Henry Morgentaler - Honours and Awards

Honours and Awards

Dr Henry Morgentaler was the first president of the Humanist Association of Canada (HAC) from 1968 to 1999. He remains the organization's honorary president. The HAC bestowed on him its Lifetime Achievement Award on August 3, 2008 in Toronto, Ontario, during its 40th anniversary celebration convention, the largest Humanist convention in the nation's history.

In 1973 Morgentaler was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. The American Humanist Association named him the 1975 Humanist of the Year, along with Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique.

On June 16, 2005, the University of Western Ontario conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree upon Morgentaler; this was his first honorary degree. This decision by UWO's senate honorary degrees committee generated opposition from Canadian pro-life organizations. 12,000 signatures were acquired on a petition asking the UWO to reverse its decision to honour Dr. Morgentaler and several protest rallies were held, including one on the day the honorary degree was bestowed. A counter petition, supporting the UWO's decision, gained over 10,000 signatures.

On August 5, 2005 Morgentaler received the Couchiching Award for Public Policy Leadership for his efforts on behalf of women's rights and reproductive health issues. The Award was given by the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs at its 74th annual summer conference. The Couchiching Award for Public Policy Leadership is presented annually to a nationally recognised Canadian who has demonstrated public policy leadership that results in positive impact on Canada or a community within Canada, often in the face of public opposition. In part, the citation reads

The women’s movement of the 1960s found in Dr. Morgentaler a person who understood that women’s equality could not be achieved within the existing restrictions on medical services for reproductive choice. In offering women access to necessary services that faced considerable restriction elsewhere, Dr. Morgentaler used both his professional status and personal skills to fight for women’s rights, while placing himself at risk. His 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.

The Canadian Labour Congress recognized him on May 28, 2008 with its highest honour, the Award for Outstanding Service to Humanity. The CLC's description reads

Morgentaler, 85 and frail, accepted the award from the Officers of the Canadian Labour Congress and thanked the unions for standing with him through his many years of struggle to secure for women the right to control their own health and their own bodies. Choice and freedom.

On this occasion, Dr. Morgentaler said, "We must remain vigilant in defence of a woman's right to choose, because there are still too many legislators and health care providers out there who are not pro-choice and too many women who continue to have their health put at risk because they are denied access to safe abortion services in a supportive environment – twenty years after Canada’s abortion laws were struck down."

In 2010, Henry Morgentaler was nominated for a Transformational Canadians award as a person who has "made a difference by immeasurably improving the lives of others." The news item points out, "In Canada, a woman can have an abortion without fear of prosecution or imprisonment – for the simple reason that there is no abortion law. For more than 20 years, that state of affairs has set us apart from the rest of the developed world. Canadian women enjoy the right to safe and legal abortions largely because Henry Morgentaler fought a long battle on their behalf. For his trouble, the unflappable Dr. Morgentaler stood trial, languished in prison, and received numerous death threats. What drove him to take such risks? "The realization that a terrible injustice was being done to women and the conviction that it was necessary to change the situation to provide help for those who needed it," replies the retired physician via email."