THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Lynn Thogersen

“It just was something that clicked with me, this whole concept of self-help and women learning more about their bodies.”

Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, November 2023

LT:  My name is Lynn Marie Thogersen, and I was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, 1951.

JW:  Tell us about your childhood. What the influences were, maybe your number of siblings, ethnic background, and so forth.

LT:  Well, my father is from Montana, and my mother’s from North Dakota, and they met at the University of North Dakota. My dad went into the Air Force and was a pilot. And so, while I was born in North Dakota, I really never lived there. We lived all over the United States, and also in Europe. My early life was in Luxembourg and France, and then we came back to the States and I went to different schools until high school. Then he got transferred to Wiesbaden, Germany, so I went to high school in Germany.

JW:  An American high school?

LT:  Yes. But I do think that the opportunity to have lived in all those different countries did have a big effect on me in terms of having exposure to different ways of living, different cultures, an appreciation for sort of the wealth that I was granted by being an American. Didn’t really necessarily have to be that you were rich, but just compared to a lot of different countries, anything was more than what they had. My parents also lived in Panama, and so that was also the big comparison of the different cultures and wealth and economic status.

JW:  Did you have siblings?

LT:   I have one brother who lives in Denver.

JW:  When did you learn about the women’s movement?

LT:  It was probably right at the end of my senior year in college. I think that’s when Our Bodies, Ourselves, came out. And then, I think Judy Norsigian and one other woman came to the University of Texas where I went to college, and spoke. I followed a boyfriend to Tallahassee, and there I saw a sign that said, “Come learn self vaginal examination.” And so, for some reason, I thought that was something I should learn to do, and went and saw the whole slideshow.

The women did a demonstration of self vaginal exam, and then through another friend, I reconnected with them. They were in the process of starting a Feminist Women’s Health Center in Tallahassee. I don’t know, it just was something that clicked with me, this whole concept of self-help, and women learning more about their bodies. I learned how to do the self-help slideshow, and then once they got the clinic going; I had a full-time job at a mental health center, so, I volunteered every Saturday in the abortion clinic.

JW:  What year was this, do you think?

LT:  1973.

JW:  Just when Roe was decided.

LT:  Yes.

JW:  So that must have affected the business that your clinic had, is that right?

LT:  Well, yes, I mean, they were able to start a clinic. Abortion was legal. Maybe it was ’74 by the time they got it started, I’m not that great with year dates. So, it was probably ’74. I worked in the abortion clinic every Saturday.

JW:  What did you do? What was your job?

LT:  I started out in what we called the sterile room, which was where you would clean and re-sterilize instruments. And also, we did examination of the pregnancy tissue to make sure that there was pregnancy tissue there, and that the abortion was complete. And then later I got trained to be a counselor. I don’t know if you remember, we called them a health worker. Basically, you explained the abortion procedure and went over the consent form with women, and then actually went into the room with women while they had their abortion to be there as their advocate.

I did that until I moved to Atlanta in 1975. After I’d been here for a while, it just was weird because there were abortion clinics, but there was nobody doing self-help clinics. I had met a woman, and we thought, “Well, this is ridiculous.” We got a copy of the slideshow from the women in Tallahassee, and I taught her how to do the slideshow, and we started doing self-help clinics in her apartment for the greater Atlanta area. It was really hard talking to women about how safe and simple an abortion procedure could be.

In Atlanta, which is the home of Dr. Crawford Long, who discovered ether, all of the abortions were done with general anesthesia.  And that has been shown, while it’s very safe, using a local anesthesia is much safer just because of the risk of general anesthesia. So, this woman, her name was Lynn Randall, she and I decided we would start our own clinic. We went down to Tallahassee so that she could see how abortions were done there.

We came back, we had met other women who had come to our self-help clinics who were also interested in working with us to start a clinic. I was 25 years old. Nobody ever said the word “No” or, “What are you thinking?” Even my parents were supportive, and they loaned me $250 dollars to help start the clinic. But somehow, by just perseverance, we were able to start the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, and we had our first clinic in 1977.

JW:  How did you get women to come there? Did you advertise? What did you do?

LT:  Yes, we did. There were several alternative newspapers, and we may even have had one in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, I can’t remember, but there were two other alternative papers that we advertised in. We also had stickers made that we would put on bathroom doors at the universities that talked about coming to the clinic. We provided not only abortions, but also what we called, “Well Woman Health Care.” Gynecological exams at the beginning, and pregnancy testing.

I remember when we were writing the request for our nonprofit status, because the clinic is a 501(c)(3), we had to do a five-year plan, and we thought, “Yes, we would be providing abortion services. We would be providing gynecological services.” We were hoping we might even be able to provide prenatal care or donor insemination. Abortion was going to be one thing that we offered. And what is it like 50 years later, we’re still fighting for abortion? We did end up offering all those services, but we were never able to, I feel in my own mind, my own heart, just be able to focus on the whole woman, and really had to spend a lot of money and time and effort just trying to maintain abortion.

JW:  I see. So, people really came to you if they needed an abortion, not for general care?

LT:  No, they did. Because our GYN clinic was also really unique. So, let’s say, for example, a woman was coming for birth control, we would schedule women to come in in a small group. It was really based on the self-help model of women getting together to talk about their common health concerns and experiences. We would see women for their GYN appointments, also in a group, and we would go over the different types of birth control that were available, and women would share their experiences. “Oh, I had an IUD. It was terrible.” Or, “Oh, it was really great.” And then the women would decide for themselves what type of birth control they wanted.

And then we showed them how to do self vaginal exam, which we also did in a group. We had worked with a nurse practitioner, and they could have a pap smear, and then also get their birth control. We had a medical director the whole time, I mean, from day one. But the clinic was definitely a woman-controlled clinic. We trained our doctors in the method of abortion care that had been used at other feminist women’s health centers, which we felt was the most safe method.

JW:  I love that you guys were training the doctors. So, they weren’t able to prescribe then? That’s the question I was going to ask. You needed doctors who could prescribe the medications that needed a prescription.

LT:  Right.

JW:  Do you recall any specific incident that was really happy for you there. Or one maybe that wasn’t so happy.

LT:  I loved working there. We kind of cross trained in all the different aspects of the clinic. So, one week I might be the coordinator of the clinic, the next one I might be the health worker who went into the room with the woman. I might work in the sterile room. The whole aspect of working in a clinic; I think I might have been a nurse in another life or something like that. That whole clinic environment, really, I loved.

I believe it was 1988, they had the Democratic Convention held here in Atlanta. This organization that was in Bennington, New York, you may have heard of them, Operation Rescue, Binghamton, NY, an anti-abortion group, decided to come to Atlanta. They thought by protesting here with the convention here, that they would get a lot of publicity. So, we knew that they were coming. I don’t remember how, but we knew.

And we went and we met with the police, and we told them about their practices up in New York. That they would go to a clinic, block the entrance, chain themselves to the door, or come into the clinic, chain themselves to the furniture. And the police were just like, “Well, that’s illegal.” And we went, “We know, but we would like for you to have a presence outside our clinic during this time.” And they just said, “Well, we’ll send a patrol car by.”

So then, sure enough, they just descended on us. People were not able to get into the clinic. The police came, they started arresting them. And then we basically spent months under siege, because it did get a lot of publicity. And then more and more anti-abortion people came from all over the country to protest. Our clinic was an individual building, so it lent itself really well for protesters. And then, of course, they hated that we had feminist in our name. That was even worse. So, we spent years being picketed; hateful people.

We developed quite a relationship with the police, which is something that I, as a radical feminist, didn’t ever think I would. But it was like every week the police were trying a new technique of how to help defend the clinic. We had mounted police, sometimes we had motorcycle police, other times we had what was called the Red Dog Squad that came; the ones that are hyper vigilant about using guns and things. And so, that was a very interesting experience.

But it was hard in another way, too, because we actually provided child care at our clinic. And I myself was very fortunate to get to have my two young babies come with me to work from six weeks on. Particularly on Saturday, there were other clinic workers who had children, and it was very unsettling in terms of, would there be a bombing? When I would walk in with my small children, the an-types would yell at me and my kids, “Why didn’t they kill you?” and things like that. That whole part was so stressful.

I remember, really, every morning, when I would drive to the clinic and I’d come up over a hill, I just was like, “Will the clinic even be there?” We had to put all this fencing and that Cortina wire around. It was very upsetting because we had this warm, homey environment, where women could feel comfortable and safe, and they felt anything but. But they still needed to get their abortion, so our abortion numbers didn’t go down. It’s just their experience getting into the clinic was so awful.

JW:  Oh, that’s what I was going to ask you, if your patient load went down. But it didn’t.

LT:  It didn’t really, no. We had volunteers who were escorts who would be in the parking lot and then walk the women in, and their partners or significant other that they brought with them. The antis would just yell at them the whole way in, try to block their entrance. It was pretty awful.

JW:  It’s very sad. I mean, it’s really sad to me that that’s how people want to spend their time. Harassing people.

LT:  Yes. And it was sad for the women, because up until that time we’d been able to really help women feel good about their decision instead of being punitive. And then when this happened, I think it was really hard for women to feel good about their decision.

JW:  But the clinic has continued, and women are getting the care they need.

LT:  Yes, and it’s even blossomed more. They are providing a lot of transgender services. They work really closely with the Latinx community, a lot more outreach in that way than we did back in the ’70s and ’80s. The executive director is a Black woman, a wonderful, very dynamic person, and the chair of their board is Black. They actually identify themselves now as a Black controlled clinic.

JW:  So has the clientele changed, or not really?

LT:  No. Now, Georgia has the six-week abortion ban. That’s been a big problem for the clinic. I’m not as close to them as I probably should be, but the work involved with that is actually even more, because you’re getting inundated with calls. “Can I come? I’ve got to get in today. I know I’m going to be six weeks tomorrow” and then they can’t go there, so then trying to have a referral network and helping women try to figure out logistics for travel and transportation.

And then, of course, it totally affects the revenue. I know that the health center had a big fundraiser. We bought our building, and it was a new, different building, probably 20 years ago. But, I mean, we had a mortgage. And so, the fundraiser really helped the clinic pay off their mortgage, which is huge because that’s a big expense every month. But that was due to the reduction in the number of abortions that were being done.

JW:  So, I’m interested in the referral service and so forth. Do you know much about how it works, or who they refer to, or how people get money to do their travel?

LT:  I don’t, I’m sorry to say. I know even back in the day when we were doing abortions, we were able to do them up to 26 weeks. Of course, they can’t now, even in Georgia, it got changed to, I think, 20 weeks. But we were always seeing women who were too far. The National Abortion Federation has an abortion fund that helps women with money. In Georgia, we really always experienced this problem of travel because 95% of all the abortions are done in Atlanta. So, people were always having challenges with travel.

JW:  I see. To get to Atlanta?

LT:  Yes, to get to Atlanta.

JW:  And were there waiting periods in Georgia, too. So, women had to come back a second time?

LT:  No. But still, for second trimester abortion, it does require two visits, so there is the overnight stay. I remember when I lived in Tallahassee before they started the Feminist Women’s Health Center there, the nearest place to get an abortion was in Jacksonville, Florida. Which was maybe two or three hours away, but for some reason, even though I wasn’t pregnant and never had to take advantage of it, that was scary to me to have to drive and not be in my own city for some reason. And I know other women feel the same way.

JW:  Yes, it’s strange, you don’t know where you’re going, it’s a very vulnerable situation to begin with.

LT:  And then in terms of aftercare, you’re supposed to go back in two weeks for a checkup. If you have any complications, and then, now you’re home.

JW:  I’m assuming a lot of women did not go back for the checkup, correct?

LT:  The ones from out of town, correct. But we told them, “You can go to your doctor for this checkup. It doesn’t have to be at our clinic.”

JW:  Right. But then the doctor might know what happened, and so then the woman may be reticent to be so upfront about that. Oh, my. Here we are again.

LT:  Exactly. I almost really can’t think of it too much because here I am, I’ll be 72 on the 29th, and I just can’t believe that we’re back to square one. Really, I’m so happy about Ohio. You get these little glimmers every now and then. I have a daughter, and I have five granddaughters, and it’s very much in my mind all the time. I just know that getting pregnant is going to be a very different situation for them. Having an unplanned pregnancy, than it would have been even two years ago.

JW:  I’m trying to think of what’s the nearest state where people go, I guess North Carolina, maybe?

LT:  Yes.

JW:  Still, that’s not that close. According to where you live in Georgia.

LT:  No, it’s about 5 hours or so.

JW:  So how do you think all that work, I mean, you said you might have been a nurse in another life, but you were always interested in Our Bodies, Ourselves. Did you continue that through the rest of your career after you left the health center?

LT:  You know, there were so many parallels. After I left the health center, I worked in the mental health field. Primarily, it was with a nonprofit organization called, the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network. Back then, they used to use the word consumer, a peer run organization. So, there were a lot of parallels, and I was able to use a lot of the things that I learned from my work in the women’s movement to apply to the mental health movement.

For example, some of the services that the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network provide, is they do a training to have people who have lived experience with mental health concerns, become certified peer specialists. And then from there, we have a program where the certified peer specialists work with the state hospitals, meeting people there, who are about to transition back into the community, and then being an advocate when they come out.

And then we have the same program set up in prisons. People with lived experience with the criminal justice system in addition to mental health concerns. But this whole concept of peer support, which to me is so similar to what we tried to do in the very early days about women taking control of their bodies, learning more about it, and advocating for others. And then there were just different things even with the business model that was similar. Running an organization, another nonprofit, when I had experience running that one.

JW:  Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And I assume this was men and women, is that right?

LT:  Yes. The mental health, it was. But interestingly, the executive director, they had two different ones while I worked there, and they were both women. And when I look back, I have never worked for a man.

JW:  Really?

LT:  I was thinking about that the other day, and I don’t know. I don’t know how it would have been for me. I’m a very flexible person, it probably would have been fine, but I don’t know. I guess I’m kind of proud of that in a way.

JW:  It sounds to me like your early work, really, you carried it through all the way through your entire career. Do you feel that way?

LT:  I do feel that way, yes. And also, one of the things, as part of my consulting business, I don’t know if you have time for this one last little story; but there was a group of health advocacy organizations that we were meeting. We were proponents of universal health care. And the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia converted from a nonprofit to a for profit, and they did not give any of their assets to other nonprofits like you’re supposed to do.

I mean, it’s fine for them to become a for profit. And because there was no real 501(c)(3) health advocacy organization, it was really just a group of – we called ourselves a gang – we found attorneys and we sued Blue Cross Blue Shield. We had to sue the Secretary of State and the attorney General of Georgia to get the assets back, and form Georgia Healthcare Foundation.

JW:  Wow. To make them follow the law, basically. That’s amazing.

LT:  That was a big deal, and Healthcare Georgia Foundation has just gone on to do such incredible work all over the state, to help people with all different types of healthcare needs and advocacy and policy changes, and things like that.

JW:  Oh, wow. An aside career you had there.

LT:  Yes. And the thing that was interesting is we got, I think, $113 million from Blue Cross Blue Shield. The lawyers got $11 million, and our little plaintiff group got nothing.

JW:  Really? So, when you said we, you mean this newly formed Georgia advocacy group.

LT:  Yes. Well, when we met with the attorneys, we had to reach out to different nonprofit healthcare organizations in Georgia to put together a little plaintiff group because it was a class action lawsuit.

JW:  I see.

LT:  I was hopeful, and I myself and another person, really coordinated the whole effort for free. It was a wonderful experience, it’s not that I expected anything. I really expected that the attorneys might give some money to the plaintiffs group as a donation after the whole thing was over. But, nope.

JW:  Well, I guess we have to think that they did a good job because they won, but still, they could have been more generous.

LT:  They could have, yes. They did do a good job, were nice people and all of that, but I just thought they could have given like, $1,000 to each group.

JW:  Take you out to dinner or something, a celebration. Oh, well, that’s an amazing accomplishment, too, because this group is going on and I assume helping consumers all over the state.

LT:  That’s why I wanted to mention it. Not that I’m trying to pat myself on the back, but it was just a big thing that happened in Georgia that had a really good outcome for all Georgians.

JW:  That’s super. Well, is there anything else you’d like to add before we close?

LT:  I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. I think it sounds like just a wonderful project, and this history is just so important to not be lost. I looked through the list of the people that you have been talking with, and it’s just amazing. I can’t wait to somehow see all their videos or however all comes together.

JW:  Yes, it’s just been a wonderful experience for me. Well, thank you. Thank you so much.