Anna Blount

Anna Blount (January 18, 1872 – February 12, 1953) was an American physician from Chicago, and Oak Park. She was awarded Doctor of Medicine June 17, 1897 by Northwestern University. She volunteered her medical services at Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago that was founded in 1889. She encouraged other women to become physicians and was the president of the National Medical Women's Association.

Blount was a proponent of birth control and a leader in the birth control movement in the United States. She was a frequent contributor to the Birth Control Review. She served on the committee of the First American Birth Control Conference. Blount gave lectures on "sex hygiene" to Chicago high schools, clubs and to universities. She created pamphlets, such as A Talk With Mothers, which discussed condom use. She believed that "shielding women" from information about sexually transmitted disease was wrong. When it was still illegal to do so, Blount gave out information about birth control in direct violation of laws against discussing birth control in order to test those laws.

In the Chicago Citizens Committee for Birth Control was active Anna Blount, member of the CWC, who in the twenties emphasized the necessity of increasing the number of women among physicians. Nota bene, her guide on birth control was titled: A Talk to Mothers by a Doctor Who is a Mother Herself. She introduced herself here as professionally prepared for counseling in the area of birth control, as well as a woman who shared these experiences with other women. Her status was legitimized by the fact of her having three children and specializing in gynecology and pediatrics.”

Blount also supported the idea of eugenics. Blount called eugenics "the most important movement of modern times." She chaired the Eugenics Education Society of Chicago. Blount believed that people should choose to have children with only the most mentally and physically healthy individuals. She believed that "cruelty is a hereditary characteristic." She connected alcoholism with heredity as well. Blount even believed that lowering the population size would prevent war and world hunger.

Blount did not believe that people who were unhappy with one another should stay married, and proposed that obtaining a divorce should be made easier in the courts. She advocated that juries on divorce trials should be made up of women.

Blount was a leader in the women's suffrage movement. She was a member of the Chicago Woman's Club and the Nineteenth Century Woman's Club of Oak Park. Blount spoke out against club organizations attempting to prevent African American women from joining. Concerning Dr. Blount's involvement in the woman's suffrage movement, The Gentle Force says,

Dr. Anna Blount and Grace Wilbur Trout ... achieved state-wide reputations as leaders for the cause, and both served on the Municipal Suffrage Commission in Illinois, as did Club members Grace Hall Hemingway and Anna Lloyd Wright. Dr. Blount was an active physician and surgeon, with a specialty in obstetrics and gynecology. She campaigned vigorously for suffrage, and in 1906 she, along with Elizabeth Ball and Phoebe Butler, established the Suburban Civics and Equal Suffrage Association (later the League of Women Voters). According to the local paper, this Association was founded by 'some of the most prominent women in Illinois, who have made an imperishable record for their service in the cause of woman suffrage.'"

Note that Grace Hall Hemingway was the mother of author Ernest Hemingway and Anna Lloyd Wright was the mother of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.