Margaret Parrish (1943-2013)

Margaret Parrish was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, and attended the University of Florida there in the 1960s. She worked as an administrator in children’s mental health groups for twenty years, and with incarcerated adults for another six years, then in the private sector doing office administration.

One year after the landmark decision to legalize abortion in 1973, she co-founded the Gainesville Women’s Health Center with Byllye Avery and Judy Levy. They were all working for the University of Florida Child Psychiatry department, Byllye and Judy as faculty, Margaret as staff.

From the beginning, the Gainesville Women’s Health Center integrated well woman care, consciousness raising around women’s healthcare needs, as well as abortion services and the hope of eventual midwifery services. This put Gainesville on the map as the home of one of the first feminist healthcare centers, changing thousands of women’s lives physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

In 1978, along with Byllye Avery and Judy Levy, Margaret Parrish went on to start The Birth Center, the seventh freestanding birth center in the United States. Other Gainesville activism included starting a battered women’s shelter, which grew out of the Gainesville Rape Crisis Center, and later a second staging program. She was especially proud of an action that she and others organized to force a powerful political organization, Blue Key, to admit women.

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