Henry Morgentaler



Henry Morgentaler, M.D., LL.D.(hc), (born March 19, 1923, in Łódź, Poland) is a Canadian gynecologist and pioneering abortionist from Montreal.

Morgentaler is a Holocaust survivor. After living through Auschwitz, he accepted a 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 strongly opposed Zionism. He and his wife, Chava Rosenfarb, left Europe in 1950 to travel to Canada where he practised medicine in Montreal. He worked 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 legalized abortion in the Roe v. Wade case. In 1972 he ran in the Federal Election in the riding of Saint-Denis as an independent, finishing fourth with 1,509 votes. Later in 1973 he claimed to have performed 5,000 illegal abortions. He was acquitted by a jury in the court case, but the acquittal was overturned by five judges on the Quebec Court of Appeal in 1974. He went to prison, 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 private clinic in Toronto was bombed, although Dr. Morgentaler was not physically harmed. In 1993, he won another case before the Supreme Court, R. v. Morgentaler, this time challenging provincial abortion regulations.

Morgentaler is currently working to open two private abortion clinics in the Canadian Arctic, so that women who live there do not have to travel vast distances to obtain abortions.

Morgentaler was also the first president of the Humanist Association of Canada from 1968 to 1999 and remains the organization's honorary president. On a number of occasions, he appeared opposite Christian theologians or evangelists on campus to debate the existence of God.

On June 16, 2005 the University of Western Ontario conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree upon Morgentaler; this was his first honorary degree. This decision by UWO's senate honorary degrees committee generated opposition from Canadian pro-life organizations. 12,000 signatures were acquired on a petition asking the UWO to reverse its decision to honour Dr. Morgentaler and several protest rallies were held, including one on the day the honorary degree was bestowed. A counter petition, supporting the UWO's decision, gained over 10,000 signatures.

On August 5, Dr. Morgentaler received the 2005 Couchiching Award for Public Policy Leadership for his efforts on behalf of women's rights and reproductive health issues.

Morgentaler has an estimated gross annual revenue of $11 million from his abortion clinics, according to research published in the Quebec/Franco-Ontarian paper Le Droit on Saturday, October 26, 2002.

Media representations
In 2005, the CTV television network produced a television movie documenting Dr. Morgentaler's life and practice. In a Montreal Gazette editorial cartoon by Terry Mosher lampooning Jean Drapeau's proclamation that the debt-ridden 1976 Summer Olympics can no more have a deficit "than a man can have a baby," Morgentaler was the recipient of a pregnant Drapeau's telephone call ("'Allô, Morgentaler?").