Henry Morgentaler has devoted much of his life to ensuring that Canadian women have access to safe, legal abortions. He was the one person who did prison time for disobeying the Criminal Code prohibition on providing an abortion that had not been certified to be medically necessary, and it was his challenge to the law that resulted in it being struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada as unconstitutional.
I received this information in an email today. Support from Canadians would of course be particularly useful; support from USAmericans might not be too weighty in the balance of opinion that is relevant to the school, but some here might want to voice it anyhow.
The decision in which Morgentaler succeeded in having the restrictive abortion legislation struck down can be read here:
http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/1988/1988scc2.html(The law was not actually struck down until 1988, but abortions were widely available with or without the committee rubber stamp before that, largely because juries in Quebec had repeatedly refused to convict Morgentaler.)
Morgentaler's "open letter to the Pope" from 1995:
http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/pope.txtSnippets:
I am writing you this letter as a secular humanist who has become quite famous in Canada for his defense of women’s right to abortion, in particular the Morgentaler decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which removed abortion from the Criminal Code. I am also honorary president of the Humanist Association of Canada, a man of your generation, born in Poland in 1923, a survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau. I personally have been a target of violence that is a result of hate propaganda against abortion. When I opened an abortion clinic in Toronto in 1984, Emmett Cardinal Carter, the archbishop of Toronto, had a letter read in all the churches of his diocese in which he called upon Christians to “stop this abomination.” As a result of this letter, violent protests against the clinics continued for years, culminating in its destruction by firebombing in 1992.
... I cannot imagine how you avoid reflecting on the question of both personal and institutional culpability for all the thousands of avoidable deaths of young women worldwide, as well as the impact on the children they leave motherless.
I appeal to you to issue an unequivocal condemnation of violence against health-care workers who provide abortion. I appeal to you to re-examine your attitudes and statements about abortion, in the interest of saving the lives of women across the world who might die needlessly and also of minimizing the real and continuing threat of violence by abortion opponents. I appeal to you to stop using murder, crime, the killing of the innocent, and similar inflammatory terms which incite indignation, anger, hate, and violence. Please refrain from comparing abortion to the Holocaust. As a survivor of the Holocaust, I personally find such a comparison gratuitous, insulting, and obscene. Many people—in particular Jews—share my feelings about this. ...
How can you compare the willful, deliberate genocide of Jews by the German state, directed by a hate-filled psychopath, to individual decisions by women to choose abortion when they find themselves unable to assume the obligations and duties of motherhood—decisions which many people consider ethical, moral, and responsible?
The email:
Dear Friends,
The University of Western Ontario has decided to give Dr. Henry Morgentaler an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on June 16. Unfortunately, the university has been getting a large amount of anti-choice mail protesting this decision and slandering Dr. Morgentaler. In contrast, there has been next to no pro-choice mail in support, so far. Dr. Morgentaler is a hero to Canadian women for securing the right to choose abortion in 1988, in the Supreme Court Morgentaler decision that threw out Canada's abortion law.
Could you help with a short, affirming e-mail to the administrators at the university? Below are the names and e-mail addresses of the President of the University and the Chair of the Board of Govenors. It is really important that as soon as possible, as many people as possible write to these administrators praising the decision to confer the law degree on Dr. Morgentaler.
The anti's are holding a vigil on Wednesday at 2pm. Would you pass this message to other Canadians who would be willing to send a note of praise?
Thank you so much for your support!
Dr. Paul Davenport, President, UWO
pdavenpo@uwo.ca
(fixed on edit; I'd left off the "p" the first time)
Don McDougall, Chair of Board of Govenors
c/o Jan VanFleet, University Secretary
vanfleet@uwo.ca
Dr. Paul Davenport, President, UWO
Don McDougall, Chair of Board of Govenors
you could copy the following...
Gentlemen,
I wish to laud your decision to give Dr. Henry Morgentaler an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on June 16. I ask that you view defamatory e.mail to the contrary with the contempt that it deserves.
Dr. Morgentaler is a hero to Canadian women for securing the right to choose abortion.
Bravo,
or...
I was thrilled when I read that the University of Western Ontario had made a decision to honour Dr. Morgentaler with an honourary Doctor of laws degree. Many of us are proud of his integrity and tenacity in working to give women the freedom of reproductive choice.
I look forward to celebrating this event with the University.
... There, I've sent mine, an original composition, of course.
Opinion from within the UWO (an historically conservative, business-oriented institution):
con:
http://communications.uwo.ca/western_news/opinion.html?listing_id=18291pro:
http://communications.uwo.ca/western_news/opinion.html?listing_id=18290It is interesting that the recent anti-choice letter-writing campaign in the local press has focused exclusively on Morgentaler, ignoring the fact that Western is also honoring at Convocation another influential advocate of women’s rights, Doris Anderson.
Anderson has, like Morgentaler, made important contributions to improving the status of women in this country. Like Morgentaler, she has an impressive record of lifetime achievements and is still going strong in her early eighties. She, like Morgentaler has been for decades an outspoken advocate of abortion rights, an issue she considers to be fundamentally one of women’s right to exercise “control over their own bodies.”
Such rights for women were not won easily. Western brings honour upon itself in recognizing the contributions of Canadians like Doris Anderson and Henry Morgentaler who have done so much to win them.
(Doris Anderson is one of my heroes. In the 1960s, she battled the publishing establishment to transform Chatelaine Magazine from a cookies and crafts monthly to the leading voice for women's rights in Canada. I always remember reading her answer to a question also put to Gloria Steinem at around the same time, and being glad that Doris was ours; the question: why does Ms. Magazine/Chatelaine carry make-up ads? The answers, in that order: (1) Because women like to make themselves attractive, blah blah blah; (2) Because we need the money.)
Go, Henry!
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