Horatio Storer

In 1865, Storer won an American Medical Association (AMA) prize for his essay, which was aimed at informing women about the moral and physical problems of induced abortion.

According to biographer Frederick N. Dyer, Storer "probably did more to found gynecology as a science and medical specialty than any other American physician.

Storer used the language of morality, writing: "The evil to society of this crime is evident from the fact that it's instances in this country are now to be counted by hundreds of thousands.

[6] The birth rate for Protestant white women had been declining over the course of the 19th century and so he had fears of what was commonly referred to as "race suicide", in which the Anglo-Saxon population was not replenishing itself fast enough to keep up with the swells of new immigrants to the United States.

His concern was that the freeing of black slaves and the influx of Chinese immigrants would mean the death of the country's white race, which he understood to mean Anglo-Saxon people.

[1] He also believed that if the AMA could control the marketplace of abortion, it would be lucrative to that growing cadre of university-educated mostly-male physicians, who were beginning to specialize in fields like obstetrics and gynecology.

[5] In an 1865 essay for the AMA, Storer wrote that "upon [white women's] loins depends the future destiny of the nation.

"[9] To help keep the white race dominant in the United States and to lend legitimacy to the AMA, Storer persuaded it to form the Committee on Criminal Abortion and to promote sterilization of what it deemed to be undesirable individuals.

Of the mother, by consent or by her own hand, imbrued with her infant's blood; of the equally guilty father, who counsels or allows the crime; of the wretches, who by their wholesale murders far out-Herod [the Great, and] Burke and Hare; of the public sentiment which palliates, pardons, and would even praise this, so common, violation of all law, human and divine, of all instinct, of all reason, all pity, all mercy, all love,—we leave those to speak who can."

[10] Storer believed that "abortions were endangering what he saw as the ideal America: a society of white Protestants in which women adhered strictly to their proper 'duties' -- marriage and childbearing."

[13] As a result of Storer's efforts, the AMA petitioned the legislatures of the states and territories to strengthen their laws against elective abortions.