Lena Levine

Who was Lena Levine?

Lena Levine was an American psychiatrist and gynecologist. She was a pioneering figure in the development of both marriage counseling and birth control. She was a close colleague of Margaret Sanger. At the time of her death she was director of the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau of New York and consulting gynecologist at the hygiene clinic of Brooklyn Jewish Hospital.

Among the views expressed in her writings a lectures were advocacy women's right to sexual enjoyment, free access to birth control, and frank discussion of sexual techniques. One of her concepts was "an annual checkup on marriage" comparable to a medical checkup. Her frank advocacy of sex education and her openly positive view of pre-marital sex have made her a target of sexual conservatives to this day.