Canada’s Top Abortionist Henry Morgentaler Dies at Age 90

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 29, 2013   |   2:25PM   |   Ottawa, Canada

Infamous abortion practitioner Henry Morgentaler — responsible for legalized abortions in Canada funded at taxpayer expense — has passed away at the age of 90. Morgentaler is the man who opened up Canada to legal abortions in 1988.

Denise Mountenay, the head of the Canada Silent No More Campaign, a group for women who have had abortions and regret their decisions because of physical complications or mental health issues afterwards, talked about him previously.

“For years he totally ignored the laws of the land and has profited, making millions of dollars. He and his clinics have been sued for damages to women, and he has lost his medical license for inappropriate behavior,” Mountenary says.

“Morgentaler has created an abortion on demand culture, where every day over three hundred babies are aborted in our nation,” she told LifeNews.com. “Abortion is not ‘real health care’ for pregnant women.”

One of the leading pro-life groups, Campaign Life Coalition, said it was sorry to hear of the death of Henry Morgentaler. Even though he was the leading abortionist in Canada and that it has been praying for the man and hoping that he would turn away from the practice of killing unborn children.

“I have been praying for him daily for more than 20 years,” said Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life Coalition. “With that said, Morgentaler has been a highly divisive figure, training abortionists in his methods of killing, doing unbelievable damage to the future of this country and as a result, millions of Canadians have been aborted.”

Hughes said Morgentaler showed signs of moving away from his earlier strident position in this issue when in 2004 he decried late-term abortions saying, “We don’t abort babies, we want to abort fetuses before they become babies. Around 24 weeks I have ethical problems doing that.”

Even in the case of severe fetal defects or teenage pregnancies, Morgentaler said that his clinics “usually counsel the woman to continue the pregnancy and put it up for adoption if she is unable to care for it.”

“This is the end of an era and we hope that our country can now turn a necessary corner and find the courage to restore protection to all human beings, born and pre-born,” said Mary Ellen Douglas, National Organizer of Campaign Life Coalition. “As we wish for both ally and adversary, may God have mercy on his soul.”

A report in The Star has more information on Morgentaler’s passing, saying his family informed an abortion activist.

Carolyn Egan, with the Ontario Coalition of Abortion Clinics, told Canadian Press she spoke with members of Morgentaler’s family, who told her he died early this morning.

She was told he was surrounded by family and it was a peaceful death at his Toronto home.

Morgentaler, who was born in Poland and emigrated to Canada in 1950 after surviving the Holocaust, opened the first abortion clinic in Canada in Montreal in 1970, followed by more clinics across the country.

He was arrested and thrown in a Montreal prison for 10 months for performing illegal abortions.

In 1983, Morgentaler was charged and acquitted in Ontario. The Ontario Court of Appeal reversed the decision, opening the way for the Supreme Court decision.

In an interview with The Canadian Press in 2004, Morgentaler said his five-year stay in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau prepared him for his showdown with Canada’s legal system.

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Morgentaler was named to the Order of Canada in 2008 but nine former recipients of the Order of Canada returned their medals in protest to Morgentaler being a recipient. That included Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte, the Catholic archbishop of Montreal.

The Canadian Judicial Council dismissed a complaint that pro-life advocates filed in response to the award. The complaint centered on Canada Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin, who had defended her role in overseeing the award.

The office applauded Morgentaler in a press release for having “a major impact on Canadian public policy” and putting himself “at risk in his determined drive to increase health-care options for Canadian women.” It claimed Morgentaler has “heightened awareness of women’s reproductive health issues among medical professionals and the Canadian public.”