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	Related links Our Bodies Ourselves Not only does the book’s official companion Web site have additional and updated information, it also features vetted links to outside sites and organizations that delve into health topics even more deeply. National Women’s Health Network Check here for women’s-health information and resources, including political-action alerts and fact sheets that cover topics like hormone therapy, breast implants, menopause, and Depo-Provera. Breast Cancer Action This San Francisco–based, feminist breast-cancer organization provides educational resources, political advocacy, and support. Black Women’s Health Imperative A research, advocacy, education, and organizing force that’s been around since 1981. On the Web site, women can take health-assessment tests, look for a job in the health-care field, or share personal stories. Our Bodies, Ourselves Simon & Schuster, 2005, 848 pages, $24.95. Click above to get the book for yourself.

YET WHILE those triumphs effected measurable change, they also may have engendered a sense of complacency.

"We once really had something called the women’s-health movement as part of the larger women’s-liberation movement," Ehrenreich says. "That has definitely dwindled."

Indeed, while it’s easy to find issue-specific, grassroots feminist groups like the San Francisco–based Breast Cancer Action, there are only a few all-inclusive, feminist women’s-health-specific organizations, such as Pearson’s National Women’s Health Network and the Washington, DC–based Black Women’s Health Imperative. Other groups, such as the National Organization for Women or the Feminist Majority Foundation, while effective at fundraising and political organizing, are less connected to women’s health specifically than to women’s rights in general.

Perhaps that’s what the times call for. In many ways, the desperate health needs of the ’60s and ’70s have been addressed, says Judy Norsigian, one of the original 12 founders of the BWHBC and executive director of that organization, which is now called simply Our Bodies Ourselves.

However, she insists, new needs have arisen — specifically, a need for guidance in sorting out the overload of information available, and in navigating an increasingly complicated health-care structure. Mainstream media, the Internet, religious conservatives, and drug companies are all to blame for this confusion, feminists say. Essentially, all these entities act in similar ways — they limit women’s access to accurate health-care information, either with inadequate coverage or too much of it, ignorant policies, or bottom-line greed. Drug companies, especially, have penetrated society, exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the risks of their products, Norsigian says, specifically mentioning the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors such as Zoloft and Prozac), which are prescribed with increasing frequency and monitored with decreasing vigor. Since 1997, direct-to-consumer advertising of these and other pharmaceuticals has led to the over-medicalization of America, Norsigian says.

Women, especially low-income and minority women, also face a severe lack of access to health care, exacerbated by skyrocketing insurance costs and a health-care system that is confusing enough even without the added complications of Internet technology. (Interestingly, many of these problems are shared by both men and women. Reagan, of the University of Illinois, suggests that "what’s missing is a movement that’s about health care for all.")

And let’s not forget about the across-the-board assault on reproductive rights — from the ban on so-called partial-birth abortions, signed by President Bush in 2003, to attempts to limit access to emergency contraception (see "Pharm Stand," News and Features, May 6) — led by religious conservatives in an increasing number of venues.

But if women are losing control of their health care in any way, OBOS will be there to give them woman-to-woman advice. "Whereas 35 years ago their motivation was to get information to women who didn’t have it, now part of their motivation is to help women facing a barrage of information sort out what is trustworthy," says Pearson, of the National Women’s Health Network.

Today, as political, social, and medical attitudes have changed, so has OBOS. Physically, the book is smaller and thicker than previous editions; also, the BWHBC has embraced technological advances by creating a companion Web site (www.ourbodiesourselves.org) where readers can access additional, continually updated information on specific topics. Inside the book’s 800-plus pages are four new chapters: "Safer Sex," "Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation," "Navigating the Health Care System," and "Considering Parenting." In addition, where lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and gender-identity issues were only briefly touched upon in the first edition, they’ve grown to take up a sizable chunk of the latest version; the "Relationships with Women" and "Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation" chapters focus on these issues, while LBTQI health and medical information is interspersed throughout.

But for all these adjustments, certain aspects remain the same. "It’s still accessible," Norsigian says. "It’s still feminist and nonjudgmental."

Indeed, the book stays true to its feminist roots, acknowledging that feminism today is vastly different from how it was in the 1960s and ’70s. In the section on relationships with men, the book addresses today’s version of the sexual revolution. "Women and girls are again being encouraged to explore sexuality and express it in ways that generally weren’t allowed previously, at least not with such gusto," the book reads. "But feminism’s third wave also coincides with powerful mainstream popular culture in which messages about sex are often superficial and rarely examine sex in the context of real relationships."

No longer is OBOS the only book of its kind. But despite its age, it still seems radical amid the hundreds of available health books, if only for its intensely personal voice. Sprinkled throughout the New Edition for a New Era are hundreds of first-person stories, from women and for women, that make reading the book an inclusive experience. It even had a tone-and-voice editor, who read the book to make sure its language was clear and accessible to all women.

One passage that was particularly shocking in 1970, and remains in the book today, was this: "Masturbating opens me to what is happening in my body and makes me feel good about myself. I like following the impulse of the moment." There are other quotations from many women, including those who have had abortions, given birth, gotten sexually transmitted infections, married their partners, left abusive relationships, or gone through menopause.

"There’s no book quite like OBOS," Norsigian says of the tome’s continued relevance, "with that combination of women’s perspective and evidence-based research in a social context."

WITH THIS latest edition, OBOS is reaching out to help another generation bridge the personal-political divide. That’s part of the reason why the New Edition for a New Era had its first-ever non-founder as editorial coordinator. Managing editor Heather Stephenson, 36, was brought into the collective as a passing of the torch, says Norsigian, who at 56 is the youngest of the original 12. In addition, many of the book’s 450 contributors are younger, and were able to offer new perspectives on age-old issues.

At a panel discussion at the Cambridge YWCA last week, it was refreshing to hear from Wendy Sanford — who was around in 1973, when the book included the chapter "In Amerika They Call Us Dykes" — as well as Elizabeth Sarah Lindsey and Shannon Berning, young women from Philadelphia and Brooklyn who solicited personal stories from lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people for inclusion in the latest edition.

"We’re talking about this huge cultural shift, that was happening in so many different places," Reagan says. "And we’re still part of it, and we’re still experiencing the ramifications, and the struggles over whether that shift is going to fully occur, or last."

Deirdre Fulton can be reached at dfulton[a]phx.com