{"id":29684,"date":"2025-06-15T17:05:39","date_gmt":"2025-06-15T17:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29684"},"modified":"2025-06-15T17:25:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T17:25:18","slug":"norma-swenson-our-bodies-ourselves-co-author-dies-at-93","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29684","title":{"rendered":"Norma Swenson, \u2018Our Bodies, Ourselves\u2019 Co-Author, Dies at 93"},"content":{"rendered":"
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She was a proponent of natural childbirth when she joined the group that produced the candid guide to women\u2019s health. It became a cultural touchstone and a global best seller.<\/p>\n

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Norma Swenson was working to educate women about childbirth, championing their right to have a say about how they delivered their babies, when she met the members of the collective that had put out the first rough version of what would become the feminist health classic \u201cOur Bodies, Ourselves.\u201d It was around 1970, and she recalled a few of the women attending a meeting she was holding in Newton, Mass., where she lived.<\/p>\n

It did not go well. One of them shouted at her, \u201cYou are not a feminist, you\u2019ll never be a feminist and you need to go to school!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was stricken,\u201d Ms. Swenson remembered in a StoryCorps interview in 2018<\/a>. \u201cBut also feeling that maybe she was right. I needed to know more things.\u201d<\/p>\n

She did, however, know quite a bit about the medical establishment, the paternalistic and condescending behavior of male doctors \u2014 in 1960, only 6 percent<\/a> of incoming medical students were female \u2014 and the harmful effect that behavior had on women\u2019s health. She had lived it, during the birth of her daughter in 1958.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite the initial tension \u2014 the woman who had berated Ms. Swenson felt her activism was too polite, too old-school \u2014 the members of the Boston Women\u2019s Health Book Collective, as they called themselves, invited Ms. Swenson to join their group. She would go on to help make \u201cOur Bodies, Ourselves\u201d a global best seller. It was a relationship that lasted for the next half-century.<\/p>\n

Ms. Swenson died on May 11 at her home in Newton. She was 93.<\/p>\n

The cause was cancer, her daughter, Sarah Swenson, said.<\/p>\n

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She was a proponent of natural childbirth when she joined the group that produced the candid guide to women\u2019s health. It became a cultural touchstone and a global best seller.Norma Swenson was working to educate women about childbirth, championing their right to have a say about how they delivered their babies, when she met the members of the collective that had put out the first rough version of what would become the feminist health classic \u201cOur Bodies, Ourselves.\u201d It was around 1970, and she recalled a few of the women attending a meeting she was holding in Newton, Mass., where she lived.It did not go well. One of them shouted at her, \u201cYou are not a feminist, you\u2019ll never be a feminist and you need to go to school!\u201d\u201cI was stricken,\u201d Ms. Swenson remembered in a StoryCorps interview in 2018. \u201cBut also feeling that maybe she was right. I needed to know more things.\u201dShe did, however, know quite a bit about the medical establishment, the paternalistic and condescending behavior of male doctors \u2014 in 1960, only 6 percent of incoming medical students were female \u2014 and the harmful effect that behavior had on women\u2019s health. She had lived it, during the birth of her daughter in 1958.Despite the initial tension \u2014 the woman who had berated Ms. Swenson felt her activism was too polite, too old-school \u2014 the members of the Boston Women\u2019s Health Book Collective, as they called themselves, invited Ms. Swenson to join their group. She would go on to help make \u201cOur Bodies, Ourselves\u201d a global best seller. It was a relationship that lasted for the next half-century.Ms. Swenson died on May 11 at her home in Newton. She was 93.The cause was cancer, her daughter, Sarah Swenson, said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29686,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29684"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29687,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29684\/revisions\/29687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}