Document 18: Letter to the editor by Peter Marshall Murray, president of the National Medical Association, Birth Control Review, 16 (July/August 1932): 216.

Document 18: Letter to the editor by Peter Marshall Murray, president of the National Medical Association, Birth Control Review, 16 (July/August 1932): 216.

Introduction

   This letter from a Harlem clinic Advisory Council member commented on the June 1932 issue of the Birth Control Review (see Document 17). It showed a Harlem Advisory Council member engaging with the views expressed by African American advocates nationally. His letter argued that African medical professionals nationwide accepted birth control when it was presented in terms of women's health and economic security, and he expressed support for birth control as a tool for securing racial justice.

   Murray, a nationally known gynecologist, was among the physicians first given permanent staff positions at Harlem Hospital. As president of the National Medical Association, Murray led the nation's oldest and largest organization representing African American doctors. At a time when the AMA followed a whites-only membership policy, the National Medical Association provided an invaluable national forum through which African American health professionals promoted the health needs of Blacks and pressed for equal opportunity within the medical profession. Later in his career he would become the first African American member of the American Medical Association House of Delegates.

PETER MARSHALL MURRAY, M.D., President, National Medical Association, writes:

WHEREVER the question of birth control has been intelligently presented to the Negro physician, nurse or social worker there have been ready converts to its urgent needs. Negro professional men and women are not overmuch concerned with the "young blades" bent on escaping responsibility or the long range social implications of the ultimate effect of the birth control movement on the future of the human race; the widest appeal has been in favor of voluntary limitation of offspring among women already mothers of several children, who are all but broken under the economic burden and are trying to make ends meet out of scanty and irregular incomes.

   Inadequate food and rest, too early return to active work after childbirth, together with many other factors have brought these overburdened mothers to the verge of physical bankruptcy.

   Almost without exception, the Negro woman physician and nurse (first-hand observers of such conditions) are anxious and willing agents for the spread of this work. They instinctively respond to the tragic appeal of these mothers for the help, which often can come only through intelligent birth control information.

   


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