Marie Pichel Levinson Warner
Born in 1895 in Ohio, doctor Marie Pichel Warner worked for the birth control movement in the United States. Among Warner’s many positions, she founded the birth control clinic at the Recreation Rooms Settlement House in Manhattan in the 1930s; in 1940, she became medical director there. She served as medical director of contraceptive clinics at New York City’s Jewish Memorial Hospital. Recognizing the value of the nonprint media, Warner gave talks about birth control over radio station WEVD and produced a film on the subject in the 1930s. She took the cause to the road and traveled throughout the United States, lecturing and visiting other clinics. In addition to these activities, she ran a private practice and published articles and books on contraception and infertility.
Family and Education
“Contraception is a health problem of importance to the patient and to the physician and involves the welfare of not only the individual but also of society,” concluded Marie Pichel Warner in a 1940 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Warner pursued that health problem, as well as infertility, in research and in practice, as assistant medical director at Margaret Sanger’s Clinical Research Bureau from 1927 to 1936, and medical director of the Family Planning Clinic in Harlem (beginning in 1933), run in conjunction with the New York Urban League.
Marie Pichel Levinson Warner was born on June 30, 1895, in Cincinnati, Ohio, one of five children of Isaac and Lily (Loeb) Pichel. She earned a BS from the University of Cincinnati (1919), working as a social investigator at Cincinnati General Hospital (1916–1917) and as a case worker for the American Red Cross (1917–1918). She married Louis J. Levinson in 1922 in Cincinnati and earned an MD from the College of Medicine of the University of Cincinnati the next year. She interned at Deaconess Hospital (1923–1924). After her husband’s untimely death, she moved to the East Coast. In 1933, she married Dr. Benjamin W. Warner. The couple lived in New York City and Scarsdale, New York.
Career
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Selected Works by Marie Pichel Levinson Warner
Artificial Insemination in Cases of Incurable Sterility (1948).
“Contraception: A Study of Five Hundred Cases from Private Practice.” JAMA 115 (July 27, 1940): 279–285.
The Couple Who Wanted a Baby (1961; Revised edition, 1968, as Modern Fertility Guide).
A Doctor Discusses Breast Feeding, with Miriam Gilbert (1981).
Social Hygiene Problems of Childhood and Family Concerns. (1934).
American Medical Directory (1925–1969).
Cincinnati Medical Heritage Center. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Kopp, Marie E. Birth Control in Practice (1933).
McCann, Carole R. Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916–1945 (1994).
Obituary. NYTimes, November 5, 1979, D7.
Sanger, Margaret. Collection. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and Sophia Smith Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
WWIAJ (1938): 1104.
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