Anna Blount

Anna Blount was an American physician from Chicago, and Oak Park. She encouraged other women to become physicians and was the president of the National Medical Women's Association.

She 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.

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.

She was a leader in the women's suffrage movement. She was a member of the Chicago Woman's Club. Blount spoke out against club organizations attempting to prevent African American women from joining.