Quotes & Sayings About Women's Health

Whoever thought up the word 'mammogram'? Every time I hear it, I think I'm supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to someone. — Jan King

As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it. — Susan Faludi

With President Obama, there's a feeling that he gets it. He has women in his life. He knows that our health care is important, that it's important able to get access to the care that we need when we need it. That's what translates. Women hear that when they hear him speak about these issues. He will be a champion and will defend us when we need it. — Sandra Fluke

The idea of making access to safe abortions harder and more expensive and more difficult, having to travel across state lines - that puts women's health and lives in jeopardy, which is something I think no one wants. — Cynthia Nixon

Of course, we're so lucky to be in a time where that's not our reality anymore. I just thought it was very interesting to go back to that time now, and to look at all of these issues that are still relevant today, but just in such a different way, and to see how we approach them and try to overcome them. Yeah, we've come a long way with medicine and women's health in the Western world, but in a lot of parts of the rest of the world, that's still a huge issue. — Eve Hewson

Like many self-help books, The Deepest Blue is full of horrifyingly simplistic language and some admittedly good advice. Somehow the women in the book learn to say: That's my depression talking. It's not "me."
As if we could scrape the color off the iris and still see. — Maggie Nelson

They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state. — George Carlin

I feel we have to begin standing our ground in the places we love. I think that we have to demand that concern for the land, concern for the Earth, and this extension of community that we've been speaking of, is not marginal - in the same way that women's rights are not marginal, in the same way that rights for children are not marginal. There is no separation between the health of human beings and the health of the land. It is all part of a compassionate view of the world. — Terry Tempest Williams

For women, all women, whatever our sexuality, it's crucial to our health that we are able to separate sexuality from reproduction. I mean whether or not we can control when we give birth is the biggest element in our health, our education, our economic welfare, our life expectancy, everything. — Gloria Steinem

Japan admitted the Imperial Army ordered the building of these brothels and the trafficking of the women. And now that it's been 70 years, there are only 46 remaining comfort women still alive in South Korea. So also in this deal, Japan is going to pay 1 billion yen - that's about 8 million U.S. dollars - to provide social services and health care to the surviving victims. — Elise Hu

I never expected in a million years that I would have the honor to become an advocate of women's health care and education, and I'd dive on a live grenade to get this message out, so thank you for this forum. — Karen Duffy

I know that it isn't just violence against women, it's how do we support ourselves and our families, how do we deal with health care for ourselves and our families? It's a bigger picture. — Patricia Ireland

I think the relationship between mother and daughter is so interesting, even in a semi-normal family. Emily Thorne/Amanda Clarke's family relationship is going to be so interesting to explore. It is going to give me so many places to go. Obviously, it has been said that she is not the most stable of characters. What is interesting about that, when you think about mental health, is that young women will often come into those problems and difficulties in their 20's, so it is very possible that this will start to affect her psyche. — Emily VanCamp

Let's make sure that we don't close down 37 of the 42 clinics in Texas and leave women with nowhere to go and put them in a situation where their health will be at risk, because what we do know is that closing down the ability to access that service unfortunately does not take the need away or women's confronting that issue away. — Wendy Davis

I do see women voters shifting to the Republican Party and doing so significantly. And the issue that's doing this is the fear the federal government will prevail in making the Affordable Health Care Act permanent law and how that will hurt small businesses. — Cathy McMorris Rodgers

Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth. — Naomi Wolf

The Iowa Women's Health Study, which has followed more than 35,000 women for decades, found eating more broccoli, cauliflower, kale and other cruciferous vegetables was associated with a lower risk of getting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the first place. — Michael Greger

I keep up with everything in terms of health, fitness, nutrition, skin care, hair, nails. Really, everything. I'm an avid reader of every women's health newsletter from every hospital in the country. — Evelyn Lauder

Climate change, demographics, water, food, energy, global health, women's empowerment - these issues are all intertwined. We cannot look at one strand in isolation. Instead, we must examine how these strands are woven together. — Ban Ki-moon

The dual scourge of hunger and malnutrition will be truly vanquished not only when granaries are full, but also when people's basic health needs are met and women are given their rightful role in societies. — Gro Harlem Brundtland

The tobacco control movement provides a good model for how to achieve massive societal changes. In 1965, over 50 percent of men and 34 percent of women smoked. By 2010, only 23.5 percent of men and 17.9 percent of women were smoking (CDC 2011). These numbers represent one of the twentieth century's most important public health achievements. — Anthony Biglan

What are the people like? Do the women wear plaid skirts, cable-knit sweaters? Are the men in hacking jackets? What's a hacking jacket?" "They've grown comfortable with their money," I said. "They genuinely believe they're entitled to it. This conviction gives them a kind of rude health. They glow a little." "I have trouble imagining death at that income level," she said. "Maybe there is no death as we know it. Just documents changing hands. — Don DeLillo

Not only is the actual word "hysteria" gendered - it once referred to an exclusively female disease, a mental illness thought to be caused by a malfunctioning uterus - there is a very long history of critics using accusations or innuendo about women's mental health or emotional stability in order to shut down their political voices. — Sady Doyle

Pelvic organ prolapse is not an American women's health concern, it is a global women's health pandemic. — Sherrie J. Palm

Every human body has its optimum weight and contour, which only health and efficiency can establish. Whenever we treat women's bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them. — Germaine Greer

Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn't matter what country they're in or what religion they claim. They all want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe but even here at home we have to stand up for women's rights and we have to reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America has to set an example for the entire world. — Hillary Clinton

I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side. — Maya Angelou

When women and families have access to reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion care, they have children when the time is right for them and build stronger families and lives. — Dennis S. Ross

In a nation committed to better living through chemistry - where Viagra-enabled men pursue silicone-contoured women - the national pastime has a problem of illicit chemical enhancement. Steroids threaten the health of the 5 percent to 7 percent of players proved, by a mild regime of scheduled tests, to be using them. Steroids also endanger emulative young people. Further, steroids subvert what baseball is selling - fair competition. And they strike at the pleasure of engagement with America's team sport with the longest history. — George Will

It's okay to talk about birth, okay - then menstruation. I first started my advocacy for women's health in the field of reproductive freedom, and the next stage would be bringing menopause out of the closet. — Cybill Shepherd

Our Bodies, Ourselves is the bible for women's health
It has served as a way for women, across ethnic, racial, religious, and geographical boundaries, to start examining their health from a perspective that will bring about change. — Byllye Avery

All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way. — Bell Hooks

Movember is an event that I've supported for a number of years. I haven't grown a moustache myself before, but I've always donated to others. I think that raising awareness for men's health is really important. You see a lot of initiatives - very public initiatives - around women's health, like breast cancer awareness and the like, but men's health issues tend to go more unnoticed. I think this is a great cause and I'm proud to support it. — James Magnussen

Male social conditioning encourages boys and men to aim to bed as many women as possible....so much so, that their self esteem and self worth become intertwined with the number of sexual partners they have; and when that number is low or even zero, so too is their self-confidence. — Miya Yamanouchi

You go into the book store, there's the cut-out of Dr. Phil, and then the dreaded women's health section where every book, instead of the menopause book with the fanged Medusa head on the cover that might be more pertinent, you always see a flower and a poppy and a daisy and a stethoscope. — Sandra Tsing Loh

I never touch sugar, cheese, bread ...
I only like what I'm allowed to like. I'm beyond temptation. There is no weakness. When I see tons of food in the studio, for us and for everybody, for me it's as if this stuff was made out of plastic. The idea doesn't even enter my mind that a human being could put that into their mouth. I'm like the animals in the forest. They don't touch what they cannot eat. — Karl Lagerfeld

Women need to know that their baby's health depends on them event before conception. — Debby Hamilton

The problem is that doctors today often assume that something mysterious and unidentified has gone wrong with labor or that the woman's body is somehow "inadequate" - what I call the "woman's body as a lemon" assumption. For a variety of reasons, a lot of women have also come to believe that nature made a serious mistake with their bodies. This belief has become so strong in many that they give in to pharmaceutical or surgical treatments when patience and recognition of the normality and harmlessness of the situation would make for better health for them and their babies and less surgery and technological intervention in birth. Most women need encouragement and companionship more than they need drugs. — Ina May Gaskin

This is about respect for women, the judgments that women make and their doctors about their reproductive health. It's an important part of who women are, their reproductive health. — Barack Obama

I've chosen to get the word out to women, especially young women, that tobacco is not glamorous - it's addictive and smoking takes a serious toll on your health. — Mena Suvari

I hope we don't have to keep going back over the same territory and winning the same rights over and over again. The battle for birth control. The battle for abortion. The parity of women's health. It's very depressing to think that you win these rights, but then you have to win them again, and again, and again, and fight the same battles over and over. — Erica Jong

It is essential that the women's preventive coverage benefit, including contraception, be available to all women, regardless of what health plan they have or where they work - as Congress intended. Providing access to birth control just makes good sense. — Gwen Moore

When we talk about 'reproductive rights' this is what we mean. It's the difference between people as objects, and people as agents: between regarding people as pawns on the policy chessboard and recognizing them as the players, the decision-makers, the drivers of policy; autonomous individuals intimately concerned with the direction of their own lives. Under these conditions women, especially, enjoy better health and live fuller lives. — Nafis Sadik

Weight gain, mood swings, fatigue, and low libido aren't diseases that can be "cured" with a quick injection or a pharmaceutical. Most of these problems can't be permanently solved by eating less or exercising more. They are hormonal problems. They mean our bodies are trying to tell us that something is wrong. — Sara Gottfried

Maternal mortality health is a very sensitive indicator. All you need to look at is a country's maternal mortality rate. That is a surrogate for whether the country's health system is functioning. If it works for women, I'm sure it will work for men. — Margaret Chan

There might be a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats on key social issues like women's rights and health care. But when it comes to taking corporate cash, they're pretty much the same beast. — Moby

Our government has made a number of promises to the men and women who served in our nation's armed forces. Sadly, these promises of health care, education and other benefits have existed more in rhetoric than in reality. — Allen Boyd

In addition to being an economic security issue, the failure to pay women a salary that's equal to men for equal work is also a women's health issue. The fact is that the salary women are paid directly impacts the type of health care services they are able to access for both themselves and their families. — Kirsten Gillibrand

Women's health is one of WHO's highest priorities. — Gro Harlem Brundtland

We stand with women by fighting for economic security, protecting access to health care and supporting women's leadership across the country — Barack Obama

Democrats will say the money they give to Planned Parenthood does not go to abortions. That the money they give to Planned Parenthood only goes to other women's health issues, including mammograms and things like that. — Chuck Todd

Thankfully, President Obama has stood firmly behind women's health care issues by supporting coverage for contraception and reaffirming commitment to organizations like Planned Parenthood. — Felicity Huffman

Oh, do fuck off. You Muslims and your aversion to drink. Fucking slaughter the greater part of the Western fucking world in Allah's name, but someone wants to toast to your health and suddenly it's all piety, prayer, throw out the pork, and let's put draperies around the women. — Christopher Moore

It pains me deeply to see members of my own party attempting to legislate women's health and contraception choices. — Linda Lingle

When I was in the Senate, I worked to pass Women's Health and Wellness Act, which bars insurance companies from discriminating against the health care needs of women. — Eric Schneiderman

Knowledge is power. It
is my hope that as we continue to do what women do best-network, guide, and
provide support for each other-POP will soon become common knowledge. — Sherrie J. Palm

women are not thinking about 'having it all,' they're worried about losing it all - their jobs, their children's health, their families' financial stability - because of the regular conflicts that arise between being a good employee and a responsible parent."34 — Sheryl Sandberg

Barsavi realized something that too many men in the city were slow to grasp; an idea that he reinforced years later when he took the Berangias sisters to be his primary enforcers. He was wise enough to understand that the women of Camorr could be underestimated only at great peril to one's health. — Scott Lynch

Gender equality and empowerment of women is key to the success of the Millennium Development Goals. Not only as a specific target, but for the goals in general. Women bear a heavier burden of the world's poverty than men, because of the discrimination they face in education, health care, employment and control of assets. — Johanna Sigurdardottir

Many young people adopt pleasures for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name ... You mustallow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scraps, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure, is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body. — Lord Chesterfield

But heart's desires? My dear, I see by your misery - by this very request you are making - that you know more of true men's and women's hearts than once you did, than your mother's world permitted you to see. Such chipped and cracked and outright broken things they are, are they not? They have their illnesses too, and their impulses. And hearts are not always connected well to minds, and even if they are, minds are not always clear and commonsensical. A heart may desire a thing powerfully indeed, but that heart's desire might be what a person least needs, for her health, for her continuing happiness. — Margo Lanagan

I'm not about my breasts; I'm just about good health, OK. I'm not afraid of doing what I need to do to stay here. I really don't understand women who are in denial, who don't want to go for a mammogram. I think it's stupidity. Sorry. I have no patience for that. — Jaclyn Smith

It's long past time we started focusing on the solutions that actually keep women healthy, instead of using basic aspects of women's health as a tool of cultural, moral, and political control. — Martha Plimpton

Women's health needs to be front and center - it often isn't, but it needs to be. — Cynthia Nixon

As a journalist in Providence, I was particularly drawn toward stories about women's issues: I wrote about discrimination, abortion, violence against women. I wrote about women's health, sexism in the media, cultural imagery. I even wrote about women (other women) with eating disorders. And quietly, privately, I starved myself half to death. There you have it: intellectual belief without the correlary of emotional roots; feminist power understood in the mind but not known, somehow, in the body. — Caroline Knapp

There is nothing new about these Republican attacks on our family planning decisions. In fact, from the moment they came into power, Republicans in the House of Representatives have been waging a war on women's health. — Patty Murray

I had patients who didn't die because they had too many pets to try to find homes for. It's why women live longer than men with the same health problems. — Bernie Siegel

It's time we recognize that, as the workplace is currently structured, a lot of women don't want to get to the top and stay there because they don't want to pay the price - in terms of their health, their well-being, and their happiness. — Arianna Huffington

A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health giving. When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she has no response, it should not take place. This is an act of prostitution and is degrading to the woman's finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding. — Margaret Sanger

I think it's important for me as an actor that I say these are the issues I'm going to be committed to. One of them for me is women and children's health around the world and their rights;the other is ovarian cancer. — Nicole Kidman

Our women are not incredible because they have managed to avoid the difficulties of life - quite the opposite. They are incredible because of the way they face the trials of life. Despite the challenges and tests life has to offer - from marriage or lack of marriage, children's choices, poor health, lack of opportunities, and many other problems - they remain remarkably strong and immovable and true to the faith. Our sisters throughout the Church consistently succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees. — Quentin L. Cook

I saw a doctor. I went in case there were any remnants of the summer inside me - sticky, slender fish bones that needed to be scraped into the bin. He was dismissive of my concerns and said my body would have let me know by now. Did I have what was known as female intuition? I said I'd had my feminine intuition somewhat scrambled in the past. — Olivia Sudjic

I'm not sure we need half a billion dollars for women's health issues. — Jeb Bush

There are over 200 million illiterate women in India. This low literacy negatively impacts not just their lives but also their families' and the country's economic development. A girl's lack of education also has a negative impact on the health and well-being of her children. — Sachin Tendulkar

I don't know what these Republican congressmen drink that make them experts on women's reproductive health. — Jackie Speier

If more men would see a story of what it was like to be pregnant, and how it felt to be in a place where you had to make a decision about whether to keep a pregnancy, maybe they would feel differently about women's health care. — Reese Witherspoon

Try being an indie author, a minority author, a woman, and a person with health issues in the world of traditional - that's where you are clearly 'different' and marginalized. I am all of that, yet I am still here and smiling. Life is good! — Kailin Gow

We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease; we tear birds to pieces to decorate our women's hats; we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for our own diseases by them. — George Bernard Shaw

Decades ago, women suffered through horrifying back-alley abortions. Or, they used dangerous methods when they had no other recourse. So when the Republican Party launched an all-out assault on women's health, pushing bills to limit access to vital services, we had to ask: Why is the GOP trying to send women back ... to the back alley? — Lisa Edelstein

I have consistently supported laws ensuring women are able to make their own health care decisions, and I will continue to protect women's access to contraceptives and reproductive health care. — Dan Maffei

The bicycle was proclaimed a boon to all mankind, a thing of beauty, good for the spirits, good for health and vitality, indeed one's whole outlook on life. Doctors enthusiastically approved. One Philadelphia physician, writing in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, concluded from his observations that for physical exercise for both men and women, the bicycle is one of the greatest inventions of the nineteenth century. — David McCullough

All I can say on women's issues and women's health issues, there will be nobody better than Donald Trump. — Donald Trump

But I had to think to myself that this was normal, because that was the attitude. I was 19 when I went to see my doctor and I was told it was all in the mind.
[Author Hilary Mantel on being told her endometriosis was imagined pain, From Oct 2009 Daily Mail interview] — Hilary Mantel

Education continued to come under particularly strong fire ... : If women learned how to manage in the world as well as men, if they learned about history and politics and studied for a profession, of course they would soon be demanding a voice and a role outside the home. The medical doctors soon discovered that education was dangerous to a female's health. — Lillian Faderman

And here's what Barack Obama and his surrogates said about Mitt Romney: Mitt Romney is the worst guy since Mussolini. Mitt Romney is the guy who straps dogs to the top of cars. Mitt Romney is the kind of guy who wants to "put y'all back in chains." Mitt Romney is leading a "war on women" and, in fact, has compiled a binder full of women that he can then use to prosecute his war. Mitt Romney is the type of guy who would specifically fire an employee so that five years later his wife would die of cancer thanks to lack of health insurance. Mitt Romney would take his money and put it in an overseas bank account specifically to deprive the American people of money. The Obama campaign slogan: "Romney: Rich, Sexist, Racist Jackass. — Ben Shapiro

I have personally been affected by women's reproductive health issues, and I will continue to support that cause and spread awareness about it. — Bethany Cosentino

Well, you know my number one cause has always been that women's reproductive health needs to be protected. — Ann Richards

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth ... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all. — Ban Ki-moon

Certainly the women's health part is something that I've become very interested in. It's not something I thought about when George [Bush] was elected ... what I'd always been interested in was education. — Laura Bush

Consider the impact of your personal care choices on our health, water supply and our wider environment. — Joanna Runciman

Although a government study found that men's health was much worse than women's health or the health of any minority group, headlines around the country read: 'Minorities Face Large Health Care Gap.' They did not say: 'Men Face Large Health Care Gap.' Why? Because we associate the sacrifice of men's lives with the saving of the rest of us, and this association leads us to carry in our unconscious an incentive not to care about men living longer. — Warren Farrell

Insomnia is a very prevalent issue. It's a women's health issue, and I chose to talk about it because so many people have experienced it to varying degrees. For me, I'm doing great now, but it took a lot of work to figure out how to get back to sleep. I had to change some of my habits. I developed some pretty bad sleep ritual habits. — Jenny Lewis

Work is only part of a man's life; play, family, church, individual and group contacts, educational opportunities, the intelligent exercise of citizenship, all play a part in a well-rounded life. Workers are men and women with potentialities for mental and spiritual development as well as for physical health. We are paying the price today of having too long sidestepped all that this means to the mental, moral, and spiritual health of our nation. — Mary Barnett Gilson

Train that bitch to love you, a bitch like that, she's the type you have to train, and even then, she'll still try to fuck around on you and test the boundaries, unless you have something no other man has, but to her you're a dick, and her she likes big dicks and muscular men, I can tell. — Stephen Demone

When we trust the makers of baby formula more than we do our own ability to nourish our babies, we lose a chance to claim an aspect of our power as women. Thinking that baby formula is as good as breast milk is believing that thirty years of technology is superior to three million years of nature's evolution. Countless women have regained trust in their bodies through nursing their children, even if they weren't sure at first that they could do it. It is an act of female power, and I think of it as feminism in its purest form. — Christine Northrup

When women are able to live in a safe and secure environment, they can participate effectively in the economy and society. This helps overcome poverty, reduces inequalities and is beneficial for children's nutrition, health and school attendance. Every woman and girl has the right to live in safety in her home and community. — Helen Clark

I would be the best for women, the best for women's health issues. — Donald Trump

Because we spoke so loudly, opponents of reproductive health access demonized and smeared me and others on the public airwaves. These smears are obvious attempts to distract from meaningful policy discussions and to silence women's voices regarding their own health care. — Sandra Fluke

Women well understood how to restrict birth through timing of sexual intercourse, herbs and abortifacients. I suspect the focus on men's control of women as the means of reproduction came later, in the last five percent or so of human history, with the idea of children as property and labor. One needed to have as many as possible, never mind about women's health or mobility or brainpower. Women's freedom was restricted in order to make sure of the paternity and ownership of children. — Gloria Steinem

Nancy [Kassebaum] and I worked on a women's health agenda when I first came. Women were not included in the protocols at NIH, the famous study, 'take an aspirin a day, keep the doctor, you know, a heart attack away.' It was done on ten thousand male medical students. — Barbara Mikulski