Henry Morgentaler - Career

Career

Henry received his medical education from the Université de Montréal, graduating in 1953. After receiving his Canadian citizenship, he practiced medicine in the east end of Montreal. He started as a general practitioner but when contraception was legalized in 1969, he specialized in family planning. He was one of the first Canadian doctors to perform vasectomies, insert intra-uterine devices and provide birth control pills to the unmarried.

On October 19, 1967, he presented a brief before a House of Commons Health and Welfare Committee that was investigating the problem of illegal abortion. Morgentaler stated that women should have the right to a safe abortion. The reaction to his public testimony surprised him: he began to receive calls from women who wanted abortions. Robert Malcolm Campbell and Leslie Alexander Pal wrote, "Henry Morgentaler experienced the law's limitations directly in the supplications of desperate women who visited his Montreal office." Morgentaler's initial response was to refuse:

"I hadn't expected the avalanche of requests and didn't realize the magnitude of the problem in immediate, human terms. I answered, 'I sympathize with you. I know your problem, but the law won't let me help you. If I do help you, I'll go to jail, I lose my practice—I have a wife and two children. I'm sorry, but I just can't!'"

For a time he was able to refer the women to two other doctors who did abortions, but when they became unavailable, he had to act. There was no one to whom he could send them, and some of them were ending up in the emergency department after amateur abortions. He has said that he felt like a coward for sending them away and that he was shirking his responsibility. Eventually, in spite of the risks to himself—loss of career, prison for years or for life—he decided to perform safe, sterile abortions for women and, at the same time, challenge the law. He knew from other doctors and from newspaper reports that women in Montreal had died from incompetent abortion. He knew that the women were determined to get abortions in spite of the danger to their health and lives. He knew that he could prevent those unnecessary deaths. And so he determined to use civil disobedience to change the law.

In 1968, Morgentaler gave up his family practice and began performing abortions in his private clinic. Back then, abortion was illegal except for cases in which continuing a pregnancy threatened the life of the pregnant woman. On August 26, 1969, an amendment to the Criminal Code legalized abortion in Canada if performed in a hospital after approval of a Therapeutic Abortion Committee. However, there was no requirement for a hospital to set up a committee and only about one-third of hospitals did, leaving many areas without legal abortion, forcing women to travel and inducing barriers and delays. Some committees never met. Even if they did, they never saw their "patient" and yet her fate was determined by their subjective opinions. In addition, there was no appeal of a TAC's decision. In effect, the system was grossly unfair. Morgentaler's abortions remained illegal under that 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 (now known as section 287) was found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada.

After Quebec stopped prosecuting him in 1976, Morgentaler opened an abortion clinic in Ontario. In spite of prosecutions, other provinces followed.

In 2003, he was able to close his Halifax clinics because a doctor that he trained was now doing abortions at a local hospital, QEII Health Sciences Centre.

In 2006, Morgentaler had to stop performing abortions after undergoing a heart bypass surgery. However, he continues to oversee the operation of his six private clinics.

As of 2011, there are clinics in Montreal, Quebec; Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario; Fredericton, New Brunswick; St. John's, Newfoundland. The twenty-one abortion clinics in Canada do almost half of the abortions, while hospitals have seen reduced demand. Henry Morgentaler had this explanation in 1992: "The private clinics are simply more user friendly—women don't have to come to hospital four times to get an abortion, as occurred in one recent case. The woman had to take an ultrasound, then make a second visit for a consultation with a counsellor, which was followed by a third visit for insertion of Laminaria. By the fourth visit, 24 hours later, she finally got the abortion, but only after a sleepless night and many cramps—it was like having two abortions instead of one. Because many Ontario hospitals still use Laminaria and general anesthetic, which private clinics don't use, the latter can provide the service with less discomfort and quicker recovery times. That's why women come to us."