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Story: Contraception and sterilisation

Family Planning conference, 1951

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Family Planning conference, 1951

Family Planning (now Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa) women attend their first national conference, in Lower Hutt in 1951. Two of the major remits from the conference were to lobby the government to provide birth-control clinics, and for medical schools to provide doctors with better training in contraception. In the conservative 1950s these pleas fell on deaf ears.

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Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa, Dame Margaret Sparrow Collection

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How to cite this page

Jane Tolerton, Contraception and sterilisation – Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/27006/family-planning-conference-1951 (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Jane Tolerton, published 23 March 2011.