Little, Lora Cornelia

Lora Little ran for Oregon House of Representatives in 1914 on the Progressive ticket and lost. Her primary platform in the campaign involved opposition to certain medical and public health policies. Little had moved to Portland from Minneapolis in 1911, and had been an active opponent to sterilization and vaccinations in both cities. In Minneapolis, she published "Crimes of the Cowpox Ring" on the dangers of vaccinations, and was the publisher of a journal called the "Liberator." In Oregon, she was the vice president of the Anti-Sterilization League and taught at the School of Health Culture in Portland, a school that she ran. In 1913, she succeeded in getting a law authorizing sterilization overturned through a referendum. In 1914 or 1915, she pressured a state senator to introduce a bill criminalizing schools and employers who required vaccinations, but the bill did not pass. In 1916, she got another referendum on the ballot that would ban mandatory vaccinations. The bill lost by 374 votes, but received around 100,000 votes. She left Oregon soon afterwards, and was arrested under the Espionage Act in 1917 in North Dakota for trying to stop compulsory vaccination in the military. She later became the secretary of the American Medical Liberty League.