New York History

New York History Winter 2014© 2014 by The New York State Historical Association 26 Winning Women’s Votes: Defending Animal Experimentation and Women’s Clubs in New York, 1920–1930 Karen Ross, Ph.D., Troy University “ . . . there may be much danger.” Simon Flexner1 In the first two decades of the twentieth century, New York antivivisection societies fought for legislation to regulate animal experimentation in both state-run and private institutions. Nearly every year Dr. Simon Flexner, Director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, traveled to the New York State Legislature in Albany to oppose antivivisectionist (AV) legislation in what became a repetitive, annual ritual with few surprises. Led by Flexner, the New York medical establishment had quietly resisted state oversight or restriction of animal experimentation by applying political pressure via their personal and professional networks. This proved effective as year after year AV legislation was killed in committee. In 1919, however, women’s suffrage threatened to disrupt this comfortable routine. New York women had gained the right to vote two years earlier, and this was the first real test of the effect women’s suffrage would have on the antivivisection question. As Flexner confided to a colleague, “We are watching the situation closely, as with the change in the suffrage there may be much danger.”2 The New York antivivisection movement began as part of a broader trend in the late-nineteenth-century United States, growing out of the humane movements of England. Although vivisection literally means cutting into a living subject, antivivisectionists commonly used it to represent any experiment involving animals. By the early twentieth century, vivisec1 . The author would like to thank Drs. Kristine Stilwell and Elizabeth Blum for their extensive editorial assistance, and also the American Philosophical Society and its archivists for substantial support. Simon Flexner to Walter B. Cannon, February 24, 1919, Simon Flexner Papers, American Philosophical Society (APS). 2. Ibid. Ross Winning Women’s Votes 27 tion, or animal experimentation as medical scientists preferred, was a standard of medical research.3 Experiments involving mice, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, monkeys, and other animals were regularly carried out in medical schools, public health laboratories, and research institutes. Antivivisectionists sought to limit or abolish such experiments, typically through legislative action. The American Anti-Vivisection Society made total abolition its goal, whereas the American Society for the Regulation of Vivisection, led by Brooklyn physician Albert Leffingwell, took a more conservative path.4 The New York Anti-Vivisection Society (NYAS) also argued for regulation, although its founder and president, Diana Belais, found no justification for vivisection.5 Other New York activists such as Frederick Bellamy, treasurer and counsel for the Vivisection Investigation League, publicly claimed to hold no position on the AV question, but rather sought to discover the extent to which vivisection was practiced in the state and under what conditions.6 The humane societies differed in their approaches. David Belais, president of the New York Humane Society and husband of Diana Belais, supported regulation, while the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals tried to distance its organization from the AV movement.7 Although many historians have characterized the American antivivisection movement as declining after 1900 and “moribund”8 after World War I, this interpretation neglects the resurgence of antivivisection activity and 3. For more on the rise of animal experimentation in the nineteenth century, see Anita Guerrini, Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Galen to Animal Rights (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 4. The conflicting goals of abolitionists and restrictionists sometimes undermined the AV movement . See Diane Beers, For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States (Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 2006), 141. 5. Diana Belais was adamantly opposed to vivisection, although she stopped short of advocating for its complete abolition. For example, see Diana Belais, “Vivisection Cruel and Unethical,” in Timely Truths on Human Health, ed. Simon Louis Katzoff (Bridgeport, CT: Co-operative Publishing Co., Inc., 1921), 306–312. In a newspaper clipping in Flexner’s files, she is quoted saying “our society is against any sort of experimentation, animal or human.” From the New York American, no date visible on clipping , but...