Joycelyn Elders Quotes

My efforts to join the fight against breast cancer all began around the fact that women were getting short-changed in the medical arena.

I have my hormones balanced. Most doctors are giving women synthetic hormones, which just eliminate the symptoms, but it's doing nothing to actually replace the hormones you have lost. Without our hormones we die.

We can reorient science - for example, a kind of medicine much more directed toward the enormous number of women's health problems which are neglected now. But the original givens of this science are the same for men and for women. Women simply have to steal the instrument; they don't have to break it, or try, a priori, to make of it something totally different. Steal it and use it for their own good.

If technology and medicine are used by women to have children or not to have children or to have healthier children - that's one thing. But if it's used to say, 'You're not a real woman unless you have a child; therefore, take all these dangerous hormones and have one at 54,' then it's another story.

Ask any woman and she'll tell you: health care for women is more expensive than it is for men. In fact, during their reproductive years, women spend 68% more on health care than men do.

It's hard for women to talk about these things, and for the doctors to really talk about it too, and to even have the knowledge of what's going on. That's why I'm doing this and urging women to speak out and talk to their doctors frankly.

So, if anatomy is destiny then testosterone is doom.

There are some great questions to ask your doctor. If he says 'no,' then you find yourself a different doctor. There really has to be a change in how we medically look at women at this time. I mean, this is not just baby gloom.

There are six million female lives lost in the world every year simply because they are female.

Men are allowed to age. Men are allowed to gain weight. Men are allowed to be quirky looking.

I think sometimes women are not driven by the same, albeit, testosterone power thing that pushes men to get into politics.

Clearly, products for women are not as well scrutinized as products for men. It appears they never tested the implants in breast tissue and that they received decades of complaints from women. It's the kind of stuff that makes you want to scream!

Preventing female infanticide is equally important in protection of women's rights.

The public likes to think that women only care about contraception.

Young women, adolescent girls, are more subject to infection, sometimes at a rate of six times that of boys. That tells you a lot about the vulnerability of women.

Abortion opponents know full well that the public would not abide putting women in prison en masse. Politically, it's more palatable to portray them as irrational, ignorant, and childlike, perhaps even temporarily insane.

There is one thing women can never take away from men. We die sooner.

I'm uncomfortable with men making decisions that affect women's health.

I actually believe we are the superior gender. Why are we superior? Statistically, we outlive men by a good 10 years. No one should underestimate the power of nagging - it's on par with nuclear weapons.

Some people believe I have an automatic advantage over other female MMA fighters, so they think 'well she has to be stronger, because she used to be a male,' but if they look into the science of it and what the hormones do to the body, to the male body once taken over a period of time... it dissipates.

Women do not get enough attention in a healthcare professional's office. We have been trained as healthcare professionals to look 'lightly' at women's complaints.

We've done a couple of women's mags, but we tend to talk about feminism and women in the industry, which I feel more comfortable talking about. It's a more valuable discussion than, 'Oh, you're a girl in a band. What hair conditioner do you use?' I use hair conditioner, and I like talking about it. But I don't want that to be the question.

If I don't take estrogen hormone replacement therapy, I can get osteoporosis.

I know you are not a woman if you are voting for Mitt Romney. Because no woman in her right mind would vote for a man that opposes a woman's right to get a clean abortion or a safe abortion.

Why isn’t the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community?