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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Worcester Institute for Experimental Biology, and supported by Mrs. McCormick, an elderly widow of one of the McCormicks of Chicago, who gave some few hundred thousand dollars for the development of this pill. And the total support from the NIH in what they call fertility control is in the order of about six million dollars a year as compared with their total budget of last year of 880 million. So, you can see it is no major effort on their part, and that's largely because of their fear of retaliation from Catholic Congressmen on appropriations,

Q:

Well, Mrs. Lasker, you must feel a certain amount of satisfaction nevertheless in having been in on this movement in its early days, even though you haven't been active in it in recent years.

Lasker:

Well, I think I forgot to say that I tried in 1940 and '41 to interest Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt in the field. I had written a letter to her, along with other people, to raise money, and I got a contribution from her--I think of $50--for the Federation in 1940, and I asked Anna Rosenberg if she'd introduce me to her, hoping that I could interest her. Anna did introduce me to her, and she invited me to visit her in Campobello. I got very little time to talk with her there as she was--no, wait there was something else that came first.

She invited me to come to the White House and others interested in the planned parenthood movement to talk with her and to talk to Miss Katherine Lenroot and Dr. Warren Draper





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