Ruth Roemer was an internationally renowned public health lawyer, UCLA School of Public Health professor and advocate for tobacco control, health care reform, and women’s reproductive rights. The collection consists of correspondence, presentation transcripts, lecture notes, research files, publications authored by Roemer and colleagues and records of professional involvement as a founding member of the California Committee on Therapeutic Abortion and as a consultant to the World Health Organization.

Ruth Joy Rosenbaum was born in Hartford Connecticut in 1916 to a politically progressive family. She was a young girl when her father, a plant pathologist, died of a bacterial infection following the extraction of a tooth. Her mother relocated the family to the Republican town of Milford where Ruth excelled in academics, gained entrance to Cornell University, majored in English and planned to teach after graduation. However, she changed her mind after she toured Europe in 1936 with the American Student Union and witnessed the rise of fascism.

13 linear ft. (35 document boxes.)

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