Beatrice Edna Tucker

Beatrice Edna Tucker was born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. Various sources give her date of birth as either October 4, 1897 or October 4, 1898. Her father Evan Tucker, formerly a grocer, began practicing medicine after she was born despite not having a medical license. Tucker knew she wanted to be a doctor by the age of six, with the active encouragement of her father, despite the profession being unwelcoming to women. By the end of her residency, she had impressed him so much that he asked her to head his obstetric clinic in a poor immigrant neighborhood, Chicago's Near West Side. The center, founded by DeLee in 1895, was originally known as the Maxwell Street Dispensary but was renamed the Chicago Maternity Center in 1932. ==Work at Chicago Maternity Center==

Tucker became the Maternity Center director in 1932. The Maternity Center always struggled to gain sufficient funding, and by the 1960s, at-home births were becoming less frequent, in part because they were less profitable than hospital births. By 1971, Tucker had moved to a small apartment on the third floor of the center. In 1972, a group of hospitals announced plans for the Prentice Women's Hospital; supporters of the Chicago Maternity Center worried the new hospital would lead to the end of the Maternity Center. Tucker organized Women Act to Control Healthcare (WATCH) to save the center, along with other medical activists and community groups such as the Chicago Women's Liberation Union. The feature-length film The Chicago Maternity Center Story documents the meetings and demonstrations held to save the organization. The center's home birthing program was ended in 1973. Tucker decried the loss of home birth as an option for mothers, blaming "a displacement of patient safety and comfort by other concerns, including physician convenience, institutional prestige and profit, conformity with regulatory and licensing bodies, and issues surrounding insurance and liability." Tucker stepped down as the medical director of the Chicago Maternity Center in 1973, after serving in that role for forty-one years. ==Later life, death, and legacy==

After stepping down from her position at the Maternity Center in 1973, she was bored by retirement. Every year, the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine awards the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Beatrice Tucker Award to a fourth year medical student for outstanding contributions to women's health. ==References==