What the champion of reproductive rights has to teach the right-to-die movement
…Two years later, as justice minister in Lester Pearson’s Liberal government, Trudeau undertook a reform of the country’s strict abortion law. The bill he introduced would permit abortions to safeguard a woman’s life or health, but only if they were performed in an accredited hospital and approved by a three-member therapeutic abortion committee. When the bill was referred for public hearings before the Commons Health and Welfare Committee, Morgentaler presented on behalf of the Humanist Fellowship. He argued vigorously that women should have unrestricted access to abortions throughout the first trimester of pregnancy — no questions asked about their circumstances or their reasons. One incredulous committee member could not quite believe what he was hearing. “Without giving a reason?” he asked. “Yes,” replied Morgentaler in his soft Slavic accent.
Neither the Commons committee nor respectable public opinion were yet ready to embrace this notion of abortion on demand, and the bill was passed into law a year after Trudeau became prime minister. Morgentaler, meanwhile, returned to normal life, with one significant difference: his public stance on abortion had made him famous. He began to receive inquiries from women all over Canada who were desperate for unsanctioned abortions (sometimes for their daughters), and who assumed that he was willing to practise what he preached. At first, he fended them all off, explaining that as fiercely as he believed in their right to choose he was not prepared to risk his medical licence or his freedom. But as the pleas continued, and as he started hearing stories about these same women being mutilated in backstreet procedures, he began to rethink his position.
Morgentaler performed his first abortion in 1968, for the eighteen-year-old daughter of a close friend. The following year, he wound up his family practice and, in the same location, opened a family planning clinic that would offer first-trimester abortions outside the provisions of the law. Although he did not advertise his services, he made no secret of his newly chosen specialty. He considered the abortions he was performing acts of not only compassion, but of civil disobedience.