Henry Morgentaler

Common card · No. 370530

Henekh "Henry" Morgentaler (March 19, 1923 – May 29, 2013) was a Polish-born Canadian physician and abortion rights advocate who fought numerous legal battles aimed at expanding abortion rights in Canada. As a Jewish youth during World War II, Morgentaler was imprisoned at the Łódź Ghetto and later at the Dachau concentration camp. After the war, Morgentaler migrated 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 was jailed in 1975 for defying abortion law when the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned a jury's acquittal. The resulting Morgentaler...

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