In 1948, the Constitution of the World Health Organization declared, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Yet this idea was not predominant in the United States immediately after World War II, especially when it came to women’s reproductive health. Both legal and medical institutions—and the male legislators and physicians who populated those institutions—reinforced women’s second class social status and restricted their ability to make their own choices about reproductive health care.
In More Than Medicine, Jennifer Nelson reveals how feminists of the ‘60s and ‘70s applied the lessons of the new left and civil rights movements to generate a women’s health movement. The new movement shifted from the struggle to revolutionize health care to the focus of ending sex discrimination and gender stereotypes perpetuated in mainstream medical contexts. Moving from the campaign for legal abortion to the creation of community clinics and feminist health centers, Nelson illustrates how these activists revolutionized health care by associating it with the changing social landscape in which women had power to control their own life choices.
More Than Medicine poignantly reveals how social justice activists in the United States gradually transformed the meaning of health care, pairing traditional notions of medicine with less conventional ideas of “healthy” social and political environments.

"Nelson has written a demanding but important book. She researched her topic well and provides a valuable history of womens health care movements of the 20thcentury." - Choice

"In the 1960s and & 70s, US feminists worked for a womens health movement that would reach beyond the sex discrimination dominating the mainstream medical system and towards healthcare that valued womens autonomy. The author examines the struggle for abortion rights, as well as the creation of community and women-centered clinics." - Conscience: The Newsjournal of Catholic Opinion

"The stories Nelson presents are familiar to womens history, the civil rights movement, and women of color feminism, but sewn together they tell a broader and connected story of the womens health movement across the United States and its longevity through the 1980s and 1990s." - Journal of American History

"More Than Medicinemakes important contributions to the history of medicine and womens history. It is a welcome addition to both fields of study." - Project Muse

"More Than Medicineis an extensively researched book, focusing on the struggle for feminists to make womens health a priority, to reach out to those in need of health care, and to integrate women friendly policies and provide care to those who have very little access to it." - Metapsychology

"Nelsons work inMore than Medicineis a solid primer on feminist health and the need for collaboration across social justice platform." - Feminist Collections