observation and the sharing of their bodily experiences, self-help activists, like Downer, combatted negative perceptions. Self-Help Clinic One In 1971, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman founded "Self-Help Clinic One" in Los Angeles. Downer and Rothman came up with the idea at the Everywoman's Bookstore, where women interested medical self-help met. During one meeting, Downer demonstrated self-examination technique by lifting her skirt, inserting a speculum into her vagina, and showing her cervix to the women at the meeting. The clinic began in a back room in the Women's Center on South Crenshaw Boulevard and later, the clinic moved to a house in the same area so as to remain accessible to women who needed its services. Downer explained that the clinic's main goal was to "take women's medicine back into our own hands. The strategy [was] to take back the power over power over our own bodies, both everyday types of control which information and self-knowledge gives [sic] us, and we also want to acquire special skills and knowledge which will allow us collectively to independently provide our own health care." The center eventually became a symbol of the struggle to legalize abortion and had an active part in the public dialogue about reproductive rights. The first clinic served as a blueprint for other self-help clinics established in other parts of California, Oregon, Washington, Florida, and Georgia. These centers led to the foundation of a decentralized coalition called the "Federation of Feminist Women's Health Centers" (FWHC). Within the coalition, they shared materials, wrote books, and met as a group to share ideas, education and provide support for each other . Principles Before the 1970s, a woman's gynecologist knew more about her body than she did. Downer wanted to change that, giving women the chance to see, understand, and take responsibility for their reproductive health, by making women aware of their rights as health care consumers. As such, Self-Help Clinic One and others like it, were more than just clinics - they were also political organizations. Although controversial among feminists, Downer believed in the concept of organizational structure. Running a clinic required a bureaucracy, but to avoid the typical bureaucratic pitfalls of regular health centers, Downer and Rothman's clinic had an open structure that invited the maximum participation when making clinic policy. She wanted to make the structure of the clinic work for the staff and patients - not the other way