The Rise and Fall of National Women's Hospital A History

In this major history, Linda Bryder traces the annals of National Women’s Hospital over half a century in order to tell a wider story of reproductive health. She uses the varying perspectives of doctors, nurses, midwives, consumer groups, and patients to show how together their dialog shaped the nature of motherhood and women’s health in 20th-century New Zealand. Natural childbirth and rooming in, artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, sterilization and abortion: women’s health and reproduction went through a revolution in the 20th century as scientific advances confronted ethical and political dilemmas. In New Zealand, the major site for this revolution was National Women’s Hospital. Established in Auckland in 1946, with a purpose-built building that opened in 1964, National Women’s was the home of medical breakthroughs scandals. This chronicle covers them all.

Linda Bryder is a professor of history at the University of Auckland, where she teaches 20th-century New Zealand history, with a particular focus on the history of social policy and health care. She is also an honorary professor at the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and was an honorary visiting professor in the School of Law & Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University. She is the author of Below the Magic Mountain, A History of the ‘Unfortunate Experiment’ at National Women’s Hospital, and A Voice for Mothers: The Plunket Society and Infant Welfare 1907–2000 and editor of A Healthy Country: Essays on the Social History of Medicine in New Zealand.