Goodbye to the Gainesville Women's Health Center

Goodbye to the Gainesville Women's Health Center
The Editors
October 1997

It is with sadness that we report that the Gainesville Women's Health Center closed its doors in September after 23 years of providing and fighting for feminist health care.

The clinic stood strong through the threats and attacks by anti-abortion forces, hostile pickets, excessive IRS scrutiny, legislative assaults on our abortion rights, and the failures of so many other local small businesses. It was only through the hard work and ingenuity of the staff and doctors that the clinic weathered so many storms, when one slip could have meant disaster.

In the next issue, we'll talk about the history of the clinic, its accomplishments, philosophy, and the for-profit dog-eat-dog climate that led the clinic to go out of business. For now we just want to thank the staff of the clinic, past and present, for the many years of pro-woman and people-oriented health care and abortions, and the strong feminist stands the clinic has taken when others were nowhere to be found.

"Health care for people, not for profit" was the motto of the GWHC, which was founded in 1974 by Byllye Avery, Judy Levy and Margaret Parrish shortly after the Roe decision legalized abortion in 1973. It's the kind of health care we need on a national scale.

Losing the clinic should make us think about how we can organize to make changes so that the GWHC is not just an isolated and embattled beachhead in a sea of for-profit health care providers. The kind of health care the clinic provided should be standard.

If you were a patient at the Gainesville Women's Health Center, and you want copies of your medical records, call the Center's number, which now rings at All Women's Health Center, and they will tell you how to get your chart.