Margaret Sparrow

Dame Margaret June Sparrow (née Muir, born 26 June 1935) is a New Zealand medical doctor, reproductive rights advocate, and author.

Early life, family, and education Sparrow was born in Inglewood on 26 June 1935 to Daniel James Muir and Jessie Isobel Muir (née McMillan), and was educated at Waitara District High School and New Plymouth Girls' High School. She went on to study at Victoria University College from 1953 to 1955, graduating BSc; the University of Otago from 1957 to 1963, from where she graduated MB ChB; and the University of London, where she completed a Diploma in Venereology in 1976. , in which she fractured her pelvis. While still recovering from her injury in 1956, she discovered her contraceptive diaphragm had failed and she had become pregnant. Her injury, alongside her being the couple's only breadwinner and her desire to prioritise her career meant she did not want children at this point - causing her to undertake an illegal abortion with the help of George Bettle, a well known chemist in Christchurch. In 1969, she began to work as a GP at the Student Health Centre at Victoria University of Wellington. 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. While working at the clinic, student demand for contraception led to her introducing the morning-after pill and helping students to get abortions. She worked as a medical officer at Student Health until 1981.

In 1971, Sparrow joined the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand, becoming president from 1975 to 1980, and again from 1984 until 2011.

In 1976, Sparrow took a sabbatical in the United Kingdom, where she undertook a year long intensive venerology diploma at University of London and the Society of Apothecaries. During her time in London, Sparrow also worked at an abortion clinic run by the Pregnancy Advisory Service, and was trained by Dorothea Kerslake in suction abortion. She also went to India, applying her recent training in a mobile clinic doing vasectomies. On return to New Zealand in 1977, she put this recent training into practice, helping to set up the Parkview Clinic at Wellington Hospital and working as a visiting venereologist there. No other pharmaceutical company was interested in importing the drug.

She is also critical of the way the current abortion system forces women to claim they need abortions on the grounds of a danger to mental health: You have to have grounds for an abortion, and in New Zealand 98 per cent of the grounds are mental health, which I think is an absolute farce. It’s just ticking boxes, and just putting people into categories, and just pretending that… having an abortion will be for the sake of your mental health. Well, I think that’s all just barriers that are put up. and in 1993 she was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal. and in 2009 she accepted redesignation as a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit following the restoration of titular honours by the New Zealand government.

The Sexual wellbeing clinic in Wellington is named after Sparrow. Sparrow was a keen collector of contraceptive devices, which were later donated to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. In 2015–16, Te Papa used them as the core of an exhibition on contraception.

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); Sparrow, "Risking their Lives: NZ Abortion Stories 1900-1939" (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017);