Laura Mentsch: Champion of Women's Health

Dublin Core

Title

Subject

female reproduction, birth control, infertility, women's health, contraception, tonics, pills

Description

Since her time as a college student in Boston in the 1970s, Laura Mentsch has championed women’s reproductive health. With a long list of credentials including a Master’s degree in Health Education, her lifetime of work spans more than fifty years and includes conducting pregnancy tests, counseling women about reproductive options, and teaching sexual education courses. Laura continues to offer her knowledge with care and empathy, empowering women to understand and advocate for their own bodies, choices, and health.

Over the course of her storied career, Laura collected a vast library of reference materials, and has generously gifted important historical texts to WRHA. These books are significant for the information they provide, and also because of the glimpse they offer into reproductive care during particular eras. Texts can be compared across time both for changes in content and also for shifts in emphasis which communicate the context of the reproductive environment of America in the 1970s through the early 2000s.

The physical texts are housed in the WRHA collections in Bozeman, Montana, and portions will be made available digitally upon request. However, pdfs of most of these texts are currently available online or through local library resources.