Barbara Seaman's 1969 book The Doctor's Case Against the Pill, and her later books about DES, Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones, and hormone replacement therapy, The Menopause Industry: How the Medical Establishment Exploits Women, were seminal feminist tracts. My copies were dog-eared because I was always lending them to friends who were considering The Pill or HRT. She was right on: these were all huge experiments by the (mostly) male medical community, where healthy women were given untested and experimental drugs for perfectly natural conditions that were not illnesses. A woman who needs birth control is not sick. A woman experiencing the symptoms of menopause is not "ill"; she is experiencing part of life. Even worse, women's concerns about the safety and efficacy of these largely untested prescription drugs were brushed aside.
As a result of Seaman's work, the U.S. Senate held hearings on the safety of "The Pill" (where only men were called to testify, natch) and a warning was added to The Pill.
This pioneering feminist died two days ago, yet the corporate media is ignoring her death and, by ignoring her death, ignoring another part of our history, or as we called it back in the day, herstory.
Barbara Seaman was fired from almost every magazine she ever wrote for (including dismissals from Ladies Home Journal, Family Circle, Omni, and Hadassah magazine) when the pharmaceutical companies threatened to pull advertising if her work was published. She was a real feminist pioneer, but as of the time of this diary, only 9 media outlets have published an obituary of Seaman. Is the corporate media ignoring the death of Barbara Seaman to keep their pharmaceutical advertisers happy? I emailed the NYTimes last night lamenting their lack of an obit, and got a form email in response, but neither the Times, the Boston Globe, nor the LATimes reports on Seaman's death today. Shame.
She will be missed. Here are some tributes to Barbara Seaman:
HuffPo: Leora Tanenbaum
HuffPo: Jennifer Baumgardner
TPM Cafe: Let us remember Barbara Seaman, crusading pioneer of the women's health movement
Chesler Chronicles: An Elegy For My Friend "Babz," aka Barbara Seaman (1935-2008) (a tribute by another feminist writer, Phyllis Chesler, the author of Women and Madness)
Our Bodies, Ourselves: Remembering Barbara Seaman
Women'sSpace: "Dear Injurious Physician" — In Memorium: Barbara Seaman, Sept. 11, 1935-Feb. 27, 2008
Washington Post: Barbara Seaman, 72; Pioneer In Women's Health Movement
(This diary is adapted from a post on my blog, Main St. USA.)