Dr. Henry Morgetaler speaks at press conference in Toronto in 1998 to mark the ten-year anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision to decriminalize abortion.
Photo Credit : Canadian Press
Dr. Henry Morgentaler raises his arms in victory at a news conference in Toronto, Ontario, Jan. 28, 1988.
Photo Credit : Canadian Press
1923 - 2013
Henry Morgentaler
Henry Morgentaler was a Lodz-born physician, who held the Order of Canada for his fight for legalized abortion.
A survivor of the Lodz Ghetto and Dachau concentration camps, Morgentaler survived the war with his brother but lost both his parents to the Nazis. Morgentaler arrived in Montreal in 1950 with his writer wife, Chava Rosenfarb, to study medicine at the Université de Montréal.
In 1967, he delivered his famous brief to the House of Commons Welfare Committee stating that women in Canada should have the right to end their pregnancies without risking their lives, as heretofore, the only available abortions – illegal ones – were often risky. Realizing how great a need there was for safe abortions in Canada, Morgentaler founded his eponymously named Montreal Clinic in east-end Montreal in 1969, the first independent clinic to offer abortions to women in Canada.
Although a limited and specific number of abortions became legal in 1969, Morgentaler’s were not, since he did not demand medical prerequisites for his patients. His clinic was raided multiple times, and he was charged just as frequently. His legal battles were so lengthy and legendary – including multiple arrests, dozens of charges, a 10-month prison stint at Montreal’s Bordeaux jail during which he suffered a mild heart attack, and three jury acquittals in Quebec – that the Canadian Parliament enacted the Morgentaler Amendment, stating that no person can have a jury acquittal overturned by an Appeals court.
Morgentaler was raised within the social milieu of the Jewish Bund of prewar Poland, a secular, socialist and Yiddish cultural environment, which he credits with his commitment to human rights. He was a long-time member and president of the Canadian Humanist Association and its lifetime honorary president, and was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 1975.
Dogged by protests, death threats and violence over the decades, even his nomination to the Order of Canada in 2008 was controversial.
