Horatio Storer

Horatio Robinson Storer (1830-1922) was an American physician and campaigner against abortion.

Storer was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended the Boston Latin School, Harvard College, and the Boston (Harvard) Medical School. After obtaining his M.D. in 1853 he traveled to Europe and spent a year studying with James Young Simpson at Edinburgh. He began medical practice in Boston in 1855 with emphasis on obstetrics and gynecology.

In 1857, he started the "physicians' crusade against abortion" both in Massachusetts and nationally, when he persuaded the American Medical Association to form a Committee on Criminal Abortion. The Committee Report was presented at the AMA meeting in Louisville, Kentucky in 1859 and accepted by the Association. As a result, the AMA petitioned the legislatures of the states and territories to strengthen their laws against elective abortions.

By 1880 most states and territories had enacted such legislation. Although abortion continued to be a common, if clandestine practice, some women were persuaded to refrain from abortion by these new laws, and also by physician persuasion.

In 1865, Storer won an AMA prize for his essay aimed at informing women about the moral and physical problems of induced abortion. It was published as ''Why Not? A Book for Every Woman''. It was widely sold and many physicians distributed it to their patients who requested abortion.

Storer started the Gynaecological Society of Boston, the first medical society devoted exclusively to gynecology, in 1869. It quickly moved to publish the first gynecology journal, the Journal of the Gynaecological Society of Boston. In many respects, Storer can be considered the Father of American Gynecology.