Downer, Carol (audio interview #1 of 3)

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Feminist Health Movement

Downer, Carol (audio interview #1 of 3)

Downer, Carol (10/9/1933); Robinson, Dara, interviewer

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/215246

Date: 2020-03-06

Abstract:

INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This first, short interview with Carol Downer was conducted for the Women Rising history project by a member of the Women Rising Collective. Downer and the interviewer, as well as other members of the collective, were long time associates in the Los Angeles women's liberation movement. Some of the material covered in this interview is also covered in the two subsequent interviews conducted by Michelle Moravec.

Description:

SUBJECT BIO - Carol Downer, one of the founders of the Feminist Women's Health Center in Los Angeles, has been a leading force in the feminist health movement and its most visible advocate of self-examination. She was also on the Board of Directors of the National Abortion Federation. The oldest of four children, Downer was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, but came to Los Angeles with her family when she was two. She attended Glendale High School, where she actively participated in student activities, and then went on to UCLA, dropping out when she became pregnant. She moved with her husband to northern California, where he was stationed in the Navy and where her daughter was born. After she moved back to Los Angeles, when she was pregnant with her third child, she reentered Los Angeles City College. By the time she was divorced from her first husband, Downer had four children, and after marrying her present husband, Frank Downer, in 1964, she had two more children. During this period, she attended CSU Los Angeles, where she studied sociology. Downer's feminist consciousness was awakened when she worked on the recall campaign of Councilman Art Snyder and saw how liberal men discriminated against women in leadership positions. Later, in 1969, she joined Los Angeles NOW, although she was acutely aware of her class difference from the other women in NOW. She worked in the Abortion Task Force of NOW with Lana Phelan, author of The Abortion Handbook, who became her mentor, and became a speaker on abortion rights for the LA NOW chapter. With an eye to learning how to perform abortions in order to challenge the restrictive laws, Downer and other women observed abortion procedures at an illegal abortion clinic. They then called a meeting on April 7, 1971 to educate women about abortion and their bodies. This was the first Self-Help Clinic. Committed to spreading the idea of self-help to women across the country, the women demonstrated a gynecological self-examination at a national NOW conference. Over the years, they traveled throughout the US and to Europe, Mexico, Central American and Iran. The outgrowth of the initial meeting of the Self-Help Clinic was the development of the concept of menstrual extraction and the invention of the Del-Em kit by Lorraine Rothman. Subsequently, in 1972, they formed the Feminist Women's Health Center (FWHC), which initially functioned in the back room of the Crenshaw Women's Center. Later that year, Downer and Colleen Willson were arrested and charged with "practicing medicine without a license" - Downer for inserting yogurt to treat a woman's vaginal yeast infection. She was acquitted after a trial that was dubbed "The Great Yogurt Conspiracy Trial" by anarcha-feminists at the Westside Women's Center. In 1973, eight of the women in the FWHC group started the first women-controlled clinic, which continued to operate successfully until 1984, when it experienced financial problems and was taken over by the Oakland FWHC.* After the Oakland clinic was burned down, the operation was resumed in Los Angeles. Downer ran the Federation of Women's Health Centers (originally founded in 1975 at a Mexico City conference on Women and Health) out of the clinic location on Wilshire Boulevard for the next two years, until 1986 when the clinic was forced to close completely. From 1987 to 1991, while she attended law school, Downer continued to work for the Federation of FWHCs. Since then, she has practiced law, mostly in the area of disabilities rights. Although a case of severe shingles (Herpes Zoster) required her to stop working in 2003 for a year, she has returned to law and continues to make appearances on immigration matters. She is currently working on a memoir of her early experiences in the women's movement. * Margo Miller, Francie Hornstein, Jennifer Burgess, Shelly Farber, and Debi Law were particularly instrumental in establishing the clinic. TOPICS - women's movement; feminism; Girl Scouts; abortions; menstrual extraction; Roe v; Wade; and mental health; Feminist Women's Health Centers; media treatment of abortion; feminist health organizing; raid of Self-Help Clinic,1972; arrest and trial for yogurt procedure; WATCH trial; and abortion in the future;

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