{"id":262935,"date":"2022-02-18T18:41:33","date_gmt":"2022-02-19T00:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=262935"},"modified":"2022-02-17T16:27:51","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T22:27:51","slug":"first-black-woman-graduate-harvard-medical-prolife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/first-black-woman-graduate-harvard-medical-prolife\/","title":{"rendered":"The first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School was pro-life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dr. Mildred Jefferson was a trailblazer in many ways. She was not only the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, but was also the first woman to become a member of the Boston Surgical Society. In addition to her groundbreaking medical career, Jefferson was also a staunch pro-life activist, responsible for creating one of the biggest pro-life advocacy organizations in the country.<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Texas, Jefferson knew from a young age that she wanted to be a doctor \u2014\u00a0a difficult path for a Black woman in the Jim Crow south. But she wouldn’t be deterred; after obtaining her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Jefferson enrolled in Harvard Medical School in 1947. According to Feminists for Life<\/a>, Jefferson said her goal as a doctor was to save lives. In 1951, she graduated from medical school, fulfilling her dream of becoming a doctor, and then continued breaking boundaries. She was the first woman to serve as a surgical intern at Boston City Hospital, as well as the first woman elected to the Boston Surgical Society.<\/p>\n

She went on to become the first female doctor at the former Boston University Medical Center (now the Boston Medical Center), and by the 1980s, was working as a general surgeon and a professor of surgery at the Boston University School of Medicine. But Jefferson’s passions didn’t only lie with medicine; she felt called to preserve all life, and was an outspoken pro-life activist. Early in her career, she had already begun arguing that the preborn child is a living human being. In a 1972 issue of Boston University’s Centerscope magazine, she wrote<\/a>, \u201cFrom conception, the complex, dynamic, developing organism-child is separate and distinct from its mother.”<\/p>\n

Inspired<\/a> by the Hippocratic Oath, Jefferson opposed the intentional taking of any life. When her attention was called to a resolution being proposed by the American Medical Association supporting legal abortion, Jefferson’s pro-life advocacy began.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0The abortion industry\u2019s past targeting of the Black community is still happening today<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n