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Abraham Stone Edit Profile

physician

Abraham Stone was an American hysician and birth-control activist. He was founder (1942) and president of the American Association of Marriage Counselors.

Background

Abraham was born on October 30, 1890 in Russia, the son of Miron Stone, a merchant, and Amelia Chamers. In 1905 his parents sent him to live with relatives in New York City. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1915.

Education

He attended New York University, receiving his M. D. in 1912.

Career

Stone served his internship and residency at the Knickerbocker, St. Mark's, and Bellevue hospitals in New York and began the private practice of urology in 1915. He was lieutenant in the army medical corps from 1917 to 1920.

Stone was appointed instructor in urology at the New York Postgraduate Medical School in 1923, a position he held until 1927.

He also served as chief urologist for the Union Health Center from 1929 to 1950 and was on the faculties of the New School for Social Research and the New York University-Bellevue medical school until his death.

The major focus of his career, however, emerged in 1921, when the Stones attended the First International Birth-Control Congress in New York and met the pioneering Margaret Sanger. The three quickly allied themselves for the cause of promoting both the practice of and research in birth-control methods.

His wife Hannah Mayer Stone became the first director of the Margaret Sanger Research Center, and after her death in 1941, Abraham Stone became its director. In 1931, Stone became director of the marriage consultation center of the Community Church of New York and began to write extensively on a number of issues involving human sexuality, contraception, marriage counseling, and fertility.

A Marriage Manual, written jointly with his wife, quickly became a classic, appearing subsequently in six English editions as well as in several foreign languages. Practical Birth-Control Methods, by Norman E. Himes, "with the medical collaboration of Abraham Stone, M. D. ," was published in 1938, with subsequent editions in 1940, 1945, and 1949.

A revised edition, Planned Parenthood: A Practical Guide to Birth-Control Methods, by Abraham Stone and Norman E. Himes, appeared in 1951. Stone's The Premarital Consultation: A Manual for Physicians, written with Lena Levine, was published in 1956.

Stone died in New York City.

Achievements

  • Abraham Stone was Director of the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau. He expanded the facility’s services to include marriage counseling and fertility and sterility services, including early artificial insemination procedures, and the institution became informally referred to as the clinical research arm of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 1947 Stone received the Albert and Mary Lasker Award of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. He also wrote many articles and served as editor of the Journal of Contraception, Human Fertility.

Works

All works

Personality

He traveled extensively, lecturing and consulting for the United Nations and for other agencies.

Quotes from others about the person

  • Alan Guttmacher, a fellow physician and colleague in the birth-control movement, wrote that "Stone was the peripatetic World Ambassador for family life. "

Connections

On August 17, 1917, he married Hannah Mayer, a Bellevue hospital pharmacist. Hannah Stone went to medical school while Abraham was in the army. She became a gynecologist and joined Stone in his private practice upon his return from service. They had one daughter, who became a physician and also married a physician.

Father:
Miron Stone

Mother:
Amelia Chamers

Wife:
Hannah Mayer

colleague:
Alan Guttmacher

colleague:
Lena Levine