Dr. Henry Morgentaler is a true Canadian hero and a tribute to our country’s ethos of growth through immigration: an Ausch­witz survivor who declined to move to Israel because he didn’t believe in Zionism, Morgentaler settled in Montreal and, after years as a private practitioner, he began a campaign of principled civil disobedience that would change Canada forever.
At the time, abortions were allowed only if a committee of three doctors judged the woman’s health to be endangered by the pregnancy. Assessing this as an injustice, Morgentaler set out performing abortions openly. In doing so, he challenged the Canadian legal system and exposed himself to harm in the tradition that stems from Socrates through Thoreau and Gandhi, publicly forcing an issue that many would have preferred remain in back alleys and hushed, euphemistic conversations.

He served 10 months in prison in the early 1970s for providing safe abortions before his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court. Arrested again in the 1980s, he took his fight to the Supreme Court of Canada who, in their 1988 decision Morgentaler et al. v. Her Majesty The Queen, struck down Canada’s laws banning abortion.

But it was not only under threat of imprisonment that Morgentaler practised. His opponents, who claimed to be on the side of “life,” attempted to take his more than once —?his Toronto clinic was bombed in 1992, and he was attacked with garden shears in 1983. Like all abortion doctors in North America, he has lived and practised under the constant threat of assassination. He has refused to be deterred.

As a result, nearly two decades after his landmark court decision, women in Canada have the legal right to decide if and when they will give birth and when they will terminate their pregnancies. Today, two thirds of Canadians agree that access to abortion should be allowed by law in at least some circumstances, though many disagree about what those circumstances are.
The law is silent on the regulation of abortion, largely because our Parliament lacks the moral courage shown by Morgentaler. Afraid of enraging and polarizing the public, Parliament has failed to pass any law either allowing or restricting access to abortion since 1989. It’s barely even talked about in political circles today.

Reasonable people may argue about the morality of abortion, about when a fetus becomes a child and whether it is ever justified to terminate a pregnancy. But while those disagreements exist — and we wish the debaters on both sides could discuss those disagreements rather than accusing each other of criminal malice — the question in law is settled. Thanks to Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the courts have recognized that constitutionally, the moral decisions are left to pregnant women, who have unquestioned sovereignty over their own bodies. If there are moral questions to be parsed, they are questions for a woman’s conscience, not for the police and the courts.

Dr. Morgentaler’s appointment to the Order of Canada this month recognizes his bravery, his dedication and his contribution to Canada. It is an event to be celebrated, and an occasion to remember.