In an essay I wrote a few months ago I said that abortion was no longer a “hot topic” in Canada. I’ve recently been forced to retract this statement, however. The reason: Dr. Henry Morgentaler, a family physician, abortion provider, and leading pro-choice advocate in this country, has received the Order of Canada for his contributions to Canadian society.
The decision – by Governor General Michaelle Jean – to bestow this honour upon Dr. Morgentaler created a firestorm of controversy unseen since the 1980s. That was the decade in which articles on abortion appeared in major Canadian newspapers on literally a weekly if not daily basis. At the time, under Canadian law women who wished to end their pregnancies had to obtain permission from a hospital-based committee consisting of three doctors who determined whether the woman in question possessed adequate grounds to do so. These grounds included medical as well as social reasons. Dr. Morgentaler on the other hand ran freestanding clinics where a woman could undergo the procedure for no other reason than she wanted it. For setting up these clinics he was imprisoned, put on trial, and acquitted on at least three occasions. Finally things came to a head in 1988 when the Supreme Court of Canada, in a case entitled R. vs. Morgentaler, effectively legalized so-called abortion on demand by removing any reference to the procedure from the Criminal Code. Morgentaler, and any other abortionists for that matter, were free to set up shop without restriction.
As expected, different groups have reacted differently to Morgentaler’s reception of the award. Feminist Judy Rebick, for example, described it as a “victory for Canadian women” in the generally conservative National Post. For Rebick and other pro-choice activists, Morgentaler’s work has made it possible for women to control their own bodies without fear of having to resort to a dangerous illegal abortion. At the other end of the spectrum, pro-life individuals and organizations, such as the Roman Catholic Church, were up in arms at Dr. Morgentaler’s nomination to the Order of Canada. They hold him responsible for the death of thousands of unborn babies. The minister at a church near my home invited his parishioners to sign an on-line petition opposing the nomination. Some past recipients of the Order, including Lucien Larre, a British Columbia priest who founded a home for drug-addicted youths, have returned their award in protest. Even people not necessarily affiliated with the anti-abortion movement have expressed reservations about the decision to grant Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who despite the presence of pro-lifers in his party has denied any intention to change Canada’s current abortion law, claims he would have preferred to see the award go to someone who united rather than divided the nation. Some White Supremacists have denounced Morgentaler as the Jew who kills White babies (I must admit to being a bit perplexed not only by the White Supremacists’ view that Jews are not White but by their portrayal of abortion as an anti-White genocidal plot, as White women actually terminate their pregnancies at a lower per capita rate than minority women do).
I myself lack strong feelings either way on Morgentaler’s reception of the Order. First, awards like the Order of Canada don’t really mean much to me. In addition, I’m fairly apolitical about abortion in general. A candidate’s position on the matter, for instance, won’t make or break my vote. I suppose I’m part of the so-called “mushy middle,” i.e. support legal abortion in the first few months of pregnancy, later for medical reasons, all the while conceding that the procedure is not the moral equivalent of having a tooth pulled. I’d even concur with the pro-lifers that abortions done for social reasons shouldn’t be paid for with public money. In these respects I think I’m like the majority of Canadians, who veer from either extreme on the issue.
Ironically, perhaps both the pro-life and pro-choice sides are guilty of according Henry Morgentaler more importance than he is actually due. To paraphrase Voltaire, if Morgentaler did not exist, we would have had to invent him. Abortion on demand, de facto or de jure, would in all likelihood have become a reality in Canada with or without him, just as it did in most other industrialized nations at a time when legislation on issues like abortion, divorce and homosexuality were being liberalized. Even before the 1988 Supreme Court decision, the much-maligned abortion committees probably didn’t stop too many women from ending their pregnancies. Many of them simply obtained permission to do so by claiming bearing a child would threaten their “health,” as in psychological health. Though anti-abortionists lay the death of thousands of what they consider unborn children at Morgentaler’s feet, in his absence someone else would have almost certainly stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and offered the same service. Just as animals will continue to be butchered as long as people eat meat, abortion will always occur if there is a demand for it.
The key to reducing the demand for abortion and resolving the debate lies in providing accessible and effective birth control so that women can avoid pregnancies they do not want. Unfortunately many members of the pro-life movement oppose not only abortion but contraception as well. Indeed one abortion provider in the Netherlands, a country with a low abortion rate despite very liberal laws, told an interviewer that by providing birth control information to his patients he has probably “prevented more abortions than the Pope.” My own hope is to see abortion one day become, in the words of former US President Bill Clinton, safe, legal and rare.
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