Academic

Barbara Seaman

By Ann Bartow

Seaman died on 2/27/08. From Women’s Enews:

Barbara Seaman always believed that women knew more about their bodies than male doctors did. As a young mother in the 1950s, she made the revolutionary decision to breastfeed her child at a time when infant formula was considered nutritionally superior.

As a public figure, long-time crusading journalist, fighter for social justice and pioneer of the women’s health movement in the 1970s, she encouraged women to inform themselves, trust themselves and stand up to medical “expertise.” …

… If nothing else, Seaman, author of the 1969 book “The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill,” will be forever remembered as the person who raised the alarm about potentially fatal side effects of estrogen used in the widely prescribed contraceptive pill, dangers only acknowledged by the federal government three decades later.

When the Senate convened hearings on the matter, a group from DC Women’s Liberation interrupted and demonstrated with “impolite” questions like why men didn’t take a contraceptive pill and why no women had been asked to testify to the Senate committee. …

For more information:

“Barbara Seaman: Muckraker for Women’s Health”:
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1566

Barbara Seaman’s last interview, with Ronnie Eldridge, CUNY TV:
http://www.cuny.tv/audiovideo/detail3.lasso?ProgramID=PR1009252

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).

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