Bessie Moses (1893-1965)
MSA SC 3520-13582
Biography:
Health care in the early decades of the twentieth century was
undergoing a period of great development and professionalization, which
ushered in a time of enhanced medical aid for society. However,
studies of women's health and services related to female care remained
relatively limited. Information concerning reproductive health,
contraception, and abortion was extremely controversial and was, in
many cases, not addressed by health care professionals during this
period. The availability of such information and the attitude of
the
medical community towards these areas of female health endured until
the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Restrictions
on reproductive information and health procedures available to women
were brought about with the passage of the Comstock Law in 1873, which
prohibited the dissemination of contraceptive advice, materials, and
information through the mail. Although in many cases women,
namely from the middle-class, were able to circumvent the laws that
censored them, poorer segments of society were drastically affected by
the lack of necessary medical information and care needed to prevent
dire circumstances, such as death, that resulted from the use of home
remedies to induce abortions, the consequences of botched abortions
performed by unqualified individuals, and the absence of self-awareness
about the female body.1 The
Birth Control movement, initiated in the first years of the twentieth
century, was the primary catalyst for change in the availability of
information and materials that allowed women, for the first time, to
educate themselves about the various avenues open to implement family
planning, learn about their bodies, and find health care facilities
specifically tailored to their needs. Margaret Sanger, one of the
most visible and controversial, figures of the movement worked
tirelessly to aid women, especially those of the lower class, in
reproductive matters to improve and extend the quality of life.
In Brooklyn, New York, she founded the first birth control clinic in
the United States that became the model for similar clinics around the
world. Bessie Moses, a protégé of Sanger, founded a
birth control clinic in Baltimore, Maryland, to serve the medical needs
of
women. Persevering in the face of laws that could, at any moment,
close her clinic and fighting for the opportunity to expand women's
health and reproductive knowledge, Bessie Moses devoted her life to
these causes and became one of the leaders in a period that saw
the development of the medical field into that of today.
Bessie Louise Moses was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 21,
1893. Her parents were of German-Jewish origins and had
established themselves as well-respected individuals in the city.
Her father, Bernard Moses, was a successful salesman and an active
member in community affairs. Her mother, Bertha Manko Moses,
remained in the home caring for their growing family. The Moses
daughters were encouraged by their parents to develop a strong sense of
the value of learning. Bessie attended public schools in the
area, excelled in her studies, and graduated from Western High School
in 1911. She attended Goucher College, graduating with her BA in
1915. Between her junior and senior years of college, Bessie had
worked at the Woods Hold Biological Laboratory, which fed her interests
in medicine and the sciences.2
Keen in continuing her studies, Bessie spent the next year as a
graduate student in the Biology department of The Johns Hopkins
University. However, her father, citing a lack of finances and
uncertainty of the suitability of the medical field as a viable path
for his daughter, encouraged Bessie to pursue a teaching career as her
sister had done. Although discouraged, she spent the next two
years as a teacher of biology and zoology, first at Sarah Newcomb
College in New Orleans, and then at Wellesley College in
Massachusetts. After finally convincing her family of the value
of a medical career for women and her intense interest in pursuing that
field, Bessie returned to Baltimore and re-entered Johns Hopkins in
1918, earning her medical degree in 1922.3
Already aware of the lack in women's health care, Bessie Moses decided
to become an obstetrician and gynecologist. She interned at the
Johns Hopkins Hospital just after graduation and then transferred to
the Women's Hospital in Philadelphia. The Women's Hospital was a
pioneering institution for its time because it employed an all-female
staff, complete with female physicians of various specializations, to
care for women patients. This experience undoubtedly opened
Moses's eyes to the advantages and possibilities offered by such a
comprehensive medical environment dedicated to women's health care.
Dr. Bessie Moses returned to Baltimore to open her own private
gynecological practice in 1924. In her first few years of private
practice, Moses also worked in obstetrics, delivering babies at the
Johns Hopkins, Mt. Sinai, and Church Home Hospitals. She found
the work immensely rewarding, but taxing as well. As Alan
Guttmacher, a close associate, explained after her death, "Bess was
constitutionally ill-equipped to be an obstetrician; she wasn't rugged
enough, either physically or emotionally. She was so involved in
the outcome of a birth that she became constantly anxious about her
patients. She was a wreck after a tough all night vigil as a Lady
Stork."4 Ultimately, Dr. Moses
decided to give up her obstetrical practice to focus solely on the
gynecological needs of her women patients. This slight career
change provided her with the opportunity to examine contraception and
its value to female patients in more depth. Moses, already aware
of the efforts of birth control movement figures, such as her friend
Margaret Sanger, allied with their cause and advocated contraceptive
usage to the women she encountered on an everyday basis in her
office. In addition to her medical practice, Bessie Moses was
devoted to counseling women in marriage concerns, which many times
focused on contraception and family planning. She exhibited a
deep concern for and personal involvement in her patients, which,
although it had proved unsuitable for her obstetics career, made her a
great physican for premarital and marriage counseling. Moses was
able to make instant, deep connections with others, and women felt
comfortable expressing their deepest concerns with her, never believing
once they would be judged or discriminated against. Patients
looked to her for advice and viewed her as a valuable authority, though
also as an equal who truly cared for the well-being of each individual
and family she spoke with. Dr. Moses became something of a
confidante to the countless numbers of women she treated over her forty
year career. Dr. Guttmacher mirrored these sentiments when he
stated, "Few physicians were loved by patients as much as Bess; she
gave of herself unstintingly."5
These qualities endeared her to all, including her students, both those
at Sarah Newcomb and Wellesley Colleges, and at The Johns Hopkins
University, where she was an instructor in obstetrics. One of the
significant aspects of Dr. Moses's successful career was the fact that
she sought to make female patients feel comfortable when seeking her
advice. She believed "women should be women first and doctors
afterward, just as men should be men first and doctors
afterward." Explaining her philosohpy on her career, Dr. Moses
stated, "In treating patients, especially young women with whom I come
into contact a great deal, you much have as full a life as possible
outside of medicine, so as to impress yourself upon them as a woman
like themselves, and not as a gowned medic."6 This ability to connect with her patients
ensured the success of Moses's medical practice and her subsequent
pursuits in establishing birth control clinics in the area.
Encouraged by the possibilities offered by the institution of small
birth control clinics around the country, doctors at Johns Hopkins
decided to open a similar medical office in Baltimore.
Distinguished members of the Hopkins faculty, Dr. Raymond Pearl, Dr.
Adolph Meyer, Dr. Donald Hooker, and Dr. J. Whitridge Williams, under
whom Moses had interned years before, planned the opening of a birth
control clinic with Dr. Bessie Moses as its director, a position she
held until 1956. The Bureau for Contraceptive Advice opened in
November 1927, at 1028 North Broadway opposite the Johns Hopkins
Hospital.7 With Moses as
medical director, women were provided with excellent health care and
couseling. However, public mores against contraception hindered
the work the Bureau was able to conduct. Only married women who
were referred in writing by their own physician on the basis of serious
health problems, which would be aggravated in the case of pregnancy,
were allowed to be treated at the facility. Nevertheless,
the Bureau was able to administer health care to more women than
medical facilities had been previously able to provide, and Moses was
able to use the clinic as backdrop against which to lobby for the end
to laws that restricted women from utilizing contraceptives and
reproductive information.
Moses became an
active force in the efforts to repeal the Comstock Law and to expand
medical instruction in areas of female health. She encountered
countless women who sought contracpetives, even though the acquisition
of such materials was illegal. The visibility of patients
returning time and again to hospitals to seek treatment for
complications from abortions and other reproductive matters struck a
chord with Moses and other physicians who supported the use of
contraceptives. Moses was vocal in rallying against the Comstock
Law and spoke against it in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee of
the United States Congress in 1932. In describing just one of the
problematic aspects of the law, she stated, "Unless scientific articles
and books on contraception are sent freely through the mails to doctors
and medical schools, it will be impossible for medical students and
physicians to be properly informed concerning the harmless and safe
methods of contraception...We resent, as physicians, any limitation on
the part of the government to our right to procure any medical
articles, books or instrument from any source."8 However, it was not until 1936 that a federal
court, not the United States Congress, ruled that the Comstock Law did
not apply to birth control. The Bureau for Contraceptive Advice,
meanwhile, was growing in size to accomodate the numbers of eager
clientele in search of the care and advice of Dr. Moses. It had
changed its name to the Baltimore Birth Control Clinic in 1932 and
extended its services beyond health to also cater to married women's
social and economic needs. Indicative of its development, the
clinic, which had initially been run solely by Moses and one other
woman, who served as both a nurse and secretary, now had expanded to a
staff of nine clinicians. In order to illustrate the benefits of
birth control to the medical community, the government, and the general
public, Dr. Moses took it upon herself to conduct an analysis of the
first five years of the clinic's operation. This study, published
in 1936, was titled Contraception as
a Therapeutic Measure, and included information about the
experiences and treatments of 1,000 patients of the clinic in order to
ascertain the value of such an establishment. It was an important
measure to gain support for the Bureau and encourage futher growth and
the proliferation of subsequent clinics.
In 1937, Moses was
instrumental in the establishment of birth control clinics akin to the
Bureau for Contraceptive Advice in other towns in Maryland, such as
Hagerstown and Ellicott City. In addition, she helped start a
clinic in the Johns Hopkins obstetrical dispensary, a prime location
that would enable physicians to reach out to more women.
Believing women's health care should be available to all women,
regardless of social or economic status, Dr. Bessie Moses established a
clinic for African American patients, the Northwest Maternal Health
Center, which was the first
all black clinic in the United States, in 1938.9 This was a very significant decision on the part
of Moses because the majority of clinics were staffed by all white
doctors and technicians, a feature that discouraged many African
Americans from seeking medical care at such places. However, the
clinic created by Moses, who also served as its medical director, was
staffed by African American physicians, whom she trained herself.
In addition, its Board of Directors was composed of prominent black
community members. This clinic, therefore, was able to provide better
access to health care for more women than had previous
facilities. In 1938, the Baltimore clinic became a member
of the national Birth Control Federation of America, which had been
founded in 1923. In 1940, the Maryland League for Planned
Parenthood had been founded, and Dr. Moses was one of a number of
physicians that traveled around to encourage the spread of birth
control clinics in towns and cities across the state in order to reach
women from all areas who were in need of health and reproductive
care. By 1942, the Baltimore clinic had changed its name to
Planned Parenthood, a move echoed around the country by fellow
clinics. Dr. Moses also decided to further expand the efforts of
her Planned Parenthood clinic by opening a fertility clinic in 1946.10 Her remarkable work with the
birth control clinics in Maryland, many of which had been established
before the Maryland League had even begun operation, are testament to
the utter devotion and care to women's needs with which Dr. Moses led
her career and life.
Throughout her long, impressive career, Dr. Bessie Moses was the
recipient of numerous awards and honors and was a member of many
presitigious organizations, which include: Phi Beta Kappa, The Johns
Hopkins University, 1922; membership in Alpha Omega Alpha, The Johns
Hopkins University's honorary medical society, 1922; first woman
recipient of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation Award in Planned
Parenthood, along with Margaret Sanger, 1950; Citation for
"distinguished scientific achievement," Goucher College, 1954; active
medical director emeritus of the Bureau for Contraceptive Advice, 1956;
served on medical and lay boards of the Baltimore Planned Parenthood
Association; president of the Johns Hopkins Women's Medical Alumae
Association; and honored by the Federation of Jewish Women's
Organizations of Maryland for her work.11
Dr. Moses continued working at her private practice up until the week
she died. After struggling with breast cancer for an extended
period of time, Dr. Bessie Moses passed away on March 25, 1965.
It was the same year that the Supreme Court ruled that state laws which
prohibited couples from using birth control devices were illegal, a
step Moses would have cheered after her lifelong battle against
restrictions on contraceptives. Dr. Alan Guttmacher expressed his
sadness over her death and gratitude for her work when he stated, "She
loved children, friends, travel, literature, art--she loved life.
She left life reluctantly--but she left it bravely. Baltimore and
the American Planned Parenthood movement lost a great lady and an
exceptional leader."12 Moses
was a pioneer in opening new avenues of care and choice for women at a
time when such ideas were adamantly discouraged by many segments of
society. A courageous and revered woman, Dr. Bessie Moses
continues to shape women's health through those touched by her life and
example.
Endnotes:
1. Stegman, Carolyn B. Women of Achievement in Maryland History
(Maryland: Anaconda Press, 2002) 209. return
to text
2. Guttmacher, Alan F. "In Memoriam: Dr.
Bessie L. Moses, 1893-1965," The
Planner, October 1965. return to text
3. Kobre, Sidney. "Dr. Bessie Moses Believes
Prejudice Against Women in Medicine is Less," Baltimore Home News, 4 January,
1939. return to text
4. Guttmacher. return
to text
5. Ibid. return to
text
6. "'Brilliant Record' Wins Dr. Bessie Moses
Award," The Evening Sun, 25
October 1950. return to text
7. "Dr. Bessie Moses Dies at Age 71," The Baltimore Sun, 26 March
1965. return to text
8. Stegman, 210. return to text
9. "Planned Parenthood Work Brings Award to
Dr. Moses," The Baltimore Sun,
30 September 1950. return to text
10. "Planned Parenthood Collection,"
University of Baltimore, Langsdale Library Special Collections,
2005. http://archives.ubalt.edu/pp/intro.htm.
return to text
11. "Dr. Bessie Moses Dies at Age 71," The Baltimore Sun, 26 March
1965. return to text
12. Guttmacher. return
to text
Biography written by 2005 summer
intern Lauren Morton
Return to Bessie Moses's Introductory Page
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