At a critical Roe v. Wade overturn juncture, and the 53rd anniversary of the first newsprint edition of Our Bodies Ourselves, there was no reprint of the iconic book that offered frank information about women’s sexual and reproductive health through a feminist lens. Instead, in September, Our Bodies Ourselves went digital as Our Bodies Ourselves Today (OBOS Today). And in the first 30 days got over 110,000 page views.
The digital platform is a collaboration between the Our Bodies Ourselves nonprofit and Suffolk University’s Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights—the nation’s first academic institute focused on women’s health as a human rights imperative.
“We couldn’t have predicted the exact date of Roe v. Wade overturn, but abortion rights have been under concerted assault for years. We knew that access to this information was necessary and timely,” said Amy Agigian, director of OBOS Today, as well as Suffolk University’s Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights.
“Digital platforms are more relevant, especially for younger generations. Digital also enables us to update much more regularly than the OBOS book ever could.”
Even people who disagree with abortion rights can find plenty they may benefit from on the site. There’s information about pregnancy and childbirth, menstruation through menopause, sexuality, growing older, gender-based violence and mental health.
Amy Agigian
As a definitive knowledge hub for “trusted, peer-reviewed information from a feminist perspective” with content by over 100 experts, OBOS Today offers a wide range of health and sexuality topics—from to contraception and abortion, to gender-based Violence to aging, to mental health, and a topic glossary from A to Z. The site’s top visited pages so far are “All about Orgasms” and “Self-Exam: Vulva and Vagina,” according to Agigian.
“Even people who disagree with abortion rights can find plenty they may benefit from on the site. There’s information about pregnancy and childbirth, menstruation through menopause, sexuality, growing older, gender-based violence and mental health,” Agigian said. “We want everyone to feel welcome and know that they can trust our site regardless of their politics.”
Empowering marginalized communities most targeted with misinformation, OBOS Today hopes to enable “integrity and dignity” by offering “clear, honest information,” Agigian said. Her team’s priority now is to publicize the site and reach more users. They’ve prioritized outreach to diverse audiences like LGBTQ youth groups and women in prison. Communities lacking Internet connectivity—a systemic issue across the U.S.—can share the platform’s resources as printouts.
The OBOS Today team is reaching out to make community leaders aware of the resource, both in digital form and through analog grassroots efforts—think: bulletin boards in highly-trafficked community centers, like libraries. This will include enlisting the help of librarians, who Agigian considers critical “information distributors who understand their clients’ needs.”
Agigian hopes OBOS Today will have as long of a lifespan as the printed version and that “nobody ends up feeling left out or unwelcomed.”
“While the anti-feminists are trying to take away from women, girls and gender-expansive people, OBOS Today is ensuring access especially to those in targeted communities,” she said. The platform’s content, perspective and expansive network of experts and institutions are all part of the “feminist movement for reproductive health, rights and justice.”
A Partnership Rooted in Future Generations’ Needs
Our Bodies Ourselves‘ origin story begins in 1969, with a group of Boston women who offered a workshop called “Women and Their Bodies,” at Emmanuel College’s Female Liberation Conference. The group pivoted into a published book in 1970 by the same title. The publication forged a new path in an era when white male doctors ruled, and basic information on women’s bodies, sexuality and reproduction was scarce. Birth control was available only to married women and illegal in most states.
In 1971, the book’s title changed to Our Bodies Ourselves. Priced at 30 cents, it sold 225,000 copies “mainly by word-of-mouth” and soon became part of most women’s book collections. Translated into 34 languages, over 4 million copies of the iconic book have been sold worldwide. The last edition was published in 2011.
When in 2018 Our Bodies Ourselves, downsized to a primarily all-volunteer nonprofit, Agigian reached out to the founders to find a way to “keep the content alive and growing for future generations.” There had already been decades-long collaborations between the two organizations which made the Center at Suffolk University a “natural home” for OBOS Today.
For the current chair of Our Bodies Ourselves board, Judy Norsigian, the launch of OBOS Today is an “emotional moment of hard work and commitment by a large group of individuals.” She applauds the university’s ongoing commitment to the community’s needs.
“We have a lot of thinking, visioning and dreaming of a way to make Our Bodies Ourselves Today live on this beautiful, wonderful digital platform. It is a work in progress curating some of the best content that’s out there,” said Norsigian.
Suffolk University president Marisa Kelly knows how valuable Our Bodies Ourselves has been “for generations of women,” citing the intersections between Suffolk and Our Bodies Ourselves’ founders, one of whom is a Suffolk alumnae, and others who have taught and worked on the campus. Norsigian taught a master’s level called called “Women’s Health Advocacy” at Suffolk University in the 2010s (a course she says she would rename as “Reproductive Health and Justice Advocacy”).
“For me both personally and professionally, it’s exciting that Our Bodies Ourselves Today is continuing on so that future generations of women looking back can say, I remember when my mom introduced me to that website,” said Kelly. She sees the collaboration as an “important step forward” to ensuring the resource’s availability for people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, faith, gender identity and sexual orientations.
Agigian said she is “super proud and excited to share the platform with the world,” and hopes to “hold intergenerational conversations.”
While OBOS Today is optimized for automatic translation, it hopes to be able to provide the information in different languages and translations in the fourth “go global” phase of the platform’s strategy. Moving forward the team also hopes to offer mentorship and online chat enablers on the site.
“We are living in an era where our civil rights and human rights are being taken away from us—not only the right to abortion in many states but also the right to talk about it,” said Agigian.
“They are coming for our contraception—make no mistake. With the ‘don’t say gay bill’, the anti-trans laws, anti-critical race theory laws, and all this clamp down on our free speech—I see OBOS Today as a real antidote to the constriction of our rights and our freedoms including freedom of speech, freedom to say what we need to say.”
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