Henry Morgentaler
| Henry Morgentaler CM |
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|---|---|
Henry Morgentaler (right) in August, 2005, with then NDP Leader Jack Layton
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| Born |
Heniek Morgentaler March 19, 1923 Łódź, Second Polish Republic |
| Died | May 29, 2013 (aged 90) Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | Doctor, activist |
| Known for | pro-choice advocacy |
| Spouse(s) | Chava Rosenfarb (m. 1945–75) |
Henekh "Henry" Morgentaler,CM (March 19, 1923 – May 29, 2013), was a Jewish Polish-born Canadian physician and pro-choice advocate who fought numerous legal battles aimed at expanding abortion rights in Canada. As a youth during World War II, Morgentaler was imprisoned at the Łódź Ghetto and later at the Dachau concentration camp.
After the war, Morgentaler emigrated to Canada and entered medical practice, becoming one of the first Canadian doctors to perform vasectomies, to insert intrauterine devices, and to provide birth control pills to unmarried women. He opened his first abortion clinic in 1969 in Montreal, challenging what he saw as an unjust law placing burdensome restrictions on women seeking abortions. He was the first doctor in North America to use vacuum aspiration and went on to open twenty clinics and train more than one hundred doctors. Morgentaler twice challenged the constitutionality of the federal abortion law, losing the first time, in Morgentaler v R in 1975, but winning the second time, in R. v. Morgentaler in 1988.
In 2008, Morgentaler was awarded the Order of Canada "for his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations." Morgentaler died at the age of 90 of a heart attack.
Morgentaler was born in Łódź, Poland, about 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Warsaw, to Josef and Golda Morgentaler. Before World War II, Morgentaler's father was active in the General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland. During the German occupation of Poland, a Jewish ghetto in Łódź was created and Jews were not allowed to leave it. Morgentaler's father was killed by the Gestapo, while Henry lived with his mother and younger brother in the Ghetto Litzmannstadt with 164,000 others. His sister had left for Warsaw with her husband before the start of the war. She was incarcerated there at the Warsaw Ghetto, and took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She was killed at the Treblinka extermination camp.
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