Lorraine Rothman, a founder of the feminist self-help clinic movement who demystified basic gynecology for thousands of women at centers in Los Angeles and Orange counties, died of cancer Sept. 25 at her home in Fullerton. She was 75.
In 1971, Rothman, a teacher and mother of four, founded with Carol Downer the Los Angeles Feminist Women's Health Center, which taught women how to perform their own cervical self-examinations and pregnancy tests.
They also popularized a procedure called menstrual extraction, which could be used as a method of early abortion.
The two women's pioneering efforts helped unleash a cultural revolution that, according to writer and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich, "legitimized the notion that we have the right to know and to decide about procedures -- from sterilization to hormone treatments -- that affect our bodies and our lives."
"What they did by introducing gynecological self-exams was very revolutionary at the time," Ehrenreich said Tuesday. "They said it was not a dark secret; you can look at yourself, it's no big deal. It had a big effect on all of us feminists who were interested in healthcare."
Rothman's unique contribution was a patented menstrual extraction kit called the Del-Em, a device with a few simple parts, including flexible tubing and a syringe, that were used to aspirate the uterine lining into a glass jar.
She also was an early critic of hormone replacement therapy, which she challenged, often in a humorous way, in her book "Menopause Myths and Facts: What Every Woman Should Know About Hormone Replacement Therapy" (1999), co-written with Marcia Wexler.
Rothman was born in San Francisco in 1932 in an Orthodox Jewish family. She bristled at the unequal treatment of women in her religion and refused to undergo a bat mitzvah.
"She questioned authority from the time she was a little kid," said her daughter, Andrea.
When Rothman was 12, she moved with her family to Los Angeles, where her father established a furniture repair shop.
In 1954, she earned a bachelor's degree and a teaching credential at what is now Cal State L.A. For the next decade, she worked as a substitute teacher in Maryland and California while raising a family with her husband, Al, a biology instructor. He died in 1995. In 1968 Rothman entered the women's movement through a consciousness-raising group at Cal State Fullerton, where her husband was teaching. Soon she was a member of the Orange County chapter of the National Organization for Women. Through her widening network of similarly disenchanted housewives and other women, she learned of a meeting in April 1971 about an event billed as a self-help clinic.
