Colorado Springs Women's Health

The Colorado Springs Women's Health Service Clinic (WHSC) was an organization that dedicated itself to empowering Colorado women, and was the first women's health clinic to be fully operated by women. The clinic provided healthcare services, including abortion, held support groups, and educated women about their physical and mental health. ^[1]

History

In the early 1970's, the women who would go on to found the clinic visited other feminist clinics, such as the Feminist Women's Health Center in Los Angeles. This research led them to developing a concept they called "well-woman," a woman who took control of her own physical health.

The organization started as a consciousness-raising women's liberation group.

In 1973, the organization released a book called "Circle One: A Self-Health Handbook" which included articles about the self-health movement's history, patient advocacy, menses extraction, various vaginal infections and their treatments, and a "large enthusiastic section of several articles on masturbation."

In 1975, these efforts manifested in the clinic located at 111 E Dale St. It was staffed entirely by women, and the clinic offered sliding scale prices for medical procedures. Even still, it often offered procedures at the lowest available cost, compared to other clinics.

The WHSC worked with many feminist organizations, such as the Big Mama Rag Collective and the Woman to Woman bookcenter, both located in Denver. BMR and Woman to Woman sponsored an International Women's Day Festival, whose events included “poetry, a belly dancing performance, a karate demonstration, a body movement workshop, a potluck dinner with free beer, (and) free pelvic exams by women from the Women’s Health Service Clinic.”

Members of the group also formed a teaching collective with an Anthropology professor at Colorado College, one of the few women professors at the college at the time, to develop a women's studies course for the Fall of 1973. ^[2]

Community Impacts

Questions

• Who was the anthropology professor at Colorado College? Look at yearbooks.
• "Circle One - A Self-Health Handbook" - Locate a copy?
  • Bonnie Pucell or Linda Harroun might have a copy #materials-to-locate
  • Linda Harroun - Director of WHSC
  • Linda Sutton
  • Bonnie Pucell - lived in a women's commune on Tejon St.

References

Anything to add?