Yumen Pass

3D illustration of Gabriel's horn

01Downer's arrest came after she showed women their own cervices using a plastic speculum and a flashlight at a Los Angeles feminist health clinic.
02The prosecution's key exhibit was a jar of yogurt Downer had inserted into a woman's vagina as a yeast infection remedy — the 'yogurt case.'
03Her 1972 acquittal was cited in the founding documents of the women's self-help health movement, which spread to 50 cities within three years.

Yumenguan — the Jade Gate — was a Han-dynasty fort at the Silk Road's western edge. Tang poets used it as shorthand for the world's end: cross it and you were gone from civilization itself.