Henry Morgentaler passed from the world at age ninety. He was Canada’s leading abortionist, in the early years performing them illegally.
One should be uncomfortable with referring to him as “Doctor,” as Canadian law professor Ian Hunter has said, it seems inappropriate to refer to a man as “‘Doctor’ whose grisly practice made a daily mockery of the Hippocratic Oath.”
Indeed, Canada’s 1988 Supreme Court decision on abortion, R. v. Morgentaler, was a monumental decision that gave Canada the dubious distinction of being the only democracy in the world that would have no law whatsoever protecting the life of the child in the womb at any time during a pregnancy. “Finally,” Morgentaler said in response to the Court’s decision, “we have freedom of reproduction in this country.”
Henry Morgentaler (1923-2013)
Citing a number of secular feminists, newspapers hailed Morgentaler as a “great” man, principally for giving women “reproductive freedom.” Usually, a man is said to be “great” for some particularly identifiable reason.
Conversely, however, Henry Morgentaler’s claim to fame, “reproductive freedom,” is purely an ideological construction. Abortion often deprives a woman of the freedom to have a child later in her life when she desires one. Some women die as a result of induced abortion. All too frequently, women come to regret their abortions, suffering debilitating mental health problems.
Various women’s groups have organized under such revealing banners as “Victims of Choice,” “Women Exploited by Abortion,” and “Silent No More.” What Morgentaler accomplished was to destroy the lives of untold children in utero and damage the bodies and the psyches of untold victims of abortion. Greatness should be made of sterner stuff.
Eleanor Pelrine, who praised Morgentaler and promoted abortion in her 1971 book Abortion in Canada (New Press, Toronto), contacted a CTV producer with the proposal that Morgentaler perform an abortion for the public affairs program W5 on Mother’s Day. Morgentaler liked the idea, because he thought it would “demystify” abortion. Catherine Dunphy stated in her 1975 book, Morgentaler: The Doctor Who Couldn’t Turn Away (Gage) that “the abortion took about five minutes. It was obvious the procedure was safe and pain-free.”
What needs to be “demystified,” however, is not the killing of life in the womb, but Henry Morgentaler himself, who is bereft of any claim whatsoever to greatness. When the Crown initially raided Morgentaler’s illegal abortuary, a number of incriminating facts that were later presented as testimony in his trial were discovered: Morgentaler did not give the woman to be aborted any medical check-up or blood test prior to the abortion, and therefore was not certain that she was pregnant. He administered anesthesia without an anesthetist present and did not have resuscitation equipment. He reused inexpensive ($3.30) plastic Vacurettes, contrary to the manufacturer’s instructions. The aborted woman who was in the recovery room at the time of the raid ended up in Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal three days after her abortion, where doctors removed approximately one-third of a six-week fetus; she had cervical cuts and lacerations and infection was setting in.
The doctor testifying on behalf of the Crown stated that the woman would probably have died if she had not been given medical care. Such evidence is not consistent with Morgentaler’s claim that “every woman on whom I have performed an abortion with good results was in danger of [loss of] life at the hands of an incompetent abortionist.” Yet Morgentaler could persist in ignoring incontrovertible and demonstrable facts with other blatant lies: “Women no longer die as a result of abortion. Women no longer get cut up or damaged as a result of abortion. Women no longer lose their fertility as a result of abortion.”
A person of greatness should be able to tell the truth. Henry Morgentaler’s life hardly deserves the hagiographic image that abortion supporters have concocted for him. If greatness, to cite Shakespeare, was “thrust” upon him, it was for ideological reasons.
The abortion movement needs its “saints” and so it creates them in its own image. But abortion, because of its commitment to killing, cannot produce real saints. Sainthood, as well as genuine heroism, will always remain the work of love.
Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, CT, and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad and Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart are available through Amazon.com.
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