Margaret Sparrow

Margaret Sparrow DNZM
Nationality	New Zealander
Known for	Campaigning for reproductive rights

Dame Margaret Sparrow DNZM is a doctor, reproductive rights advocate, and author.

Career

Sparrow started her career in health working at the student health centre at Victoria University of Wellington in the early 1970s. At the time, the clinic would only allow contraception to be given to married couples, and she had to go against the wishes of the director of the clinic to put up an information display about contraception.^[1] While working at the clinic, student demand for contraception led to her introducing the morning after pill and helping students to get abortions.^[2]

Sparrow has been the president of the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand from 1975 to 1980 and again from 1984–2011.^[3] She is a Director of Istar Ltd, a not-for-profit company that imports the abortion pill mifepristone.

Honours

She was awarded an MBE in 1987, the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal in 1993, and the DCNZM for services to medicine and the community in 2002, which in 2009 became a DNZM.

The Family Planning clinic in Wellington is named after Sparrow.^[4]

Publications

Sparrow, Abortion Then & Now: New Zealand Abortion Stories From 1940 to 1980 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2010)
Sparrow, Rough on Women: Abortion in Nineteenth Century New Zealand (Wellington, VUP, 2014) (forthcoming)

References

↑ "Alice Bush and Margaret Sparrow". Te Ara. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
↑ "Sex, drugs and country dancing". The Wellingtonian. 8 November 2012. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
↑ "Dame Margaret steps aside from abortion reform group". The New Zealand Herald. NZPA. 30 March 2011. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
↑ "Margaret Sparrow Clinic - Wellington". Family Planning New Zealand. Retrieved 10 June 2014.

External links