A young woman came up and said that she had a boyfriend at 17 and she had cramps and he said, ''Do you know 'Our Bodies, Ourselves'?" He stole the book from his mother's bedroom, when he was 12. He wanted to be a good boyfriend.

Q: In the past 30 years, one thing that hasn't changed is the tone of the writing.

A: It's intimate, friendly, accessible. We've been committed to this since the beginning. . . . The lesbian chapter was written by lesbians in the beginning, when they had a very negative experience in society. One [reader] said ''I thought I was gay. That first chapter -- it made me depressed." . . . There's no question that when things change in our lives, we can write more positively, which makes being a lesbian in this country . . . less filled with intimidation and harassment. There are more resources out there. That was not true in the 1970s. The chapter is now written in a much more positive tone.

Q: In the 1970s, a lot of the info in ''Our Bodies, Ourselves" couldn't be found elsewhere. Now that such information is on the Internet and in other books, do you see yourselves as filling a particular niche?

A: No women's health book has a combination of practical, truly accessible information with evidence-based information along with political analysis. You don't get them both in one book. It makes us uniquely consumer oriented and feminist oriented and [medically] oriented.

We get a lot of comments -- ''Why ruin it by putting in abortion?"

Q: How do you respond to that?

A: I say, ''You know as well as I do. You may not want to get an abortion, but many women do. It's part of women's health." . . . I point out that the majority don't agree [with lack of access to abortion]. . . . Eighty percent of [US] counties have no abortion providers now.

Q: Do you think younger women are aware of how many more health care options there are now than there were in the 1970s?

A: No, but it's a terrible generalization. Younger women who get good mentoring, take women's studies [classes], and use the Internet are better prepared. Young women who only watch mass media are not going to be well informed. Most people read USA Today. Most don't know [abortion rights are] in jeopardy.

Q: Is Roe v. Wade in danger?

A: We're just one Supreme Court justice from losing Roe v. Wade.

Q: Anyone who read the book in the 1970s probably can't get the police photo of Gerri Santoro, who bled to death in a motel room after a botched abortion, out of her head. Talk about why this image hasn't lost its power.

A: There was a big debate about leaving it in. The reason to leave it in is to remind young women that abortion wasn't [always] legal. It's for women who can't appreciate that. It reminds you how desperate women feel when they can't [go through with the pregnancy].

Q: What's the biggest risk to women's health today?

A: There are several. One is the inability to get good information from mass media. You have to hunt for balanced information. . . . One of the biggest threats to health is the unnecessary and unacceptable influence of the pharmaceutical industry. I'm talking about blockbuster drugs that are advertised, consumer ads, not doctor ads. . . . And when I say the inability of the mass media to present information, [I mean] childbearing, birth, this idea that body type should be a Madison Avenue norm. . . . It's about products and services that people put on their bodies every day. It encourages women to engage in unhealthful dieting, for example.

Robin Dougherty, a writer and critic, lives in Washington, D.C. She can be reached at inkrd@aol.com.