Amazing. This book is full of information new to me even as a long-time activist. Block shows how what we don’t know is making us sick, even if we are healthy. A challenge to feminist orthodoxy and, in some cases, feminist naivete, at its center is a critique of the use of technological fixes to solve social injustices.

Loretta Ross
cofounder of SisterSong
coauthor of Reproductive Justice

Attention women: your ‘wellness’ visits may be unnecessary and may even lead to harm. That’s the disturbing fact at the center of Jennifer Block’s important expose of a health-care system that is most profoundly failing female patients. Every woman needs to read this book.

Pagan Kennedy
New York Times contributing writer and
author of Inventology

Here, at last, is the comprehensive feminist medical examination we’ve been waiting for. Jennifer Block methodically, skillfully, and compassionately dismantles standard practices that continue to do so much harm to women.Buy one copy for yourself and a second copy for a friend, sister, aunt, mother, cousin, daughter, neighbor. Block is a national treasure, and this is her most ambitious work yet.

Elisa Albert
author of After Birth

This book is brilliant, controversial, exhaustive, funny, and necessary… I cannot wait to buy it for friends wondering how to live feminist lives in the contemporary age.

Renée Ann Cramer
Professor of Law, Politics, and Society, Drake University
author of Pregnant with the Stars

Block’s journalistic standards are impeccable. From the first sentence, she draws you in, evoking every emotion, with the book often reading more like a novel than an exposé on the complicated world of women’s medicine.

Toni Weschler
author of Taking Charge of Your Fertility and Cycle Savvy

Nearly fifty years ago, the women’s health movement transformed the doctor/patient relationship and empowered women to listen to and believe in their bodies. In Everything Below the Waist, Jennifer Block suggests that perhaps the movement was not quite as transformative as we’d like it to have been. This is a powerful and important book that forces us to face the limitations of medical technology to truly liberate women. It’s also a great read; I couldn’t put it down. It should be required reading of anyone interested in the future of women’s health.

Wendy Kline
Professor, Dema G. Seelye Chair in the History of Medicine
Purdue University
author of Coming Home: How Midwives Changed Birth