Women's health — mental and physical, emotional and sexual, sociological and psychological — was the topic of this weekend's conference in the Wartik Building.

As Women's History Month draws to an end, a coalition of campus groups ran the three-day Conference on Women's Health and Wellness.

Workshops addressed a variety of topics, including race and sexuality, menstruation, self-cervical exams, eating disorders, contraception and HIV.

Keynote speakers highlighted pertinent issues in women's health: Sarah Weddington spoke about her role in the historic Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion; Wendy Sanford conducted a body image workshop for women; and Patrick Califia discussed his experience as a female-to-male transsexual.

Sarah Weddington on legalizing abortion

Younger generations should not take their reproductive rights for granted, the attorney who successfully argued the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade said Saturday.

Sarah Weddington, a nationally known lawyer and activist, spoke about the history and continuing legacy of Roe v. Wade.

"I'm here asking people to be vigilant in protecting the victories of the past," Weddington said.

She and a group of women from her law school class decided to file the case after seeing the effects illegal abortions had on women.

"Roe v. Wade was not something we were sitting in a classroom and saying, 'Oh, what can we file a lawsuit about?' It was a direct result of women's tragedies," she said.

Part of Weddington's argument was that making abortion a crime deprived women of the liberty to make the most important decision of their lives.

Weddington was 25 when she argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. She said she remembers being terrified.

"I had done uncontested divorces, wills for people with no money and one adoption for my uncle — that was my legal experience at the time," Weddington said.

But Weddington won the case, and in 1973 abortion was declared legal in the United States. She emphasized, however, that the struggle did not end that day.

"Although we won a level of freedom in 1973, reproductive rights are not free. There needs to be a lot of people involved in making it free," she said.

She said recent cases in Missouri and Pennsylvania have caused the decision of Roe v. Wade to be weaker today than it was in 1973.

"People are always trying to do things that make abortion less available without having to come out and say it should be illegal," she said.

Weddington said widespread availability of the morning-after pill and health insurance coverage of birth control pills are issues that need to be addressed today. She said she sees young people as being on the forefront of this struggle.

"You cannot, sitting here, know where your life's pattern will take you," Weddington said. "But you can know what issues you care about and figure out how to act for them."

Wendy Sanford on body image

It was a professor's worst nightmare: 50 people in a room in Wartik Lab, sitting silently with their eyes closed.

It was exactly what Wendy Sanford wanted.

The co-author of the best-selling book Our Bodies, Ourselves asked probing questions of the group in an exercise on body image during the conference Saturday.

"Picture yourself as you look today," she told the group.

Later, she had them imagine themselves before a mirror and asked what parts of their bodies they judged the most.

After the 10-minute session, the room erupted into conversation as participants began to share their thoughts with one another.

"Women all over the country wake up every morning and think about what they hate about their bodies," Sanford said.

She said many of the images that cause this body-hatred come from advertising. Companies put forth an "ideal" image so women will want to buy products to attain the image, she said.

Sanford gave the group ideas on what they could do to combat negative body image, some of which she had collected from women she met at other colleges.

"Celebrate what your body does, rather than how it looks," she said. "Watch old movies."

Marilyn Monroe was a size 16, she told the audience.

Patrick Califia on female to male sexuality

Pat Califia grew up in a large, Mormon family in the Midwest. She didn't like to wear dresses and she wanted a pocketknife.

By all accounts, her desire to be a boy made her an eccentric child in a conservative religious community.

When she grew up, Califia became a lesbian-feminist activist and writer, authoring such popular titles as Macho Sluts, Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex, and Diesel Fuel: Passionate Poetry.

Now she's a man.

"My gender dysphoria really reached the point where I felt like I had to do something about it," Califia said of his decision to undergo a female-to-male transition.

When he started taking testosterone, he immediately experienced several physical and mental changes.

"I became able to understand the lyrics in heavy metal songs," Califia joked.

He started to grow facial hair and get acne, he said. Above all, though, he said he had sexual urges.

He said he doesn't know if most men feel the same way he did, but "if they do, then my decision is that men behave really well."

One of the failings of this country is that there is no third gender category, he said. This needs to be addressed for the benefit of all people in society, he added.

"The process of being socialized as a man or a woman is traumatic for all of us," Califia said.