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Groundbreaking ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ Co-Author Dies at 93

The book ignited a movement marked by candid discussions of women’s health and health care.

Norma Swenson—a co-author of the groundbreaking book, Our Bodies, Ourselves—has died at age 93, The New York Times reported. According to the author’s daughter, she died due to complications from cancer. The book, first released in 1970 by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, became a flashpoint for women’s health and health care, igniting candid conversations about childbirth, aging, and feminism across the world with 225,000 copies sold in its first run. Swenson joined the collective in 1971 and was remembered as one of several women who were key to moving the book to a global stage and its accompanying nonprofit, Our Bodies Ourselves, to global recognition, the Times reported. “Norma was always committed to an intersectional approach,” said Judy Norsigian, a core member of the book collective, which today provides small grants to women’s health groups to support women. About the women’s health movement, Swenson told the Times in 1985, “It’s not that things have so dramatically improved for women,” she said. “But they’d be much worse if it were not for the pressure of the women’s health movement.” The book, last updated in 2011, has sold more than 4 million copies and has been translated into 34 languages.