Abstract
Jennifer Nelson’s More Than Medicine sets out to tell the story of the feminist health movement and to demonstrate a larger connection to social justice movements focused on inequalities including civil rights and feminist movements. Nelson describes the way the volunteers, nurses, midwives, and doctors provided transportation, food, clothing, and temporary shelter housing in addition to the provision of health care services.
More Than Medicine provides substantial history of the women’s health movement and focuses extensively on grassroots, feminist health resources, and community-based clinics—University of Washington’s YWCA—Abortion and Birth Control Referral Services (ABCRS), Aradia Women’s Health Center in Seattle, WA, and Atlanta Feminist Women’s Health Center (FWHC) in Georgia. Nelson intentionally sets out to highlight the differences and similarities between women’s health movements in different regions. Women’s health in this book is mostly centered on obstetrics (OB)/gynecology (GYN) health that includes access to abortion, birth control, and prenatal care.
There are many similarities between the recent (and possibly short-lived) push toward integrated health care through the Affordable Care Act and early neighborhood health clinics and women’s health centers. This book highlights the strengths of community-based health care in treating women and families holistically including addressing the social, economic, and environmental factors (or social determinants) of health that has been recently repackaged as integrated care.
More Than Medicine provides a historical overview of the professionalization of women’s health in the United States. As seen in other feminist movements, women’s health clinics started as grassroots movements to respond to and resist harmful health policy. YWCA feminists created the ABCRS to ensure that women had safe and positive abortion experiences with dedicated and caring practitioners. Although ABCRS was a mostly volunteer-based service, it was comprehensive and responsive to women’s needs including evaluating providers based on feedback from women to improve services. Dovetailing with the services provided by ABCRS, Aradia Women’s Health Center was a grassroots clinic with the goal to “transform women’s health care to incorporate a nonhierarchal and compassionate atmosphere that validated women’s experiences with and knowledge of their bodies and affirmed their reproductive and sexual intentions, whatever those may be” (p. 94).
However, the anti-abortion movement and health policies targeted toward limiting access to abortion, birth control, and sexual health, Aradia Women’s Health Center, Atlanta FWHC, and other clinics were forced to increase the medicalization of care through professionalization of services in order to financially survive.
While More Than Medicine sets out to include and highlight the role of women of color in the feminist health movements, it falls short in terms of expansive attention to the number of health issues including forced sterilization among marginalized communities. Given the extensive attention to access to abortion and birth control services, the limited attention to the extent of forced sterilization among women of color and the impact on health is glaring. The work of the Atlanta FWHC, Loretta Ross, and the Women of Color Reproductive movement is covered within the book each being provided with separate chapters. However, the experiences of other marginalized communities, for example, Native American women and Latinas, are given limited attention and often as a footnote within the larger conversation.
Overall, More Than Medicine provides an in-depth—though limited scope—of women’s health movements. Nelson provides good linkages between the impact of policy on access to and provision of women’s health care that is quite substantial and an often neglected focus of policy work. This book or specific chapters of this book would be a good addition to any history or policy course.