Donley, Joan Elsa - Dictionary of New Zealand Biography

Abstract

Joan Donley was a midwife whose advocacy of home births and natural childbirth helped shape modern midwifery in New Zealand. She argued that women should have the right to reject medicalised maternity care, and helped establish several organisations which promoted natural childbirth and an extension of the rights of midwives. Donley regarded home birth as a ‘feminist and a political act’ by which women could reclaim their bodies from ‘the white, male-controlled obstetrics and gynaecology … specialty which is trying to gain a complete monopoly of childbirth in New Zealand’.