Henry Morgentaler

Life & Legacy

Henekh "Henry" Morgentaler (March 19, 1923 – May 29, 2013) was a Polish-born Canadian physician and abortion rights advocate who fought numerous legal battles aimed at expanding abortion rights in Canada. As a Jewish youth during World War II, Morgentaler was imprisoned at the Łódź Ghetto and later at the Dachau concentration camp.
After the war, Morgentaler migrated to Canada and entered medical practice, becoming one of the first Canadian doctors to perform vasectomies, to insert intrauterine devices, and to provide birth control pills to unmarried women. He opened his first abortion clinic in 1969 in Montreal, challenging what he saw as an unjust law placing burdensome restrictions on women seeking abortions. He 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 was jailed in 1975 for defying abortion law when the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned a jury's acquittal. The resulting Morgentaler Amendment to the Criminal Code restricted appeal courts from overturning acquittals. Morgentaler twice challenged the constitutionality of the federal abortion law, losing the first time, in Morgentaler v The Queen in 1975, but winning the second time, in R v Morgentaler in 1988.
In 2008, Morgentaler was awarded the Order of Canada "for his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations." Morgentaler died at the age of 90 of a heart attack.