We define moral courage as the ability to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, or discouragement. When we say a person has moral courage, we speak of things like ethics, good and evil, right and wrong. This is the kind of person who does bold things. They do these things not because they are trying to make a name for themselves or impress their peers, but because it is the right thing to do. A person with moral courage stands up in the face of adversity. There are many examples of moral courage throughout the history of our country. Certainly, we would think that Abraham Lincoln was a man of moral courage. He was the leader of our country, and took a stance on slavery that was not popular to everybody.
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The Blackwell family even housed a runaway slave girl for several weeks until she could get on a ship for England. These were exciting times for Elizabeth. She felt like she was doing good work for a worthy cause. In 1838, the Blackwells moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. It took the family nine days to make the trip from New York. When Elizabeth was 17, her father died. Since the family didn’t have much money, Elizabeth and her sister opened a boarding school for girls. One of the girls at the school was dying. She was a friend to Elizabeth, and she thought that Elizabeth had taken such good care of her while she was ill, that maybe she should look to a career in medicine. The girl told Elizabeth that the worst part of being sick was being examined and treated by a doctor who was a man. Elizabeth was teaching at the school and did not really like teaching, but it seemed impossible to her that she could go to medical school and become a doctor. In those days, only men were doctors. Women could be teachers, or even nurses. Elizabeth talked to her mother about what it was like to bear children and asked her mother if it would have been more comfortable if she had a competent woman doctor to attend to her during childbirth. Her mother agreed that it would have been less embarrassing to have a female doctor. Elizabeth Blackwell, at the age of 23, decided that she was going to become a doctor. She began the process by reading