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Pregnancy Testing by
Elaine Wessel
In the
early 1970's, it was not possible for women to buy their own pregnancy
testing kits at drugstores; that only became possible a few years later.
The only places that women could get pregnancy tests were at doctor's
offices and health clinics, where many women were reluctant to go. Women
who were considering abortion (illegal throughout most of the United
States), unmarried women, very young women, and women who could not
afford doctor's fees were among the women who found CWLU's Pregnancy
Testing a very useful service.
Women's health concerns, in a variety of forms, were among the major
issues that CWLU dealt with throughout its' existence. In the spring
of 1970, when CWLU was only a few months old, the organization decided
to work on the creation of a women's health clinic as a city-wide project.
This clinic, eventually given the name of Alice Hamilton Women's Health
Center, never actually came about, but out of the plans for the clinic,
Pregnancy Testing got started, and existed in one form or another throughout
the history of CWLU.
The plans for the clinic assumed that it would be in one location,
and that a number of committees would be needed to make the clinic
function. One such committee was called Medical Technology, which set
to work in deciding which medical tests would be offered at the clinic,
and training people to do those tests. Pregnancy testing (done with
urine samples brought in by the women) was one such test, and it turned
out to be easy to learn and easy to perform even in settings that were
not fully-equipped clinics.
Because members of the Medical Technology Committee were ready to
do pregnancy tests even before the clinic opened, they decided to go
ahead with pregnancy testing at several different locations. The original
plans would have been to consolidate pregnancy testing in the clinic
when it opened, but since the full clinic never opened, pregnancy testing
continued to be done at several locations around Chicago during the
course of CWLU's existence.
The first two locations were at a YWCA on the southwest side, in
the neighborhood where the planned Alice Hamilton clinic would have
been, and at La Dolores Women's Center on the north side. Both of these
locations were in service in 1970-71; in both locations, the pregnancy
testing project had to leave when the hosting location closed down.
When CWLU opened up an office on the north side in 1972, pregnancy
testing began at that location, and continued through several different
locations of the office: on Belmont near Clark, 1972-74; Lincoln near
Diversey, 1974-76; and Diversey and Milwaukee, 1976-77. In addition,
a new south side location opened up in 1970's, at a church in Hyde
Park.
The pregnancy test was a chemical test which looked for the presence
of HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin hormone) in a woman's urine. If
a woman was pregnant, HCG would be present in her urine and she would
test positive. The test was "non-invasive" in the sense that the people
doing the test did not have to examine the women or draw blood. The
facilities needed for the tests included the test kits themselves (purchased
in bulk from a medical supply house), a bathroom with a toilet and sink,
a refrigerator, and a sturdy work table with good light.
Most of these facilities were already available in the various rented
or borrowed locations where pregnancy testing was done, which is
one of the reasons why pregnancy testing was easier to set up than
some other medical tests. The chemical tests were fairly easy to learn,
even for people without much background in the biological sciences,
and succeeded in demystifying medicine (at least for the women who
were active in the pregnancy testing project).
Elaine Wessel is active in the CWLU Herstory Website Committee
and was a member of the Pregnancy Testing workgroup. Her photographs
of CWLU activities may be seen throughout our site and in our Gallery section.
She is presently working as an audio-visual specialist in the education
field.
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