Document 29: "Questions Asked After Lecture by Dr. Levinson at New York Urban League," 26 January 1933, Reel 33, Papers of Margaret Sanger, 1900-1966, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Introduction
This is a list of questions asked by the audience at a public lecture given by Dr. Marie Levinson, the doctor who replaced Hannah Stone as the primary physician at the Harlem Branch clinic after the Bousfield report. The list provides a rare glimpse of the reproductive health concerns of average members of the community who attended clinic educational programs. It also demonstrates a level of comfort with Levinson; most of these questions explicitly address sexual and gynecological concerns. The lecture was one of the first Levinson gave in the renewed publicity campaign initiated at the January 1933 Advisory Council meeting (see Document 27). Levinson gave a total of twelve lectures in the community in January and February of 1933. She gave four more lectures at the New York Urban League as well as two each at the Abyssinian Baptist Church and the New York League of Girls Clubs and one each at the Mahopac Democratic Club, the Echo Hill Clinical Medical Society in the Bronx, and the True Sisters Committee. Attendees at the talks totaled 1,450 women and 720 men. Deputy Director S. A. Allen of the Urban League wrote to Sanger in February to praise the lectures Levinson gave and to commit the Urban League to hosting more such talks.[96]
QUESTIONS ASKED AFTER LECTURE BY DR. LEVINSON AT NEW YORK URBAN LEAGUE THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 1933
1. Is it necessary to have your husband's consent to come to the clinic?
2. Does contraception cause sterility?
3. Is it a fact that if you have only one ovary that you can not become pregnant?
4. May anyone go to the BC Clinic or only those who have ill health?
5. What is the cause of inflammation of the womb?
6. If you have ovaries and not tubes can you become pregnant?
7. What is ovary trouble?
8. How do you know you have it?
9. Can you have a baby if you have no womb?
10. Will peritonitis prevent you from becoming pregnant?
11. Will a weak back from a fall cause your womb to turn?
12. If you have had a hard time with the first baby and the doctor says it is dangerous for you to have another, it that true or just a saying?
13. What is the cause of a discharge in a man?
14. If there any danger in becoming pregnant if you have a discharge?
15. If a man has a discharge, will a women catch it?
16. Why is it that so many women can not have babies no matter how hard they may try?
17. If a man has a discharge can a woman become pregnant?
18. How does a man catch the disease that causes a discharge?
19. When a woman is ruptured, why dies it feel like a baby moving?
20. Can a woman become pregnant if the man discharges and woman does not?
21. Would it be a healthy child?
22. If a woman has a milk leg after child birth, can she become pregnant again?
23. Is there any explanation why a woman who has had one child can not have any more?
24. Does a woman know when her womb is twisted?
25. Why does a woman have twins?
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