Two years later, she is returning — leaving today to spend 10 days working alongside the two local Haitian midwives that staff the HCM Maternity Clinic, a birth center that serves more than 2,000 women a year. While the midwives provide the best care possible under difficult conditions, outcomes for mothers and babies could be improved with additional training and support.

Karen’s trip is sponsored by Circle of Health International, which works with local health care providers in crisis- and disaster-struck regions to ensure access to quality reproductive, maternal and newborn care. Like all COHI volunteers, Karen is donating her time, and COHI is fundraising to cover the transportation to Haiti (about $800 in airfare and local travel) and room and board on the compound where the birth center is located (about $300).

Here’s where you come in. For as little as $10, you can help send Karen to Haiti. Want to donate more? Please do so! Numerous gifts are available as perks for donors who can offer $20, $35, $50 or more.

Training drills like the one shown (left) help ensure safer births in unsafe times. Women in areas of crisis or disaster often struggle to secure basic reproductive health care. The Fond Parisien Birth Center (right) serves more than 2,000 women a year, providing critical care.

It’s all part of the Get Karen to Haiti campaign that Our Bodies Our Blog and other bloggers involved in improving maternal health are participating in for the next two weeks. Hillary Boucher and Jeanette McCulloch at BirthSwell have more information about the collaborative effort.

Your donation can make a huge difference. According to COHI:

Birth Centers like the one at Fond Parisian provide a model of care for other areas in Haiti and around the world, where maternal mortality is at the highest rate in the Western Hemisphere, with 630 deaths per 100,000 live births (compared to 11 deaths per 100,000 births in the US).

The midwives at the Fond Parisien birth center have received training in supporting women in low-risk births, providing care in common emergencies, and are developing protocols for when to transfer to other emergency medical facilities. But unlike their peers in the U.S. and in other industrialized societies, they do not have access to the latest research or journals, conferences where they can share skills, or even family support.

Karen took a moment as she was preparing for her trip to talk with Our Bodies Our Blog about her birth philosophy and why she’s returning to Haiti now (see below). Her goals are specific:

* Review existing protocols for managing emergencies and deciding when to transfer to the local hospital. Provide clinical support and skill-building where it could improve outcomes for Haitian women and their babies.

* Run emergency drills using improved protocol for complications most likely to be seen at the clinic, including shoulder dystocia and postpartum hemorrhage.

* Improve monitoring processes so that the clinic can evaluate their existing protocols and make improvements based on evidence, not just anecdotal understanding.

We hope you’ll consider supporting Karen’s efforts in Haiti and visit COHI’s Facebook page to follow along on Karen’s journey. You can learn more about COHI’s efforts in Haiti on its website.

* * * * * * * * * *

Our Bodies Our Blog: You first visited Haiti after the earthquake. How did that experience affect you and your commitment to expanding access to evidence-based care?

Karen Feltham: Arriving in Haiti, especially Port Au Prince, was overwhelming. I kept thinking of how long the earthquake lasted, counting in my head and imagining the earth shaking and the buildings falling — the world changing in 30 seconds. What was that like? Homes become rubble, the living-dead. It has changed everything for me, in a way. Anything can happen, in any instant. It might sound funny, but I run through worst-case scenarios in my head and with my family. Where will you go? Where will we meet?

Witnessing the work of countless NGOs and volunteers was inspiring, as well as a bit maddening. There was (and is) really good work happening in Haiti. There are excellent providers and logisticians providing great, life-changing (and life-providing) services. And that is inspiring.

At the same time, I think that there is a feeling of, “Anything is better than nothing.” I have seen that lead to a neglect of clinical standards.

OBOB: Why are you returning now?

KF: The organization that I volunteer with (Circle of Health International) is completing their work there and turning over the operation of the clinic to a local organization. This is a nice opportunity to re-connect with midwife colleagues who I had worked with previously. My goals for the trip are to run emergency obstetric care management drills, review core competencies, and always to reinforce and encourage the midwifery model of care.

Also, skilled birth attendants at delivery (and fewer pregnancies) definitely lower the maternal mortality rate. The international community is expecting quite a bit from newly trained midwives, and midwifery is a tough job. In the United States, a licensed midwife is more likely to begin independent practice with the benefit of collaboration and experienced colleagues. And so, I feel a commitment to providing something similar to this midwife team.

OBOB: How does your birth philosophy inform your volunteer efforts?

KF: I absolutely believe in the power of kindness and how it can be transformative, even revolutionary. Think of what women bear, here and elsewhere — assault, abuse, submission. I can’t change a country’s infrastructure, health care and education policies. But I can listen. I can provide the most gentle pelvic exam and the most respectful atmosphere.

If my touch is the first that a newborn feels, then I promise to make it a gentle one. If my voice is the first that she hears, then let it be welcoming. This is what I can bring, a reminder that excellent clinical skills are essential, but that kindness is life-changing. At least that’s what I think, and it’s the best that I can offer.

OBOB: You’ve identified three goals for your time in Haiti. Can you give readers a sense of how those goals will be achieved?

KF: I’m not sure how each day will unfold. One must be very flexible in these situations. But I’m certain that each day will be very full. My volunteer partners and I will run through management of the obstetric emergencies; postpartum hemorrhage and shoulder dystocia — the “what-ifs.” It’s so valuable to run through what everyone does in these situations, and then do it again.

Also, each day will include conferencing with the midwives, which involves reviewing clinical cases and addressing whatever concerns that they might have, along with symptoms, diagnoses, and procedures they have questions about.

OBOB: Have you incorporated into your teaching at Binghamton any experiences or lessons learned from working alongside midwives in Haiti and Nicaragua?

I guess that every experience influences every other, even in subtle ways.

I teach at the Decker School of Nursing at Binghamton University in both the graduate and undergraduate programs. I love working with nursing students! They are amazingly good people. One of the courses that I teach is in global nursing. So many students are interested in really making a difference but don’t know where to begin. I try to share a bit of my own experience and encourage each individual student to find their own way. I believe in the ripple effect of good work.

Also, one thing I try to do intentionally with students is to blur the line between “us” and “them.” Haiti and Nicaragua are very far away, and it’s easy to think that the people, clinicians and patients are so very different from us. I try to refer to clinical cases that I have seen elsewhere and good clinical work and speak to the shared experience between provider and patients that happens everywhere.

Health care is what happens between midwife (and doctor and nurse) and patient. It doesn’t happen at the upper levels of the bureaucracy. It’s the thing that takes place between two people. And that is true in Ithaca, N.Y., Fond Parisien, Haiti and Managua, Nicaragua.

* * *

“I did training for more than 5,000 women across the country, and all their stories and all their experiences are in Our Bodies, Ourselves. Along with the stories and political activism, we started brokering power at the personal as well as at the political level. As of this moment, we have something to celebrate.”

Those words were spoken by Renu Rajbhandari, a prominent women’s rights activist in Nepal, during our 40th anniversary symposium, Our Bodies, Our Future: Advancing Health and Human Rights for Women and Girls, on Oct. 1. Co-hosted with Boston University, the event marked four decades of activism and celebrated our evolution from a small group around a kitchen table in the United States to a vibrant network of social change activists at the table in countries around the world.

Held in conjunction with the release of the ninth edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” the symposium was also an opportunity to meet 12 of our global partners, including Renu, and listen to their extraordinary journeys of claiming and transforming this landmark book for the women and girls of their countries. Renu referred to the effort as a “transcreation.”

Many women talked about the cultural, political and social challenges to their activism and the relationships and networks they have built in order to effect change. (View videos from symposium, including the global panels.)

The book’s impact and legacy was described by many speakers, including local luminaries. In a video welcome, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick recalled how he was 15 years old when “Our Bodies, Ourselves” was first published; it was considered “racy,” yet filled with information that made him “a better person, and certainly a better partner.”

Robert Meenan, dean of Boston University School of Public Health, offered a formal welcome, followed by an all-star cast of women’s health advocates, including Byllye Avery, founder of the Avery Institute for Social Change and the Black Women’s Health Imperative, and Adrienne Germain, president emerita of the International Women’s Health Coalition. Marie Turley, executive director of the Boston Women’s Commission, brought greetings from Mayor Tom Menino, who had declared Oct. 1 Our Bodies Ourselves Day in the city of Boston.

These terrific presenters, and our energetic emcee, Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of Women, Action and the Media and a contributor to the new edition, spoke about the personal impact “Our Bodies, Ourselves” has had on their lives and the important role played by organizations like OBOS in realizing health equality and human rights, while at the same time reminding the audience of the sizeable challenges ahead.

They symposium paid tribute to the 14 OBOS founders who changed the world of women’s health 40 years ago. Sam Morgan Lilienfeld and Judah Rome, sons of deceased founders Pamela Morgan and Esther Rome, shared memories of their mothers – not only as feminist moms, but as powerful and positive role models.

“My mom viewed birth as an experience that has the power to change and define the life of a woman,” Sam said, “and her spirit of embracing and celebrating these major life events, which we sometimes may welcome and sometimes greet with trepidation, is something I’ve always admired.”

In his remarks about Esther completing the manuscript of “Sacrificing Ourselves for Love” just before her death in 1995, Judah said: “Watching my mom through the final months of her life was very painful for me, but it taught me how to live.” He told the audience he had hoped that her legacy would live on, adding, “I can tell from the energy in the room that it does.”

Our courageous global partners have used “Our Bodies, Ourselves” to develop and bring culturally unique health and sexuality information to their own communities. In addition to the challenges they encounter, they also discussed their success negotiating with power brokers – from men and matriarchs in the family, to religious leaders and heads of institutions.

Their stories of transformation, in Tanzania, Turkey, Japan, Israel, Serbia, India, Nepal, Senegal and Latin America, were reminiscent of the journey taken by OBOS founders 40 years ago. The parallel between the two groups of women was palpable and confirmed that not only has the book gone global, but it continues to inspire movement building by and for women and girls in every region of the world.

Loretta Ross, national coordinator of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, closed the day, firing up the audience by reminding everyone of the very real threats to women’s reproductive and sexual rights in the United States and around the world. Even so, she said the global partners’ activism and their use of the human rights framework made her “excited and optimistic” about the future.

As the day started with reminiscences of the 1960s and 70s, it ended with a freshly-stoked fire in the belly. OBOS is at the forefront of changing the lives of women and girls and will continue this work in the U.S. and around the world — into the next 40 years and beyond.

June Tsang is the program associate for the Our Bodies Ourselves Global Initiative

The list of speakers includes:

• Byllye Avery, founder of the Avery Institute for Social Change and the National Black Women’s Health Project, on the impact of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”
• Adrienne Germain, president emerita of the International Women’s Health Coalition, on the challenges and opportunities for our health and human rights.
• Sam Morgan Lilienfeld and Judah Rome, sons of OBOS founders Pamela Morgan and Esther Rome, on growing up with feminist mothers.
• Sally Whelan, program director for the OBOS Global Initiative, discusses the efforts involved working with groups around the world that are adapting “Our Bodies, Ourselves” for their own communities.
• Ayesha Chatterjee, program manager for the OBOS Global Initiative, introduces the organization’s global partners.
• Loretta Ross, founder and national coordinator of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, delivers a rousing closing keynote filled with personal stories and political wisdom. Don’t miss this.

Plus there are welcomes by Massachusetts Gov. Patrick Deval, Robert Meenan, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, and Judy Norsigian and Zobeida Bonilla, OBOS executive director and OBOS Latina health initiative coordinator. And it’s emceed by the one and only Jaclyn Friedman.

And, of course, there are the stories from OBOS’s global partners — women from Tanzania, Israel, Turkey, Senegal, Nepal, Japan, Puerto Rico, India, Bulgaria, Serbia and Armenia who shared their extraordinary journeys transforming “Our Bodies, Ourselves” into different texts and languages, sparking movements and change in their own countries. Along with U.S. participants — including myself and SPARK’s Dana Edell, they address the successes and challenges of the global women’s health movement in three panel discussions on YouTube.

Learn more about the symposium, which also celebrated the launch of the brand new edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Even those of us who expected great things came away more emotionally overwhelmed (in a good way) than we could have imagined. Hearing how groups literally created words for women’s bodies that didn’t exist, or how they dealt with harassment, threats and other obstacles to sharing accurate information about women’s reproductive health and sexuality, are stories that stay with you. We hope these videos can be used to educate and inspire.

Here’s Byllye Avery on women’s health and self-knowledge before the publication of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” It sets the stage for everything that happened (and will happen) as a result.

Norsigian talks about how the earlier “Our Bodies, Ourselves” editions demystified health and medical care, helping women to feel entitled about their right to ask questions — and get answers — from a paternalistic medical system. The book “changed the basic discourse” around women’s bodies and health, while also offering explicit information about access to birth control and abortion.

One of the ongoing health challenges, she notes, is the rate of sexually transmitted infections; women around the globe still struggle to have sex that doesn’t put their health at risk.

The video includes footage of a recent book signing for the brand new 2011 edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” held at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass., and references the work of women’s groups in other countries that have adapted “Our Bodies, Ourselves” for their own communities.

In under 3 minutes, this interview provides one of the best historical and forward-looking assessments of the impact of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” around the world.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Heterosexual couples in which one partner had HIV were studied in seven African countries. The participants were sexually active, not pregnant, and not on antiretroviral medicines. Women were HIV-tested quarterly and asked at those times about their contraceptive use.

The researchers found that unprotected sex and sex with other partners was more likely when women used a hormonal contraceptive, but even when they controlled for this, the risk of HIV infection was higher in women using injectable contraceptives compared to oral or no hormonal birth control. Risk of infection in uninfected men from their infected partners was also higher.

The study was limited in that it relied on women’s self-reporting of contraception use and methods. The way participants were selected could have biased the results, and condom use was also self-reported. The study did not randomize women to a birth control method, nor was it designed from the outset as a test of HIV risk and specific types of contraceptive use. It also could not clearly evaluate any risk associated with oral birth control, because there were not enough users of the pill in the study.

Despite these limitations, there is reason to be concerned about whether there is a link between Depo Provera or its generic forms and risk of HIV infection. There are several ideas about how the drugs could potentially increase risk, but the HIV question has been around since at least 1996. That year, researchers working with monkeys and implantable contraceptives published a study suggesting increased risk of a similar virus. Researchers involved with early work on this subject have responded:

How many years has it been that the non-human primate model, and other researchers, have been warning about this and being ignored? What, 15 years now? Shocking.
and
It’s not like we did our work and it was published in an obscure journal. There’s absolutely no excuse for people doing contraceptive work to not have known this, and not to have taken this forward in the late ’90s. We should have had this answered [in humans] ten years ago.

Global health programs often promote long-acting methods like Depo Provera for women in areas where access to regular medical care is difficult and maternal mortality is high. These same areas often have high rates of HIV. I find it unacceptable that the question of contraceptive use and HIV risk has been around for years, and we don’t appear to be much closer to a clear answer. As Charles Morrison wrote in an accompanying editorial:

The question of hormonal contraceptive use and risk of HIV acquisition remains unanswered after more than two decades. Active promotion of DMPA in areas with high HIV incidence could be contributing to the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, which would be tragic. Conversely, limiting one of the most highly used effective methods of contraception in sub-Saharan Africa would probably contribute to increased maternal mortality and morbidity and more low birthweight babies and orphans—an equally tragic result. The time to provide a more definitive answer to this crucial public health question is now; the donor community should support a randomised trial of hormonal contraception and HIV acquisition.

Such a trial would require careful design in order to minimize any risk to participants and to stop as soon as any increased risk of one method is clear. It might be impossible to get funding for, but we owe it to women, who deserve clear and accurate information about the potential risks of injectable and all forms of contraception.

In it, Claudio touches on many important themes: human rights, reproductive justice, body image and media, class, race, heterosexism, the environment, corporate greed, and more. There is much to consider in this piece. In particular, she speaks of the need for the women’s health movement to work at the intersections of many forms of oppression:

…this is the 11th IWHM, we are on our 34th year of the contemporary women’s health movement since the very first IWHM was held in Europe in 1977. On the one hand we have achieved much as a movement. And yet on another, whether it be in Asia or Europe we are experiencing backlash and the continuing control of our bodies.

In 1977 and today regimes of control determine the way we work, love and live. Then and now, women have resisted. As long as there is a need for resistances there is a need for a movement. Where women work together to free themselves from class, caste, race, colonial, neo-colonial, heterosexist, and other regimes of control, there we shall find our movement.

She writes that we should not all stop noting differences between us that cause divisions, but should instead move beyond a focus on ourselves and the bigotry encouraged by our larger systems, and work against oppression by refusing to divide into “us” and “others:”

What is the problem, is my ability to accept the world according to their making. Where I exclude myself from others and their struggles, there is where I fall into error. Where I conceive of the women’s health movement as not also a movement against globalization; where I conceive of the movement against sexism as not also a movement against heterosexism, where I conceive the movement against racism as not a movement against caste—that is where I fall into error.

…It is wrong to think that world poverty comes about from the lack of democracy and equity in the area of production and not in the area of reproduction. The women’s health movement must not feel itself out of its depth when it engages the movement against globalization. At the very least we must recognize that the medicalization of the bodies of women who can afford the expensive drugs and procedures, something I have seen discussed well in this meeting, comes from the same logic that denies life saving drugs to those who cannot afford to pay.

Just read the whole thing!

And sometime soon we will have archived video from our own event available online, where you will be able to see and hear our global partners discuss their inspiring women’s health work around the world, including the need to work at the intersection of many oppressions and to frame women’s health in the context of human rights. We’ll post something as soon as the videos become available.

Meanwhile, over on Capitol Hill, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs voted Wednesday to approve a bill (H.R. 2059) that would prohibit the U.S. government from providing funding to the United Nations Population Fund.

The International Women’s Health Coalition, in an alert sent out Wednesday morning on the assault on funding for services that help the world’s poorest women, noted that the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), “may not understand how essential and cost effective UNFPA’s work to promote the health and rights of women and girls really is.”

Here’s what UNFPA does for the world’s poorest citizens (feel free to call Rep. Ellmer’s office, 202-225-4531, to share this information):

• Access to contraception and family planning services
• Midwifery and emergency obstetric care
• Prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted infections
• Prevent and treat obstetric fistula
• Work to end female genital mutilation and other harmful traditional practices such as child marriage
• Essential reproductive health services in post-conflict and disaster situations

We’ve heard the stories first-hand of how funding and access to services can save lives, yet right-wing politicians continue to malign the UNFPA out of ignorance and bias.

Reality check: The UNFPA “supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.”

Read more about the international development agency’s programs, along with this FAQ, and please spread the word.

by Gamze Karadağ
OBOS Project Coordinator, Turkey

I’m a 29-year-old feminist from Turkey. It is hard to be a feminist in Turkey, as I know it is in many countries.

When you state that you’re a feminist, people judge your appearance and question whether you hate men. They speculate about your sexuality, asking if you are a lesbian and why feminists are so “offensive.” Pity we have to encounter such prejudices.

In Turkey, women who call themselves feminist have increased in number in the past few decades, but they are still a very small group. Of course, there are many women who, though they fear being associated with the term and the clichéd prejudices, are still interested in feminist issues.

Many women go about their daily routines giving little thought to obtaining information about their rights, health and body. At the same time, they have difficulty finding sources of information if the need arises. So feminism remains not well understood.

Also, there are some separation points in the women’s movement, including ethnicity, religion and sexual identity, that make moving forward with common goals more difficult. Groups tend to focus on specific concerns, such as legal regulations and violence against women, instead of women’s health and broader political issues. In addition, women’s issues are pushed to the side in Turkey’s political institutions.

I got involved in the women’s health movement when I started working at Mavi Kalem as a volunteer. We were organizing health programs and implementing house visits. At the end, my teammates mentioned the “Our Bodies, Ourselves” book and the possibility of starting that project. It was a brilliant experience to be part of such a project as a health trainer, and with OBOS I started specializing on women’s health rights.

Being a part of this project, I learned a lot — especially about myself, my body, feminism and women’s solidarity. My commitment to finding solutions to problems affecting women in Turkey increased when working on “Bedenlerimiz Biziz,” the Turkish version of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” (read more about the book in progress).

Now we are developing educational modules on women’s health based on “Bedenlerimiz Biziz,” and we are working on women’s health and women’s rights education. In these times, coming together with women are the moments I enjoy in life. The experiences give me energy and hope.

We expect to complete the “Our Bodies, Ourselves” project by the end of 2011. When “Bedenlerimiz Biziz” emerges, we believe many women will take steps to improve their lives. We also believe that this book’s arrival will create an opportunity for reform around the politics of women’s health and the feminist movement in Turkey.

A native of Çanakkale in Turkey, Gamze Karadağ is the general coordinator of Mavi Kalem. She organizes its volunteer and field teams, conducts health trainings for women in local communities, factories, and shelters, and contributes to its monthly women’s health magazine, Zuhre.

by Irina Tordorova
OBOS Project Coordinator, Bulgaria

The Women’s Health Initiative in Bulgaria (WHIBG) published a Bulgarian adaptation of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in 2001, with support from the Open Society Institute and Global Fund for Women.

In the years following its publication, we have used the book as a base for discussions in many seminars in community centers (or “Chitalishte”) across the country, as well as in other outreach activities with women’s groups in small towns and villages. These seminars have been met with great interest and support.

Some of the women’s health topics on which we focus are health disparities, particularly in relation to cervical cancer, cervical cancer prevention, and infertility/assisted reproductive technologies. Our outreach and health promotion activities are based on extensive quantitative and qualitative research that our associates conduct in Eastern Europe.

The situation in Bulgaria concerning cervical cancer prevention is worrisome, since cervical cancer mortality has risen during the past two decades. In Western European and most other Eastern European countries (except Romania and Serbia), in contrast, the incidence and mortality rates are consistently decreasing. In Bulgaria, mortality from cervical cancer has increased from 3.9 per 100,000 women in 1980 to 6.9 per 100,000 women in 2006, which is more than three times the rate for Western European Union countries.

Though Bulgaria sustained a regular screening program from the 1970s until the late 1980s, this program was discontinued when the healthcare system underwent restructuring during the nation’s transitional period. The results vividly illustrate the effects of the rapid dismantling of the existing healthcare system on women’s health and mortality. Screening is currently conducted on an ad hoc, opportunistic basis. Rather than making PAP tests part of a preventive program, they are usually done as part of exams for other purposes.

Women are facing structural barriers, which limit motivation and access. In a nationally representative study we conducted with women age 20 to 65, we found that relatively few women (46 percent) have ever had a Pap test. Socioeconomic conditions were related to the extent to which the women reported facing healthcare system barriers to screening (difficulties in access, transportation, price, communication with providers, etc.).

Quite striking were the disparities in the different ethnic groups. For example, 51 percent of women of Bulgarian ethnicity reported being screened, while only 39 percent of Turkish women and 8.8 percent of women of Roma ethnicity reported screenings.

More recently, there have been initiatives by the Ministry of Health to develop contemporary strategies to reduce mortality from cervical cancer. So far, the process has been slow. However, our associates have been conducting health promotion activities. They are also providing policy recommendations and participating in Parliamentary and Ministry of Health working groups to develop successful prevention strategies and programs.

Cervical cancer mortality is a vivid indicator of inequalities between and within countries, as well as an indicator of the health of a health care system. Cervical cancer is highly avoidable, and continued health promotion and policy efforts are needed to reduce incidence and mortality in Bulgaria.

Irina Tordorova is a health psychologist and professor at the Center for Population Health and Health Disparities at Northeastern University. She is also past president of the European Health Psychology Society (EHPS) and EHPS representative to the United Nations. She co-founded the Women’s Health Initiative in Bulgaria, which published a Bulgarian adaptation of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in 2001.

by Kathy Davis

My first face-to-face contact with the women from Shokado bookstore responsible for the Japanese adaptation of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” was at a Crossing Borders with OBOS conference in the Netherlands in 2001.

Three women entered the room, and I vividly remember the one in the middle who was wearing a hat and smiling broadly. I had a sense that she was being respectfully escorted to the meeting by her friends, and I wasn’t far off the mark. As Sally Whelan, OBOS program manager, later explained, this woman was a “real hero.”

Toyoko Nakanishi (left) was the owner of the Shokado Women’s Bookstore, which she founded in 1975. For many years, Toyoko single-handedly produced a newsletter on women’s books and tirelessly supported countless women’s projects, including — at the time — the extremely daring and daunting adaptation of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” As she put it: “If I won’t do it, I’m not a woman.”

True to her words, she opened the second floor of her book shop to the translation team for weekly meetings, attended nearly all of them herself and, during the three years it took to finish, she was constantly on the phone (this was before email!) networking with hundreds of people and organizations that helped make the book possible.

No wonder Toyoko was smiling.

Every “Our Bodies, Ourselves” adaptation is exciting in its own way, and the Japanese project is no exception. This edition, published at a time when women did not have words to talk about their bodies, opened up a new way for Japanese women and girls to discuss their bodies and sexuality. Previously, they could not explain their physical experiences or express their desires to their partners, and they were at the mercy of physicians.

A case in point was the Fujimi hospital scandal that broke in 1981. More than a thousand unnecessary hysterectomies were performed on women, all of whom who were told that their uterus was “rotten” or their ovaries “a mess.” At the time, many of these women could not even utter the word “uterus.”

Fortunately, the situation is very different today, and much of this is due to the pathbreaking work that took place on the bookstore’s second floor. The women who worked on the Japanese edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” got rid of all the expressions that treated women’s bodies in a negative way — including words that implied shadiness, shame, or secrecy. They developed a whole new language, one that empowered women and girls and made them feel good and confident about themselves.

For example, the term “shame hair” became “sexual hair,” and menstruation, which had been linked to the word for “pollution,” was straightforwardly named “a monthly occurrence.” Some of these newly invented words have even made it into the latest Japanese dictionaries, showing just how influential this project has been.

One of the most wonderful things about the different resources based on “Our Bodies, Ourselves” is that each project looks for a way to make a difference in its own context. The Japanese project shows that language is power and that being able to talk about our bodies in positive and affirming ways is empowering.

Kathy Davis is a senior researcher at the Institute of History and Culture at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. A noted authority on feminist scholarship, her publications include, among others, “The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders.”