Someone is going to have to step up to be Dr. Morgentaler

On October 17, 1967, he presented a brief on behalf of the Humanist Association of Canada before a House of Commons Health and Welfare Committee that was investigating the issue of illegal abortion. Morgentaler stated that women should have the right to safe abortion. The reaction to his public testimony surprised him: he began to receive calls from women who wanted abortions. Robert Malcolm Campbell and Leslie Alexander Pal wrote, "Henry Morgentaler experienced the [abortion] law's limitations directly in the supplications of desperate women who visited his Montreal office." Morgentaler's initial response was to refuse:

"I hadn't expected the avalanche of requests and didn't realize the magnitude of the problem in immediate, human terms. I answered, 'I sympathize with you. I know your problem, but the law won't let me help you. If I do help you, I'll go to jail, I lose my practice—I have a wife and two children. I'm sorry, but I just can't!'"

For a time he was able to refer the women to two other doctors who did abortions, but they became unavailable. There was no one to whom he could send them, and some of them were ending up in the emergency department after amateur abortions. He has said that he felt like a coward for sending them away and that he was shirking his responsibility. Eventually, in spite of the risks to himself—loss of career, a prison term for years or for life—he decided to perform abortions and, at the same time, challenge the law. ...

He knew that he could prevent those unnecessary deaths, so he determined to use civil disobedience to change the law.

In 1968, Morgentaler gave up his family practice and began performing abortions in his private clinic. He devoted his clinic to performing abortions on women as well as providing birth control and contraceptives, though it was illegal at the time.

Read the rest of the article to learn about how as a child in Poland he was incarcerated in nazi concentration camps for being jewish. Then as an adult in Quebec, incarcerated for performing abortions.