OUR BODIES OURSELVES, OUR PURSES
By Diana Heil, Courtesy Photo

The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico)
September 10, 2005 Saturday

Co-author’s visit to Santa Fe will raise money for several projects,
including health guide for Latinas

Judy Norsigian, co-founder of the Our Bodies Ourselves organization
in Boston, is coming to Santa Fe.

She will visit her sister Lisa, who also goes by her Tibetan Buddhist
nun name Rinchen Lhamo. And Norsigian will speak about women’s health
issues at a house party, which is open to a limited number of guests
from the public.

Norsigian, 57, is on a fundraising tour through the Southwest.

“We’ve been facing difficult times financially in the last few years,
and so we’ve instituted this house-party routine, which is a wonderful
way to talk about issues and get support and get people to understand
how the book is certainly a source of income but it is never more
than 10 to 15 percent of our total budget,” she said in a telephone
interview this week.

The nonprofit’s operating budget is about $500,000.

Through its books, workshops and activism efforts, the group provides
information about health, sexuality and reproduction from a feminist
and consumer perspective. Our Bodies, Ourselves, the book’s founding
text, is now in its eighth edition. Tibetan and South Korean versions
are in the works.

The Latina Health Initiative, a special outreach effort of the group,
produced Nuestros Cuerpos, Nuestras Vidas. But the Spanish-language
edition hasn’t been updated since 2000.

“We’re hoping to create a collaboration with some institutions because
we don’t have the funds to do it ourselves, and the publisher is
very small,” Norsigian said. “I would love to see that begin next
year. It’s badly needed.”

The initiative also is translating a booklet called “Journeys of
Parenthood,” written by the Maternity Center Association in New York
City. It will offer practical guidance to pregnant mothers while
staying sensitive to Latina cultural practices.

In 1971, when Norsigian first met the Boston Women’s Health Book
Collective at age 23, she didn’t know much about feminism, but she
was interested in nutrition. The college graduate had been living on
a commune in upstate New York for a year, where she learned how to
rebuild Volkswagen engines and grow organic food.

Meanwhile, the dozen women she met in the collective had challenged
the medical establishment by writing a 193-page booklet called Women
and Their Bodies. Soon after, Norsigian worked on the first chapter
on nutrition for Our Bodies, Ourselves, the book’s new title. It sold
250,000 copies.

“I became very interested in reproductive-health issues, midwifery,
childbearing … and trying to keep the effect of the profit motive
down to a dull roar in health and medical care,” Norsigian said.

In 1973, the year abortion became legal, Simon & Schuster published
the first commercial edition.

Norsigian came from an Armenian-American family. Her father ranted
against religion and psychiatry, and her mother was a lab technician.

Norsigian’s mother always wanted to be a doctor. But Norsigian’s
grandfather thought it was a waste for a woman to get an education;
her role was to be a mother.

So what did her mother think of Our Bodies, Ourselves?

“Though she never really read it that carefully, she was proud we
did it,” Norsigian said. “My mom was a feminist in her own way.”

Today, at age 83, Norsigian’s mom still teaches yoga classes in Boston.

GRAPHIC: 1. Judy Norsigian, second from left, along with the other
staff members who worked on Our Bodies, Ourselves. Norsigian will be
in Santa Fe on Wednesday.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress