Order of fucking Canada, yo.
by
Dawn Coyote
07/06/2008, 2:17 AM #
Perhaps you happy Americans missed it, but on July 1st, Canada Day, Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Holocaust survivor, physician, and abortion activist, was given the highest honour in the Land. He was named to the Order of Canada.
From the CBC article:
Now 85, Morgentaler, a Polish Holocaust survivor who immigrated to Montreal after the war, opened his first abortion clinic in 1969 and performed thousands of procedures, which were illegal at the time.
Morgentaler, a trained family physician, argued that access to abortion was a basic human right and women should not have to risk death at the hands of an untrained professional in order to end their pregnancies.
Morgentaler's clinics were constantly raided, and one in Toronto was firebombed. Morgentaler was arrested several times and spent months in jail as he fought his case at all court levels in Canada. <link>
Thanks to Morgentaler, women in Canada don't have to drive a few hundred miles to get an abortion. Before they undergo the procedure, they don't have to listen to their doctor tell them that they're killing a teeny-tiny human being. They don't have to pay for it out of their own pocket: it's covered by our universal health care.
I can't take credit for Morgentaler, but this is the best Canada's birthday present I could have hoped for, and it gives me a warm little feeling that in a significant way my nation is, in fact, better than yours.