Henry Morgentaler - Humanist Perspectives

A Tribute to
Henry Morgentaler
March 19, 1923 – May 29, 2013
“Every mother a willing mother,
every child a wanted child.”
Madeline Weld
D
r. Henry Morgentaler,
Morgentaler, the terminaquite possibly the
tion of unwanted pregnan“The fact that I
most controversial
cies was both rational and
could have been a
public figure in Canada, died
compassionate. He also
of a heart attack on May 29
felt driven to do something
spot of dust 50 years
at the age of 90. Even more
meaningful with his life.
ago
but
I
survived
than with Prime Minister
“The fact that I could have
Pierre Trudeau, people loved
been a spot of dust 50 years
made me understand
him or hated him. Such
ago but I survived made me
that I could never
strong feelings were evoked
understand that I could never
by Morgentaler’s unflagging
give up, that I had a respongive up, that I had
commitment to make aborsibility to my fellow human
a responsibility to
tions safe, legal, and accesbeings to accomplish somesible in Canada. His battle to
thing important,” he said in
my fellow human
change Canada’s restrictive
an interview in 1993.
beings to accomplish
abortion laws went all the
Of course, not everyone
something important”
way to the Supreme Court
saw things that way. His
and resulted in the abortion
detractors considered him
provisions in the Criminal
as wicked as the Nazis who
Code being struck down.
killed his family for the apMorgentaler, a Holocaust survivor, believed proximately 80,000 abortions that he estimated he
that being an unwanted child could elicit feelings personally performed. Morgentaler’s perseverance
of rage, which he thought was a motivating factor despite the heavy personal and monetary price he
in Hitler’s mad quest to exterminate the Jews. To paid was strongly motivated by his humanist be6
Humanist Perspectives, Issue 186, Autumn 2013
Dr. Henry Morgentaler joins
demonstrators on Parliament Hill
to protest the government’s stand
on abortion during a freedom of
choice rally in Ottawa on Dec.
8, 1983. (Photo: Paul Chiasson /
The Canadian Press)
liefs. In fact, Henry Morgentaler was also a very
prominent figure in the development of the humanist movement in Canada.
Heniek (later Henry) Morgentaler was born
in Lodz, Poland, on March 19, 1923. His father,
a trade union leader, was murdered by the Nazis
in 1939, his sister died in the Lodz ghetto, and
his mother at Auschwitz in 1944. Morgentaler
and his brother spent time at a labour camp in
Dachau and were liberated at the end of the war
in 1945. He studied medicine in Germany and
Belgium before marrying his childhood sweetheart Chava (Eva) Goldfarb and immigrating to
Montreal, Canada in 1950. Morgentaler obtained
a medical degree in 1953 from the Université de
Montréal and went into private practice as a general practitioner. He also joined the Humanist
Fellowship of Montreal, becoming president in
1964. In 1967, Morgentaler appeared on behalf
of the Humanist Fellowship of Montreal and
the Toronto and Victoria Associations before
the Canadian government’s Commons Health
and Welfare Committee, where he urged that
Canada’s restrictive abortion law be repealed.
The Humanist Association of Canada (HAC,
now Humanist Canada) was formed in 1968
largely through his efforts. Morgentaler served
as president of HAC from 1968 to 1970. While
he always maintained his interest in humanism,
his time from 1970 onwards was consumed by
his abortion activism.
The publicity from Morgentaler’s 1967 presentation to the Health and Welfare Committee
brought desperate women seeking abortions to his
medical practice. At first, he turned them away.
Performing illegal abortions could cost him everything he had worked for. He could lose his licence,
his practice, his reputation, and his source of income. But he had also seen women whose illegal
abortions had nearly cost them their lives and knew
from other doctors and newspaper reports about
women dying from illegal abortions conducted by
incompetent practitioners. He decided to embark
on a course of civil disobedience in defiance of the
provisions dealing with abortion in the criminal
code of Canada. The law, Morgentaler said, was
“barbarous, cruel, and unjust.” In 1969, he notified his patients that he was giving up his practice.
Humanist Perspectives, Issue 186, Autumn 2013
7
He racked up huge
legal fees, was once
attacked by a man
with garden shears,
was roughed up
by a mob, and saw
his Toronto clinic
firebombed and burn
to the ground in 1992
He did just that in 1970,
and opened his first freestanding abortion clinic in
Montreal. On June 1, 1970,
he was arrested and charged
with two counts of performing an illegal abortion. In
1973, a jury acquitted him.
Immediately after his acquittal in 1973, Morgentaler
published his findings on
the vacuum suction method,
which he had introduced
into Canada, based on over
5000 cases in the Canadian
Medical Association Journal. His complication
rate was extremely low compared to those in general hospitals.
In 1974, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned the jury acquittal, and Morgentaler was
sentenced to 18 months in prison. He served 10
months and was released after suffering a heart attack. In 1976, Canadian federal law was changed
so that an appeal court could no longer overturn an
acquittal by a jury and apply a conviction; instead a
new trial would have to be ordered. This is known
as the Morgentaler Amendment. In 1976, a second
jury trial in Quebec on the 1970 charges resulted
in another acquittal. The Quebec government, now
led by the separatist Parti Québecois, announced
that the federal abortion law was unenforceable.
In 1983, Morgentaler opened clinics in
Winnipeg and Toronto. In Manitoba, he was
charged with conspiring to procure miscarriages
but the charges were dropped. He was also arrested in Ontario, but a Toronto jury acquitted him in
1984. The Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the
acquittal and ordered a new trial. Morgentaler appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. In 1988,
the Supreme Court struck down the abortion provision in the Criminal Code on the grounds that it
violated a woman’s right to security of the person.
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney tried to again introduce a restrictive abortion law (Bill C-43) that
passed the House of Commons but was defeated in
the Senate by a tie vote. Canada has been without
a law on abortion since 1988. Morgentaler continued to establish abortion clinics across Canada.
8
Humanist Perspectives, Issue 186, Autumn 2013
Morgentaler paid a
high price for his singlemindedness. His marriage
to Eva ended in divorce
in 1975, as did his second
marriage to Carmen Wernli.
(He is survived by his third
wife, Arlene Leibovitch.)
He racked up huge legal
fees, was once attacked by
a man with garden shears,
was roughed up by a mob,
and saw his Toronto clinic
firebombed and burn to the
ground in 1992. After several abortion providers in Canada and the USA were
shot, he wore bulletproof vests and installed bulletproof windows in his home. When Morgentaler
was honoured with the Order of Canada in 2008,
some previous recipients resigned from the Order
in protest.
Nevertheless, he persevered, both in his
crusade to make abortion accessible to every
Canadian woman and in his promotion of humanism. It is while we both served on the Board of the
Humanist Association of Canada in the late 1990s
and early 2000s that I had the privilege of getting to
know Henry personally. Morris Manning, the lawyer who represented him in the landmark Supreme
Court case, said that Morgentaler’s humanist philosophy helped him to surmount trials few others
could have endured. “Henry Morgentaler is the
quintessential example of a person with compassion, intelligence, and courage who sought to help
people and was at various times put through the
criminal justice system in ways that very few people are put through the system.”
Henry Morgentaler was a man who had
the courage of his convictions. RIP, Henry, and
thank you.•
Madeline Weld is President of the Population Institute
Canada and a Toxicologist Evaluator at Health
Canada, Ottawa, Contact: [email protected]
A memorial service will be held for Henry
Morgentaler in Ottawa in September. Time
and place to be announced.