54 Facts About Henry Morgentaler

Henry Morgentaler opened his first abortion clinic in 1969 in Montreal, challenging what he saw as an unjust law placing burdensome restrictions on women seeking abortions.

Henry Morgentaler was the first doctor in North America to use vacuum aspiration and went on to open twenty clinics and train more than one hundred doctors.

Morgentaler's father was killed by the Gestapo, while Henry lived with his mother and younger brother in the Ghetto Litzmannstadt with 164,000 others.

Henry Morgentaler's sister had left for Warsaw with her husband before the start of the war.

Henry Morgentaler was incarcerated there at the Warsaw Ghetto, and took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

In February 1943, Henry Morgentaler was sent to KL Kaufering.

Henry Morgentaler entered a Displaced Persons Hospital in Landsberg am Lech.

In 1947, Henry Morgentaler made his way to Brussels in Belgium, where he rejoined his friends the Rosenfarbs.

Chava's sister, Henia Reinhartz, in her Memoir, "Bits and Pieces," described the harsh economic conditions while the family, and Henry Morgentaler, lived in Brussels.

Henry Morgentaler received his medical education from the Universite de Montreal, graduating in 1953.

Henry Morgentaler started as a general practitioner in 1955 but increasingly specialized in family planning, becoming one of the first Canadian doctors to perform vasectomies, to insert intra-uterine devices, and to provide birth control pills to unmarried women.

Henry Morgentaler stated that women should have the right to safe abortion.

Henry Morgentaler has said that he felt like a coward for sending them away and that he was shirking his responsibility.

Henry Morgentaler knew from other doctors and from newspaper reports that women in Montreal had died from incompetently performed abortions.

Henry Morgentaler knew that the women were determined to get abortions in spite of the danger to their health and lives.

Henry Morgentaler knew that he could prevent those unnecessary deaths, so he determined to use civil disobedience to change the law.

In 1968, Henry Morgentaler gave up his family practice and began performing abortions in his private clinic.

Henry Morgentaler devoted his clinic to performing abortions on women as well as providing birth control and contraceptives, though it was illegal at the time.

Henry Morgentaler's abortions remained illegal under the new law because he did not submit them in advance to a TAC for approval; they became legal in 1988, when section 251 of the Criminal Code was found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada.

In 1983, Henry Morgentaler debated former abortion doctor Bernard Nathanson for an hour on a Canadian national superstation.

In 2006, Henry Morgentaler had to stop performing abortions after undergoing a heart bypass surgery.

Henry Morgentaler continued to oversee the operation of his six private clinics.

Henry Morgentaler said that he applied for status as a model abortion clinic and proposed to the federal and provincial governments that abortions could be safely done outside hospitals.

Between 1973 and 1975, Henry Morgentaler was tried three times in Montreal for defying the abortion law; each time, he raised the defence of necessity, and each time he was acquitted.

At the trial of the first charge in 1973, Henry Morgentaler was defended by Claude-Armand Sheppard.

Henry Morgentaler was sentenced to 18 months in prison and began serving his sentence in March 1975.

Henry Morgentaler was not released on parole after serving one third of his sentence, six months.

In 1976, Morgentaler went to the Supreme Court of Canada in an attempt to overturn the country's abortion law in Morgentaler v The Queen but was unsuccessful.

Henry Morgentaler spent the next 15 years opening and running abortion clinics across Canada, in clear violation of the law.

In 1983, Toronto Police raided Henry Morgentaler's newly opened clinic and he and his two colleagues were charged with providing illegal miscarriages.

Once again Henry Morgentaler used the defence of necessity and was acquitted by the jury.

Once again, Henry Morgentaler appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Henry Morgentaler has described this as the happiest day of his life.

Henry Morgentaler opened a clinic, supposedly to interview clients for abortions outside the province.

Nova Scotia then sought an injunction to stop Henry Morgentaler from performing clinic abortions.

The New Brunswick Court of Queen's Bench ruled that Henry Morgentaler had standing to proceed with a lawsuit against the government.

In 2009, Henry Morgentaler was 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.

Henry Morgentaler believed that the attacker was an American and that the attacks were an unwanted byproduct of the vitriolic, religiously fueled abortion battle in the United States.

The Montreal Gazette reported in 1974, that according to police evidence, Henry Morgentaler was re-using disposable vacurettes, against the manufacturer's instructions which stated that they "cannot be re-used".

Henry Morgentaler settled out of court a few years later, paying $101,000.

Henry Morgentaler was the first president of the Humanist Association of Canada from 1968 to 1999.

Henry Morgentaler remained the organization's honorary president until his death in 2013.

In 1973, Henry Morgentaler was one of the signers of the second Humanist Manifesto.

In 1989 Henry Morgentaler received the "Maggie" Award, the highest honor of the Planned Parenthood Federation, in tribute to their founder, Margaret Sanger.

On June 16,2005, the University of Western Ontario conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree upon Henry Morgentaler; this was his first honorary degree.

In offering women access to necessary services that faced considerable restriction elsewhere, Dr Henry Morgentaler used both his professional status and personal skills to fight for women's rights, while placing himself at risk.

Henry Morgentaler's actions have brought about fundamental changes in Canadian law and to the health care system and in so doing dramatically affected for the better the lives of Canadians from coast to coast.

Canadian women enjoy the right to safe and legal abortions largely because Henry Morgentaler fought a long battle on their behalf.

Feminist and author Judy Rebick told The Globe and Mail that it was time Henry Morgentaler was honoured for his long battle; she said "Dr Henry Morgentaler is a hero to millions of women in the country," she said.

On June 1,2009, three members did leave the order in protest against Henry Morgentaler's admission, including the Archbishop of Montreal, Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte.

In 1972, Henry Morgentaler ran in the Federal Election in the riding of Saint-Denis as an independent, finishing fourth with 1,509 votes.

In 1999, Henry Morgentaler said that a decline in youth crime rates could be credited to the legalization of abortion nearly twenty years earlier, leading to fewer neglected and angry children and more mothers surviving to nurture their children.

Henry Morgentaler was the subject of a 1984 National Film Board of Canada documentary Democracy on Trial: The Henry Morgentaler Affair, directed by Paul Cowan.

The alternative rock band Me Mom and Henry Morgentaler used the doctor as the inspiration for its name.