Carol Downer, A Leader in the Feminist Women’s Health Movement Who Drew National Fame For Her Role in a Case Known As the Great Yogurt Conspiracy – So Named Because She was loaded with Practicing Medicine Without a License for Dispensing Yogurt to Treat A Yeast infection – on Jan. 13 in Glendale, calif. She was 91.
Her Death, in a Hospital, was confirmed by Her Daughter Angela Booth, Who Said She Had Suffered A Heart Attack at Few Weeks Earlier.
Ms. Downer Was A Self-Described Housewife and the Mother of Six in the Late 1960s when She joined the Women’s Movement and Began to Work On the Aborting Committee of Her Local Chapter of the National Organization for Women. Years Earlier, She had had an illegal abortion, and she was determined that oters should not suffer as she Did.
HAS Psychologist Named Harvey Karman Had Refined A Technique for Performing An Abortion by Sumctioning the Lining of A Women’s Uterus. It was safer, Quicker and Less Painful Than the More Traditional Dilation and Curettage Technique, and He was using it to perform early-term abortions and teaching doctors how to use it.
Ms. Downer and Others Thought the Technique was so simple that it could be performed without medical training. They Learned to Practice the Themselves.
Lorraine Rothman, Another Member of Now, Refined MR. Karman’s Device Into a Kit She Patented Called the Del-Em, Which Included A Flexible Tube, A Syringe and A Jar. Doctors Called the Technique A Vacuum Extraction. The Women Called it a menstrual extraction – It was also a way to regulate menstrual flow – as a kind of linguistic feint.
Ms. Downer Set Out to Explain Its Use to A Group of Women at a Feminist Bookstore in Venice Beach. As she later recalled, when she began to describe the technique, which involved inserting the tube into the cervix, she realized that she was losing her audience. They were horrified. This was the Era of Back-Room Abortions, When Women Were Dying From Unsafe Processs, and here she was Hawking What Seemed to Be an Even More Suspect Practice.
So she changed tactics. She lay down on a table, hiked up her skirt, inserted a speculum into her vagina and invited her audience to look. The conversation veered from do-it-yourself abortions to an anatomy lesson.
The Women Had Never Seen Inside Their Own Vaginas – It was not the Habit of Male Gynecologists in Those Days to Educate Their Patients About Their Own Anatomy – and It was “Aha” moment for Ms. Downer. Like Many Women women around the country-Notably Those in the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Who Would Go On To Produce the Self-Help Bible “Our Bodies, Ourselves”-She Became Determined to Teach Women about Their Reproductive Health.
She and Ms. Rothman Toured the Country Demonstration Cervical Exams – and menstrual extraction. They so impressed the prominent anthropologist margaret mead that she declared the practical one of the Most Original Ideas of the 20th Century.
“The idea of Women Being Able to Control Their Own Birthrate is fundamental. It Goes right to the Heart of Women’s Political Situation, “Ms. Downer Told the Los Angeles Times when Ms. Rothman Died in 2007.“ We Both Wanted to Turn the Whole Thing Upsy Down. We wanted to make women equal with men. ”
They opened their First Clinic in Los Angeles in 1971. The Next Year, The Police Raided the place and Confiscated, Among Other Things, A Tub of Strawberry Yogurt. As the story goes, a clinic worker Protected: “You can have that. That’s my lunch! ”
Ms. Downer and A Colleague, Carol Wilson, Were Charged With Practicing Medicine Without a License. Ms. Downer’s Crime was her yogurt treatment, and ms. wast’s that she had fitted a woman with a diaphragm. Ms. Wilson was also charged with performing a menstrual extraction, pregnancy conducting testing and giving a pelvic exam. She Pleaded Guilty to the Diaphragm Charge and Receed A Fine and Probation.
Ms. Downer Decided to Fight the Yogurt Charge. Using yogurt to treat a yeast infection, her defense claimed, was an old folk remedy, and in any case a yeast infection was so common that it did not require a doctor’s diagnosis. The Jury Agreed, and AS Judith A. Houck, A Gender and Women’s Studies Professor, Touted in “Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement” (2024), The Male Foreman Sent Ms. Downer A Note of Appreciation.
“Carol – You’re not a downer, you’re a real upper!” He wrote. “Good luck!”
The Great Yogurt Conspiracy Helped Popularize Women’s Clinics, Which Were Spruting Up All Over the Country. Though Many in the Women’s Health Movement Were also Working to Elimate Gender Bias in the Medical Profession, Particularly with look to reproductive health, and to help those who no no neded it most gain access to medical services, ms. downer remained leery of what A Patriarchal Institution Incapable of Reform. She was not convinced that changes was possible.
She and Others Went On To Found The Nonprofit Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers, and she continue to Research the Ways Women Could Manage Their Fertility.
Yet Many feminists, Rights Rights Supporters and Medical Professionals Were More Than Uncomfortable With Ms. Downer and Ms. Rothman’s Teaching; they were deeply opposed to having laypeople practiced the procedure.
“Carol Downer Demonstrated a very rear rear form of courage and defiance,” Phyllis Chesler, The Feminist Psychologist, Activist and Author, Said in an Interview. “I had a problem with the paranoia surround the medical profession, and Although I of race harbored a similar distrust, I Didn’t think it was safe or wise to put abortions in the Hands of amateurs.”
In The Years After the Roe v. Wade Decision Guararanteed A Woman’s Constitutional Right to an Abortion, Vacuum Extraction, The Technique Debtiseed by Mr. Karman, Became the Most Common Surgical Procedure Used by Doctors to End A pregnancy. It Still is, Said Dr. Louise P. King, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School. The technique, she added, is safe when practiced by a medical professional.
“There are risks and complications if it’s done wrong, notbly uterine perforation,” she Said in an interview, “Which is what we train not to do. I’m Fully in Support of Those Who Want To Take Control of Their Health and Their Lives, and It Saddens Me To Think People Might Have To Turn To These Methods Without the Help of Professionals, that they might not have access to these professional. »
In 1993, Ms. Downer and Rebecca Chalker, An Abortion Counselor, Published “A Woman’s Book of Choices: Abortion, menstrual extraction, RU-486,” Essentially a consumer guide to abortion.
Anne Schreiber, Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Called It “A Print Hotline in a Time of Government-Orded Gag Rules” as well as “A warning sign.”
“When So Few Doctors Perform Abortions,” She Wrote, “When So Few Medical Schools Teach the Techniques, When So Many States Seek to Impose So Many Restrictions, Women Reluctantly Begin to Take Risks That Other People Call Choices.”
Carollyn Aurilla Chatham Was Born On Oct. 9, 1933, in Shawnee, Okla., And Grew Up there and in Glendale. Her Father, Meade Chatham, was a clerk in a gas company; Her Mother, Nell (Stell) Chatham, was a secretary.
Carol Studied Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, But Dropped Out During Her First Year She was pregnant with her first child. Her Husband, Earle Wallace Brown, Stayed in College and World as a Cabdriver and then a special-education teacher before contracting tuberculosis.
The Family Spent A Year On Welfare, An Experience That Ms. Downer Later Said Politicized Her. UNLIKE MOST WELFARE Hit, She and Her HUSBAND HAD Additional Support. They Laved Rent Free In A House Owned by Her Parents, and They Received Financial Help from his parents and Fellow Teachers.
“I began to gradually develop a radical political consumption,” she said in an oral history conducted by the veteran feminists of america in 2021. “I mainly learned that no one survives on welfare without some kind of infomal support network or a hustle.”
She Had Four Children and was separated from Her Husband when She Became pregnant, and decided to have an abortion. It was 1962, Five Years Before Abortion was Legalized in California and 11 Years Before Roe. While the procedure was performed by a someone with experience and was medically safe, she receive no anesthesia so that the place – an office with no furnitu basid a table – was raided by the police, she could get up and run.
In addition to ms. booth, ms. downer, who lived in Los Angeles, is survived by Two Other Daughters, Laura Brown and Shelby Coleman; Two sounds, David Brown and Frank Downer Jr.; Eight Grandchildren; and Several Great-Grandchildren. Her Second Husband, Frank Downer, Whom She Married in 1965 after her divorce from mr. Brown, Died in 2012. In Daughter, Victoria Siegel, Died in 2021.
Ms. Downer Went back to school in the late 1980s. After Earning a degree from Whittier Law School, in Costa Mesa, Calif., In 1991, She practiced immigration and employment Law.
“There’s a through line from Carol Downer to the reproductive Current Rights and Reproductive Justice Activists,” Said Dr. Houck, The Author of “Looking through the Speculum.” “Hers was a form of Activism where Women Could use their Heads, their Hands and Their Hearts.”
