Alice Bush

Alice Mary Bush (née Stanton, 7 August 1914 – 12 February 1974) was a pioneering New Zealand female physician, paediatrician and activist for family planning services and abortion access.

Early life and education Bush was born in 1914, the first daughter of lawyer Sir Joseph Stanton and Marjorie McMaster. She had two brothers and two sisters and the family lived in Mountain Road, Epsom. When Sayers returned in 1944 he and Bush practiced in partnership and she also was appointed to a position in the paediatric ward at Auckland Hospital, which she needed to qualify in paediatrics. She also served as Secretary (1945–1946) and President (1948, 1953) of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Medical Women's Association.

Bush gave family planning assistance to the Ōtara Māori Committee in the late 1960s and was made an honorary tohunga of Ōtara.

Family planning and abortion activism In the late forties, Bush also became involved with the New Zealand Family Planning Association, helping to provide respectability to an organisation that still proved controversial, given its role in publicising and distributing contraception. She served on its board (1947) and chaired its medical advisory committee (1960), before serving as liaison with the New Zealand Medical Association and clearing the way for clinic work with doctors before New Zealand approved use and distribution of the contraceptive pill (1961). Her role is chronicled in Helen Smythe's history of the Family Planning Association. Bush's biographer, Faye Hercock, also noted that she was concerned about the rise in backstreet abortions and displayed considerable impatience with the conservatism of her male colleagues in her later years when it came to access to safe, legal and affordable abortion in New Zealand. Over time, Bush gradually radicalised her position and became one of the founders of the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand. At the time she died, in 1974, the private Auckland Medical Aid Centre had just opened, providing a free-standing dedicated abortion clinic for the first time in New Zealand.

Personal life Bush met her husband Faulkner Bush in New Plymouth in 1939. He was a teacher and became headmaster of Avondale Primary School in 1964.

Bush was known for her commitment to paediatrics, and her activities in many areas of child health and family well-being. She believed a child's early emotional and physical environment were crucial to improve society and that sub-optimal health in children was problematic. Her tireless work to help others contributed to her own ill-health.

Selected publications

A national health service (1943) Personal relationships (1944) 'Doctor and the delinquent'. New Zealand Medical Journal 60: 60–64 (1961) 'Unhappy child'. New Zealand Medical Journal 61: 85–87 (1962) 'Evaluation of methacycline hydrochloride'. New Zealand Medical Journal 66: 240–243 (1967) 'Allergy over a quarter century'. New Zealand Medical Journal 68: 101–103 (1968) 'Family planning as seen by the paediatrician'. Choice 10, no. 1: 11–13 (1972)