Dame Margaret Sparrow, retired sexual health physician, at her Wellington home. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Dame Margaret Sparrow is a medical doctor who specialises in sexual and reproductive health and family planning. A passionate advocate of a woman's right to safe, legal abortions, Sparrow is also an author and she will be speaking at this year's Auckland Writers' Festival, August 27, 3.30pm.
I was the second of four children. My parents were loving and kind and I had a very happy childhood but we were given absolutely no information about sex. When I first got my period, I had no idea what was happening. Although my parents weren't unusual in this matter, because in those days, sex just wasn't talked about at home or at school.
When I was going through puberty, a neighbour on a nearby farm, a friend of the family, would sexually harass me. There was no penetration, but I knew his behaviour was wrong and I didn't feel there was anybody I could tell. There was no such thing as school counsellors, and I realised I had to deal with it in my own way, which was to avoid him and find excuses not to do things like take half a dozen eggs to them, as I was sometimes asked to do. It was only as an adult that I discussed this with my mother.
My parents encouraged me at school, but no one in my family had ever been to university so, when I went from Taranaki to Victoria University on a scholarship, I had no idea what to expect. This was 1953 and even though I was good at arts subjects, I decided to study science because I thought it would be interesting and I loved it. Towards the last year of my degree, I met Peter, the man who became my husband, and he said he was thinking of doing medicine at Otago and suggested I do it too.
We were both accepted to medical school, but the night before we were due to go down, I was involved in a car accident. Having fractured my pelvis, I had to spend several weeks lying in bed waiting for it to heal. By the time I was able to go down to Dunedin, it was too late to start so I found a job as a medical research assistant for the professor of surgery which made for a very interesting year. When I finally started medical school a year later than intended, there were only about 10 women in a class of over 100. I wasn't aware of any discrimination, but I did lose my bursary when Peter and I married, which I just accepted.
I was brought up to think sex was saved for marriage, and because we didn't engage in premarital sex, I only became interested in contraception after we were married because I knew, if I wanted to continue in my career, I needed contraception. The diaphragm was the most popular method back then, but to get one you had to show you were married. We were too poor for an engagement ring, but because my father-in-law was a parish minister, he'd put a notice of the impending marriage in the parish magazine, so I took that to the doctor and only then was the diaphragm allowed to be fitted. Those restrictions on access to contraception meant there were lot of illegitimate children back then - that was the term people used - and the social disgrace of getting pregnant outside marriage meant many people were forced into unsuitable marriages.
The arrival of the pill in 1961 was significant and I was one of the very first women in New Zealand to use it. I'd just had my second child, I was healthy, I'd already had one abortion using George Bettel's Elixir – goodness knows what was in it - and I didn't want more children. I was also married, which was the most important box to tick, to be allowed to use it. I didn't actually see a doctor because my husband was training to be a general practitioner, and he brought home free samples of Anovlar that the drug rep left at the surgery. I lived on those free samples, and to be in control of my fertility was life-changing.
Soon after I qualified, after seven years of marriage, my husband and I went our separate ways. As I was about to do my two compulsory years in the hospital system, I chose Stratford and Hāwera because my parents were still farming in Taranaki and my mother was very helpful with the children who were still quite small.
One of my first jobs was with the Taranaki District Health Department where I became involved in sex education programmes in schools. I was very inspired by one or two very progressive teachers, but there was a lot of resistance to teaching young people about sex. We weren't surprised when one of those teachers was called to head office in Wellington to defend the work, but he knew what his community needed.
I was in my 30s when I went overseas for the first time. It was January 1973 and I went to a student health conference in Canberra, where Professor Derek Llewelyn-Jones gave the keynote speech. He'd written a popular book called Everywoman which was very in tune with contraception and abortion. As he was speaking, we received the news that Roe v Wade had passed in the United States and the whole audience erupted into applause. Abortion was still illegal in New Zealand at that time, and it was a very seamy and sordid business. It was hard enough to get a pregnancy test back then, and New Zealand women were sent to Australia if they wanted a safe abortion so Roe v Wade was a huge advance.
After spending four years in public health I went to Wellington and became the student health officer at Victoria University. After seven years I qualified for sabbatical leave and in 1975 I went overseas to do more training on university pay. I took the children, who were teenagers by then and I based myself in London and worked for one of the big pregnancy advisory services. I learned such a lot while I was there. I did a family planning certificate, a course in venereology and I also learned how to do abortions.
Another thing that fell into place while I was there, my mentor, Professor Malcolm Potts suggested I learn to do vasectomies, although only surgeons could do vasectomies in England. Interestingly Professor Potts' wife was an eye surgeon, and she was allowed to do them, and she gave me my first vasectomy lecture. I also observed in clinics, but to get practical experience it was suggested I go through India on the way home. I was given letters of introduction and I did my first vasectomy in a mobile clinic, a converted bus, in Bombay. My training was organised by a very progressive man, Dr Pai who was director of Family Planning Bombay. He was famous for setting up a vasectomy clinic at Bombay station where men were given transistor radios as an incentive if they could prove they were family men. We didn't give transistors, but the men we operated on could get one hundred rupees, which was a lot of money.
We made great advances in contraception through Family Planning and Student Health but when I look back, I'm amazed how people didn't talk openly about important things. Up until the 1970s, the Medical Association deemed it unethical to prescribe contraceptives for unmarried women. Religion also put up many barriers, especially the Roman Catholic church, even though Catholic women have abortions and use contraception to the same degree as non-Catholics, yet the church played a huge part in preventing open communication. But not all resistance has been based in religion. Some is just inherent conservatism and "morality", as well as misogyny and paternalism which have all created antagonism towards social advancement.
As someone who saw Roe v Wade being enacted, seeing the law repealed was very sad. There'll undoubtedly be more problems and more deaths, because wherever abortion is outlawed, it doesn't go away, it just makes it unsafe particularly for poorer women, because there's always been one law for the rich and another for the poor.
One of the biggest achievements in my career was helping to change our abortion laws. In 1977 we effectively put an end to backstreet abortions, but we were left with a complicated system that took four decades to change, so we still need to remain vigilant here but I don't see America as a trendsetter today. When you think of places like Mexico and Ireland, who've changed their laws in the last decade, or of Europe's progressive laws, with the exception of Poland, America is an outlier.
It is impossible to condense 87 years of life into one hour but, when I think back, I know I liked school but I didn't have any thought of a career, because women either went into teaching or nursing or into office work. Those were a woman's three career choices until she got married. There was no vocational guidance in my day and I knew I should learn to make pikelets and scones and when I grew up, I'd marry one of the local farmers' sons and be a farmer's wife, but I was rescued from that destiny by education.
This collection of stories will help inspire a restful weekend.