Vol. 77/No. 24      June 24, 2013

Morgentaler was dragged into court four separate times because he publicly admitted to performing abortions in disregard for the law requiring approval by hospital board committees. He was acquitted every time by juries who accepted his defense that the abortions were necessary to save the life and health of the women.

In 1988 Canada’s Supreme Court upheld Morgentaler’s last acquittal and struck down the abortion law, ruling that it denied women the right of “life, liberty and security of the person.”

Before immigrating to Canada in 1950 at age 27, Morgentaler, of Jewish descent, endured several years in Nazi concentration camps. The experience deeply marked his political outlook.

As a general practitioner in a working-class neighborhood of Montreal in the 1960s, Morgentaler initially refused to break Canada’s abortion law, which at the time carried a possible life sentence. But he changed his approach after treating several patients with life-threatening injuries as a result of botched abortions.

“I decided to break the law to provide a necessary medical service because women were dying at the hands of butchers and incompetent quacks, and there was no one there to help them,” he told his biographer in 1996.

Morgentaler was also influenced by the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down state laws restricting abortion up to 24 weeks and recognized that the constitutional right to privacy protects a woman’s right to choose.

“The Supreme Court decision in the United States was historic,” Morgentaler told the Militant in 1984. “I wanted to see Canadian women have the same rights as their American sisters.”

Morgentaler’s challenge to Canada’s federal law took place in the context of a social movement for national and workers’ rights in Quebec. Beginning in the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Quebecois workers and youth took part in strikes and demonstrations for union and French-language rights and against national discrimination. These mobilizations culminated in a province-wide general strike in 1972 in defense of union leaders arrested during a fight by public-sector workers for an increase in the minimum wage.

Growing support for Morgentaler included backing from the Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ), Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) and teachers organizations.

“In Quebec a French-Canadian, Roman Catholic jury acquitted me,” Morgentaler told the Militant in 1984, referring to his first acquittal in November 1973. The jury understood the motivation, they understood the problems of French-Canadian women who could not get a hospital abortion.”

The Quebec Court of Appeals made an unprecedented decision around Morgentaler’s second jury acquittal when they reversed the verdict and declared Morgentaler guilty in 1974. Morgentaler was sentenced to 18 months but released after 10, following a heart attack.

Under political pressure the federal government in 1976 passed the “Morgentaler law,” preventing courts from reversing a jury decision on appeal.

The jury at his third trial, which took place while he was still in prison, threw out the charges after just 55 minutes of deliberation. In 1976 the newly elected nationalist Parti Quebecois declared it would grant immunity to doctors who were qualified to practice abortion.

Morgentaler launched abortion clinics in several provinces across the country in defiance of physical and legal threats. At his fourth trial in 1984, an Ontario jury threw out criminal charges initiated by the provincial government — four years before the Canadian Supreme Court decriminalized abortion.

Today in Canada, as in the U.S., access to abortion is uneven and under assault. Clinics and hospitals providing abortions under government medicare exist only in large urban centers, a major obstacle for women in small towns and rural areas. And abortions are not allowed in the eastern province of Prince Edward Island.

Rightist forces opposed to legal abortion continue to campaign inside and outside the federal parliament for new legislation designed to chip away at the 1988 decision. But no federal government has dared to directly challenge that landmark victory, for which Morgentaler was among its most outstanding champions.
 
 
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