Feminists vs. Doctors: Feminist Health and the Politics of Professional Regulation in Feminist Women's Health Center, Inc. vs. Mohammad et al.

The circumstances surrounding the federal anti-trust case Feminist Women’s Health Center Inc. v. Mahmood Mohammad et al. (1978) demonstrate the shifting and hotly contested landscape of regulatory control over professions and industries in the the mid-1970s.   Using archival materials and legal records, this paper tells the story of an antitrust lawsuit filed by a grassroots feminist health clinic, the Tallahassee [Florida] Feminist Women’s Health Center (TFWHC), against a group of physicians employed by the county’s only hospital, alleging physician collusion to inhibit the TFWHC’s ability to do business.  Ultimately decided in favor of TFWHC in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals under Judge Homer Thornberry, Feminist v. Mohammad was a landmark case, officially granting feminist health groups recognition and legitimacy they had found difficult to obtain. 

Simultaneously, the ruling struck a blow at the customary power of professional organizations like the American Medical Association, whose immunity to antitrust prosecution was thereby negated.  This places Feminist v. Mahmood in the context of the broader legislative mood of the Carter administration’s deregulation of industries such as trucking and airlines and cases such as Federal Trade Commission vs. American Medical Association (1975).  Feminist v. Mohammad thus demonstrates ways in which the 1970s activist left (including feminist health activists) sometimes shared deregulationist goals with the federal government.  Pursuit of deregulation is an aspect of the feminist health movement not typically discussed in feminist health movement scholarship, but which helps contextualize feminist health in the broader economic and political landscape of the Carter era.