Henry Morgentaler
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Henry Morgentaler, M.D., LL.D. honourary (born March 19, 1923, in Lodz, Poland) is a Canadian medical doctor and long time abortion activist from Montreal.
Morgentaler is a Holocaust survivor. After living through Auschwitz, he accepted an United Nations scholarship that was being offered to Jewish survivors. He went to medical school in Germany while living with a German family that was forced to house him under the programme.
Upon graduation he refused to go to Israel because he did not believe in Zionism. He and his wife left Europe in 1950 to travel to Canada where he would practice medicine in Montreal. He would work there as a general practitioner for nearly twenty years before his convictions about abortion caused serious conflict with others. On October 19, 1967, he gave public testimony before a Government of Canada committee about his belief that any pregnant woman should have the right to a safe abortion.
In 1969 he gave up his family practice and began openly performing illegal abortions. Soon after in 1970 he was arrested in Quebec for performing one. This was three years before the Supreme Court of the United States would legalize abortion in the Roe v. Wade case. In 1972 he ran in the Federal Election in the riding of Saint-Denis as an independent, he got 1,509 votes and finished 4th. Later in 1973 he would claim to have performed 5,000 illegal abortions. He would be acquitted by a jury in the court case, though this was overturned by five judges on the Quebec Court of Appeal in 1974. He was sent to prison, though he appealed and was again acquitted.
Morgentaler was charged again in 1983 in Ontario for procuring illegal miscarriages. He was acquitted by a jury, but the verdict was reversed by the Ontario Court of Appeal. The case was then sent to the Supreme Court of Canada. He was acquitted once again, and the Canadian Supreme Court declared the law he was convicted under to be unconstitutional in the case of Morgentaler et al. v. Her Majesty The Queen 1988 (1 S.C.R. 30). This ruling essentially ended all statutory restrictions on abortion in Canada.
In 1992, his Harbord Street clinic in Toronto was bombed, although Dr. Morgentaler was not physically harmed.
Morgentaler is currently working to open two abortion clinics in the Canadian Arctic, so that women who live there do not have to travel vast distances from their homes for abortions.
Morgentaler was also the first president of the Humanist Association of Canada.
In early 2005, the CTV television network produced a television movie documenting Dr. Morgentaler's life and practice. On June 16, 2005 the University of Western Ontario conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree upon Dr. Henry Morgentaler; this is his first honorary degree. This decision by UWO's senate honorary degrees committee has generated controversy with Canadian pro-life organizations.
External links
- The Morgentaler Clinic (http://www.morgentaler.ca/)
- Supreme Court of Canada, R v. Morgentaler (1988) (1 S.C.R. 30) (http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/cgi-bin/disp.pl/en/pub/1988/vol1/html/1988scr1_0030.html)
- Petition to help Dr Morgentaler (http://www.petitiononline.com/DRHM0605/)