Inside the Second Wave of Feminism by Nancy Rosenstock

Author:Nancy Rosenstock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books

The second national conference of WONAAC was held at Boston University in February 1972 and was attended by 1,300 people.

Ginny: The focus of Boston University Female Liberation was to organize a national conference about reproductive choice and get official sponsorship for it.

We went to a student council meeting where we wheeled in a reel-to-reel projector. We said, We’re going to ask you for money to help us put on a national educational organizing conference for women’s right to choose abortion and for safe, legal birth control available to all. We want you to watch this short movie, which will explain why. We turned on the movie, which had been made in Cambridge. I forget the name of the movie. It was a movie about illegal abortions and what happens to women when they get these—how their insides were ripped open and others bled to death. Some women survived, but were never able to have children. The movie showed the terrible, terrible things that were happening with back-alley abortions. It was a very powerful movie.

When the lights went on, we proposed that they give us all the facilities for free and—I forget what the budget was—$1,000, or something like that, to help with national publicity. They agreed to do it. The student government of BU hosted the conference.

Later, I was invited to come on the WONAAC staff to help with fundraising. I moved to New York City in December 1972 to be on staff.

Dany: In 1972, I was the office manager of Female Liberation. We put out the weekly newsletter, as well as the Second Wave. We had quite a large mailing list, over a thousand women. We had weekly meetings, but they were dwindling in size. We used to have parties to put out the newsletters. It was a big deal putting it out—mimeographing, collating, putting labels on. It was the better part of a night involving fifteen people. But even that had gotten to the point where it was two or three people at the most doing anything.

BOWAAC was doing work on abortion, and their office was literally down the hall from Female Liberation in the building in Central Square, Cambridge. We were neighbors. You could watch women walking up the stairs past the Female Liberation office and going directly to BOWAAC. At that point, Female Liberation wasn’t doing much of anything.

There was going to be a rally on the Boston Common demanding safe, legal abortion. Female Liberation was involved but was not the key organization. If members of Female Liberation wanted to get involved, they just went straight to the BOWAAC office.

Ann Marie: From the end of 1972 until the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, I was the office manager of BOWAAC.

Diana: In May 1972, I spoke at a rally as part of Abortion Action Week called by WONAAC that was held throughout the country to continue efforts to legalize abortion. I said:

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