“My mother was a schoolteacher who fought for reforms such as the right to teach in Spanish, the vernacular,” she explained. “English was imposed upon the Puerto Rican school system when the US military invaded in 1898.”
“In Puerto Rico, racism was subtle. There wasn't the kind of separatist racism like in the US. I wasn't used to this.”
“I saw that anybody who could afford an abortion could get a perfectly fine one. It would be written up as an appendectomy. Women from the US used to go to Havana to get abortions.”
“What brought me to the women's movement was the women's health movement. The cultural elements of feminism didn't resonate with me, but abortion resonated with me. I became part of the women's movement in October 1970 at an international meeting on abortion rights attended by several thousand women and held at Barnard College in New York City.”
“Women brought a feminist perspective to health issues affecting women. They examined power relationships among individuals and between individuals and systems. The very early drafts of Our Bodies, Ourselves, by the Boston Women's Health Collective, which was seminal in all this, said we need to know our bodies, we need to know what makes us healthy and what threatens our health, and we need to negotiate or confront the health care system to get the best possible health from it.”
“The only way to effect change was for more women to go into the professions and instill a different perspective—a more human touch and a more respectful relationship with patients.”