Barbara Seaman, 72; Pioneer In Women's Health Movement

Among Ms. Seaman's early targets was Robert A. Wilson, a gynecologist whose best-selling book "Feminine Forever" (1966) described hormone therapy as a cure for what he called women's "deficiency disease."

Wilson, whose book was funded secretly by an estrogen manufacturer, said women taking estrogen at 50 could "still look attractive in sleeveless dresses or tennis shorts."

Ms. Seaman responded, "How do you know that it isn't from the tennis?"

Barbara Ann Rosner was born Sept. 11, 1935, in New York, where her father was assistant commissioner of social services. He mother taught high school English.

After graduating from Oberlin College in 1956, she started writing and editing for women's magazines. She was a columnist for the Ladies' Home Journal in the late 1960s when she began receiving letters from readers concerned about blood clots, heart attack, depression and other serious medical conditions after taking oral contraceptives.

"I started finding out very early on that the patients taking the pill didn't agree with the doctors that it was perfectly safe and simple and wonderful," Seaman said. "The early pills had 10 times the amount of hormones they have now. They were a massive overdose."

She interviewed doctors and officials at health organizations for her first book, "The Doctors' Case Against the Pill," considered by many a landmark text that led Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) to hold hearings in 1970 about the safety of oral contraceptives.

However, Ms. Seaman and other activists said they were appalled not only by the lack of female witnesses but also by testimony from one doctor that "estrogen is to cancer what fertilizer is to wheat." Feminists disrupted the hearings in protest.

Public outcry from the hearings stimulated research to find safer drugs as well as drug label warnings. By the 1980s, manufacturers in the United States drastically lowered estrogen doses in oral contraceptives; they had been lowered years earlier in Britain.

Ms. Seaman wrote "Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones" (1977) with her second husband, psychiatrist Gideon Seaman. Her other books included a biography of racy novelist Jacqueline Susann, "Lovely Me" (1987), the basis for a TV film staring Michele Lee. Ms. Seaman recently co-authored two books on women's health with Laura Eldridge, including "The Body Politic," an anthology of writings from the movement.

Her marriages to Peter Marks, Gideon Seaman and Milton Forman ended in divorce.

Survivors include three children from her second marriage, Noah Seaman, Elana Seaman and Shira Seaman, all of Manhattan; her stepmother, Ruth Gruber of Manhattan; two sisters, Jeri Drucker and Elaine Rosner-Jeria, both of Manhattan; a stepbrother, David Michaels of Bethesda; a stepsister, Celia Michaels of London; and four grandchildren.