Women’s Bodies, Women’s Identities, and the Next Chapter for Our Bodies Ourselves

From the beginning, OBOS promoted a broad and often daring vision of the close ties between women’s health and social, environmental, and political conditions. This cutting-edge point of departure meant that the organization and its publications often served as a pioneer in identifying and grappling with emerging issues, taking on challenges that most other women’s health groups missed or considered outside the purview of dominant reproductive health and human rights conversations.

As the international assisted reproduction landscape grew, for example, OBOS was there. Its signature book tackled human genetic and assisted reproductive technologies beginning in the 1990s, with medical information and political commentary on matters including human cloning, surrogacy, sex selection, genetic testing, and proposals to genetically modify future generations. The most recent edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves, published in 2011, includes a chapter on “Infertility and Assisted Reproductive Technologies,” as well as a separate section on “Emerging Issues: Biopolitics, Women’s Health, and Social Justice.”

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