Carol Downer

Carol Downer
Born	1933
Occupation	Immigration Lawyer, Author, Activist, Board of Directors of the Feminist Women's Health Centers of California
Years active	40+ years
Awards	Christopher Tietze Humanitarian Award in 1998, Wiley W. Manuel Award in 1994,
Website	WomensHealthInWomensHands.org

Carol Downer (born 1933) is an American feminist lawyer and non-fiction author who has focused her career on abortion rights and women's health around the world.

Downer began her activist career in the movement for civil rights and local politics in California during the 1960s. She became active in the women's liberation movement in 1969, and she worked to try to make abortion available in Los Angeles, California under the liberalized abortion law. Downer began her reproductive rights career on the Abortion Task Force of NOW with Lana Clarke Phelan, author of The Abortion Handbook, who became her mentor. Downer and other women observed abortion procedures at Harvey Karman's illegal abortion clinic on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles to learn how to perform abortions themselves. While there, she took a vaginal speculum and figured out how to do a vaginal self-examination. When Downer and others organized as the Los Angeles Abortion Task Force, they called a meeting on April 7, 1971 at a feminist book store to educate women about abortion and their bodies. Downer demonstrated the vaginal self-examination to the estimated two dozen women that attended. Downer's group formed the Women's Abortion Referral Service, the first of its kind to offer pregnancy screening. "Women came from all over for help", Downer said.

The result of this first meeting of the Self-Help Clinic was the development of the concept of menstrual extraction and the invention of the Del-Em kit by Lorraine Rothman. This provided women with a less traumatic abortion option than the use of a metal tool to scrape the inside of the uterus, which was predominately used at the time. Downer and Rothman travelled across the country and many Self-Help Clinics were formed. During this time, abortion, birth control and fertility information were not available to women. In addition, there were an estimate 5,000 deaths a year from illegal abortion. The menstrual extraction and vaginal self examinations that Downer pioneered with her team provided women with the means to learn about their bodies and take control of their reproduction. Barbara Ehrenreich described Downer and Rothman’s efforts as "legitimizing the notion that we have the right to know and decide about procedures...that affect our bodies and our lives." In 1972 she also gave a notable speech to the American Psychological Association on September 5, 1972, in Hawaii, entitled "Covert Sex Discrimination Against Women as Medical Patients."

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