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Regarding this issue. Dr. Morgentaler performed a great service. No one has the right to judge unless they've walked in those shoes. For the many women he has helped, gave counseling, and did not demean them for a decision, which I'm sure was not an easy one for them to make. I am sure he was probably the only one who didn't make them feel like criminals, and understood, how difficult it was for them to make that choice.

The committee which decided to bestow the Order of Canada on Dr. Henry Morgentaler clearly didn't consult Joanne Boone or Vicky Green.

If Morgentaler is considered brave for conducting abortions on them, they are equally as brave for standing up and saying they wish now he hadn't. And although both described the famous abortion doctor as professional and clinical, neither would have recommended him for the award. He's not a hero or pioneer for everybody.

"I heard a sucking sound."

And just like that an 18-year-old girl known then as Joanne LaMere was no longer pregnant and $600 poorer after a cash payment. "If you can imagine a soul being pulled out one's body! That is how it felt," said Boone, now 56, a grateful mother of three in Caledon. "It felt so unnatural. We are supposed to give life, not end it."

She feels she had no choice and no say. "I was nine weeks pregnant and I didn't have many options," she said of her family making the call to take this route.

Some 13 years later, a 21-year-old Vicky Green also found herself at the controversial East End Clinic. "It was Jan. 2, 1983," said the now 47-year-old Ottawa-based social worker who now has two children of her own. "If Dr. Morgentaler doesn't believe me, he can check his own records."

She was 12 weeks pregnant and was having second thoughts. "Dr. Morgentaler sat in front of me and I was crying. I told him I don't want to do this to my baby. He said it is not a baby and that you will have other pregnancies."

When the procedure started, she said, she remembers saying "it hurts" to which he said "just relax." Soon it was over and she recalls Morgentaler taking the fetus over to a table in a canister.

Much as we may feel and act as individuals, our race is a single organism, always growing and branching--which must be pruned regularly to be healthy. This necessity need not be argued; anyone with eyes can see that any organism which grows without limit always dies within its own poisons. The only rational question is whether pruning is best done before or after birth. Being an incurable sentimentalist I favor the former of these methods--killing makes me queasy, even when it’s a case of “He’s dead and I’m alive and that’s the way I wanted it to be.” But this may be a matter of taste. Some shamans think that it is better to be killed in a war, or to die in childbirth, or to starve in misery, than never to have lived at all. They may be right. But I don’t have to like it--and I don’t.

You can quote all the editorials that you want, but if you go to the Governor General's website, (as I posted earlier) you will see what the real requirements are for being named to this order.

I am aware of these very basic requirements

it is also generally accepted that appointments to the Order of Canada are not meant to be political, and these appointments are not meant to sharplyy divide the country on political lines.

what message as we sending when what was considered criminal at the time is now recognized as worthy of the highest honor.

Morgentaler is worthy of the Order
Jul 04, 2008 04:30 AM
Chantal Hébert

OTTAWA–In a previous life 20 or so years ago, I had personal and professional cause to cross paths with Dr. Henry Morgentaler. For a brief season, we both visited the Toronto Central YMCA at the same time. While waiting for my sons' swimming classes to finish, I would eavesdrop on other mothers as they came up to him to commend his crusade.

By then Morgentaler had become the bread and butter of my reporting life as a Toronto-based correspondent for Radio-Canada. For while the first chapter of his battle took place in Quebec in the '70s, it was in Ontario a decade later that the definitive one got its start with the opening of the Harbord St. clinic and the beginning of a legal trek that would end with a landmark Supreme Court ruling.

I literally tagged along with the story. The 1988 decision that removed abortion from the Criminal Code was delivered on the day I moved to Ottawa to take a permanent posting on Parliament Hill. Not for the first time, my partner was left to unpack the myriad of boxes of a family of four.

For those of us who covered the abortion debate, there is some irony to the fact that Morgentaler will receive his Order of Canada at the same time former prime minister Kim Campbell is honoured. A substantial part of her legacy as minister of justice is a failed bill designed to fill the legal void created by the Morgentaler ruling.

These days, the fact that neither the Supreme Court nor Morgentaler himself is ultimately responsible for Canada's wide-open abortion regimen often gets lost in the rhetorical shuffle.

While the court did find that the existing Criminal Code dispositions on the issue were unconstitutional, it actually left the door open for the federal government to address abortion in a Charter-respectful manner.

Campbell's bill was the last serious government effort to do that. Under the guise of recriminalizing abortion, it allowed the procedure on a broad-based basis. While it satisfied neither side, it reflected enough of a consensus to narrowly pass the test of the House of Commons and likely went as far as the Charter would allow.

The bill died in the Senate at the hands of an unlikely pro-choice/anti-abortion alliance. Not wanting to settle for anything less than an outright (and unconstitutional) ban on the procedure except in life and death cases, the anti-abortion lobby instructed its Senate supporters to oppose it. Since then, there has been no public momentum for a return to the legislative drawing board.

For the many pro-choice Canadians who cheered Morgentaler on, a life of activism is more than reason enough to give him the Order of Canada. For the many others who are more ambivalent about abortion but who prize the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, his contribution to turning it into a living document should warrant the honour.

To this day, it is hard to think of a Charter ruling that is as prominent in the annals of Canadian women's rights as the Morgentaler decision. He should no more be consigned to the closets of history than the activists who forcefully broke new constitutional ground to champion same-sex, minority language or native rights.

As for the vocal opponents of abortion, they could reflect on the fact that if the Order of Canada committee had really wanted to celebrate our unrestricted abortion regimen, it is the anti-abortion lobby and its all-or-nothing approach to the issue that it should have elected to honour.

http://www.thestar.com/Canada/Columnist/article/454118

sailing- what do you mean- try again?? He was convicted- and even if it was a 19 year old- he had no business hitting her. period.
And- who gets appointed>I don't really care- no matter who does; you can't please everybody.

Even worse, you accuse anti abortionists of not doing something about unwanted babies such as raising them. Are you are jerk? (just a question).

Babies are in demand for
adoption in Canada. What a jerk!

You are what women call a "dick head" where you penis rules
your brain according to your statement "we are talking about sex here...and all bets are off in that area...if their gonna, they're gonna!" Speak for your self.

Having a baby is doing our part. It was considered a duty
in Canada to have 2 babies during and after the war.

You are typical of the mindless masses that only know what they are told through the mass media instead of critical thinking, critical questioning and researching for opposite opinions and then forming your own.

I wonder: would the people who are posting in this thread to defend Morgentaller's appointment be happy if an anti-abortion crusader was appointed to this order for his activism????

I should know better than to bore people here with facts.
What is much more useful is righteous indignation and opinions.

I think we're sending the message that as a country, we're growing up.
That societies, and their laws, evolve. That we have the maturity and ability to recognise injustice, and right past wrongs.
That our Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are valuable and worthy documents.
We're sending the right message, as I see it.

The way I see it is this man did indeed push for a much needed right for women, and did so to women in a safe manner despite the risks to himself-I find nothing wrong with abortion, nor do I find nothing wrong with ignoring bad laws- but the fact that its such a controversial issue should have made this man incapable of earning this award reguardless.

The Order of Canada is the centrepiece of Canada’s honours system and recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation. The Order recognizes people in all sectors of Canadian society. Their contributions are varied, yet they have all enriched the lives of others and made a difference to this country.

Two-thirds of Canadian back Order of Canada for Morgentaler: poll

Janice Tibbetts
Canwest News Service

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

OTTAWA - Two out of three Canadians either support or somewhat support the appointment of Dr. Henry Morgentaler to the prestigious Order of Canada, reveals a new poll, which points out Prime Minister Stephen Harper is in the minority by voicing his "personal dissatisfaction" with the controversial nomination.

The survey, conducted exclusively for Canwest News Service and Global National, showed 65 per cent of Canadians favour awarding the high honour to the Toronto abortion doctor, while 35 per cent are against it.

"Two-thirds support is very solid," John Wright, senior vice president of the polling firm Ipsos Reid, which surveyed 1,023 adults from July 4-7. "You're not going to do much better than that."

Women, Quebecers, and people under 35 were the most likely to approve of Morgentaler's investiture to the order, bestowed on Canadians who have made a major difference to the country.

While opposition was strongest in the Prairies and Atlantic Canada, a majority in every province still gave the nod to the announcement that Morgentaler, one of the most divisive Canadians in history, would receive the snowflake-shaped insignia.

Nationally, 27 per cent of Canadians polled said they strongly supported the nomination, while 37 per cent somewhat agreed. On the other side, 19 per cent were strongly opposed and 16 per cent were somewhat opposed.

The nomination of the 85-year-old Morgentaler, whose name has been synonymous with abortion rights since he opened his first clinic in Montreal almost four decades ago, has revived passionate debate nationwide.

On Tuesday, protest persisted when representatives of Madonna House, an Ontario Catholic organization, travelled to the official residence of the Governor General in Ottawa to return an Order of Canada medal awarded 32 years ago to its now-deceased founder, Catherine Doherty.

Ontario's Catholic premier also jumped into the debate by saying he supports Morgentaler's induction.

"I know Dr. Morgentaler is seen as a controversial figure but I believe in a women's right to make a very difficult decision and if she makes that difficult decision and chooses to have an abortion I want her to be able to do that in a way that is safe and a way that's publicly funded," Dalton McGuinty said Tuesday afternoon in Toronto.

"It is divisive, but I think it is important."

The prime minister also has been among about one dozen MPs who have criticized Morgentaler's award, saying last week that 'my preference, to be frank, would be to see the Order of Canada be something that really unifies, that brings Canadians together."

Harper also said he had nothing to do with Morgentaler's appointment, which was made by an independent advisory council led by Beverley McLachlin, the chief justice of Canada.

"Despite Prime Minister Harper's personal dissatisfaction with this decision . . . it appears that he is in the minority," a news release on the poll said.

But Wright said he doubts Harper risked alienating two-thirds of the country, since he did not directly attack abortion.

Regionally, support was strongest in Canada's three largest provinces. Seventy-two per cent of Quebecers said they support Morgentaler's appointment, followed by Ontario residents at 69 per cent and British Columbians at 61 per cent. In Alberta, 64 per cent indicated support, followed by 52 per cent in Atlantic Canada and 51 per cent in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

The poll also showed that more women than men favour Morgentaler's investiture, at 68 per cent and 61 per cent respectively.

There were also strong age divisions, with support among the under-35 set reaching 70 per cent, followed by middle-aged Canadians at 65 per cent. Of those who are 55 or older, 59 per cent supported the decision.

The survey is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20, but the margin of error is greater within regions and other subgroups.

The poll also showed that more women than men favour Morgentaler's investiture, at 68 per cent and 61 per cent respectively.

There were also strong age divisions, with support among the under-35 set reaching 70 per cent, followed by middle-aged Canadians at 65 per cent. Of those who are 55 or older, 59 per cent supported the decision.

You are a male, so fortunately you will never experience the situation,

Morgentaler would have denied me my life - and his actions have meant that thousands, no, hundreds of thousands if not millions, of children, have been denied a life.

[He worked to give women like your mother choice in dealing with pregnancy.

As a Canadian (albeit in exile), I applaud the decision. After surviving the Holocaust, Dr. Henry Morgentaler forged ahead with his clinics, regardless of the personal & financial consequences (he spent time in jail & hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees); because he felt that the human race would not be free until women were free to make their own decisions about their lives & bodies.

Morgentaler would have denied me my life - and his actions have meant that thousands, no, hundreds of thousands if not millions, of children, have been denied a life.