Authors provide a much-needed analysis of the dynamic decades after 1945, when both Canada and the United States began using federal funds to expand health-care access, and biomedical research and authority reached new heights. Focusing on a wide range of issues - including childbirth, abortion and sterilization, palliative care, pharmaceutical regulation, immigration, and Native health care - these essays illuminate the ironic promise of biomedicine, postwar transformations in reproduction, the varied work and belief-systems of female health-care providers, and national differences in women's health activism. Contributors include Aline Charles (Laval University), Barbara Clow (independent scholar), Laura E. Ettinger (Clarkson University), Georgina Feldberg (York University), Karen Flynn (York University), Vanessa Northington Gamble (Association of American Medical Colleges), Elena R. Gutiérrez (University of Illinois, Chicago), Molly Ladd-Taylor (York University), Alison Li (independent scholar), Maureen McCall (physician, Nepal), Michelle L. McClellan (University of Georgia), Kathryn McPherson (York University), Dawn Dorothy Nickel (University of Alberta), Heather Munro Prescott (Central Connecticut State University), Leslie J. Reagan (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Susan M. Reverby (Wellesley College), Susan L. Smith (University of Alberta), Ann Starr (visual artist and writer), and Judith Bender Zelmanovits (York University).