THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Carol Downer
“My actions have been rooted in my personal experiences.”
A pioneer of the women’s self-help movement, author and attorney. Los Angeles NOW, abortion committee, 1969. Co-founder of The Feminist Women’s Health Center, CA 1973. Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Care Centers. Author of A New View of a Woman’s Body, How to Stay Out of the Gynecologist’s Office, Women Centered Pregnancy and Birth, and A Book of Women’s Choices.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, October 2021
Photo 1. Carol Downer, Sandra Sullaway, Becky Chalker and Suzann Gage. Photo 2. Life Magazine Special Report, “Remarkable Women 1776-1976.” L-R: Suzann Gage, Sherry Shiffer, Francie Hornstein, Carol Downer, Lorraine Rothman, & Lynn Heidelberg (lying down), 1976.
More About Carol:
- Carol Downer’s website Women’s Health in Women’s Hands
- PODCAST: Carol Downer revolutionized the women’s health movement, and refuses to quit, decades later – by Meghan Murphy, founder and editor of Feminist Current, January 24, 2020
- Carol Downer: Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter, September 2019
- Interview with Francie Hornstein and Carol Downer, The Abortion Underground, May 2019
- Interview – The secret home abortion movement that started in LA two years before Roe v. Wade, KPCC Radio, April 2017
- “No Stopping: From Pom-Poms to Saving Women’s Bodies,” by Carol Downer, On the Issues Magazine – A Magazine of Feminist, Progressive Thinking, 2011
- Women’s Spaces Show with host Elaine B. Holtz and guest Carol Downer, 2005
- Women’s health movement and the WATCH arrests, 1979, Pacifica Radio Archives
- Self-Help Proponents Speak at Tribunal, The Oakland Tribune, 1972
- The First Self Help Clinic, 1971
- Wikipedia page
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975