Following Orders
I know I've already devoted a portion of an entry to Dr. Henry Morgentaler's induction into the Order of Canada, but considering how many opinions from the pro-life (as-long-as-you're-a-fetus) crowd I've had to endure flooding the Letters to the Editors pages, why shouldn't I use my own little electronic soap box to further my agenda?
If you were to read any of these letters over the last two weeks (yes, it's only been a fortnight we've had to rehash this tired debate...I know it seems longer), you'd think Dr. Morgentaler invented abortions; indeed, he is painted as single-handedly responsible for a vertiable genocide of Canadian fetuses. What the vocal religious conservative minority refuses to acknowledge is that Canadian woman were seeking abortions--dangerous, archaic abortions performed without adequate medical expertise--long before Dr. Morgentaler ever opened his Montreal practice. They also make little mention of the fact that he is not the first medical practitioner who advocated illegal birth control and was inducted into the Order. Elizabeth Bagshaw, one of Canada's first female physicians and the director of an illegal birth control clinic in Hamilton, Ontario, was inducted into the Order in 1972.
The motto of the Order of Canada is They desired a better country. Henry Morgentaler desired a Canada in which women were not driven underground to be butchered by quacks with coathangers, and fought for this vision of Canada at great personal cost. He was and remains an advocate of humanism, women's rights, and civil liberties. If those are not values that should unify Canadians, then I don't know what would be.
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