Yay! He’s one of my childhood heroes!  Not that I ever needed an abortion when I was a young woman growing up in Canada, but I remember silently rooting for this man who would not bow down to those who firebombed his clinic and threatened his life. I was awed that he would put his life on the line to help women who wanted to be able to live their own lives with some measure of agency.

Hey, ‘manda, they’re savaging you pretty good over at McArdle’s blog.

Please come back and try defending yourself… we need the laughs!

Here’s some free advice: next time you want to go on about intellectual lightweights and obtuseness, try avoiding the repeat post!

Not Medal of Honor, it’s the Order of Canada. :-o

Well I guess it’s time to celebrate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8pYl1VJLt0&feature=related

Montreal’s own ska sensation: Me, Mom & Morgentaler

Sirk: Forgive us, we’re Yanquis.

What Sirkowski said: it’s the Order of Canada.

That said, damn. Good for the Order of Canada Panel.

Funniest comment, on the 3rd page:

‘I wonder how many Order of Canada recipients our nation has “lost” because of Henry Morgentaler’s efforts.’

Is the number of recipients a set number, and if so, wouldn’t it at worst change who the recipients are rather than “lose” them?

If Morgantaler’s parents hadn’t met, would our neighbors up north have “lost” an Order of Canada recipient, too?

I’m pretty impressed that it takes to page three of the ‘highest ranked comments’ for a wingnut to get a word in at all.

Congratulations to the good doctor for sticking to his convictions and helping to create a better society for all women when it would have been far easier and much safer to have given in, and a hearty thanks to the promoting committee for realizing that he is deserving of the highest award Canada has to offer.

I wonder how many Order of Canada recipients our nation has “lost” because of Henry Morgentaler’s efforts.

Probably not as many as the serial killers who have been “lost”.

Amanda Marcotte, if they die because of an illegal abortion, it’s their own fault. It’s kind of like dying from an overdose of illegal heroin, except that the two situations are nothing alike.

Sigh.

I love how it’s automatically assumed that the women lost to illegal abortion don’t count as lives lost.

Or for that matter, the number of women who might have been Order of Canada recipients had their lives not been derailed by being forced early in life to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Judy Rebick, the woman quoted in the article who led a lot of the organizing to keep Morgentaler’s clinic operating, was the keynote speaker at a legal conference my girlfriend organized here in Toronto last spring. I hate to sound star-struck or sentimental, but she was one of the most engaging, invigorating speaker I’ve ever heard. She was very funny and very human, but at the same time the stories she told about how things went down were a real inspiration to a room full of young lawyers and activists and a reminder of why we need to keep doing the things we’re doing.

Morgentaler is a badass, and he and the people he worked with are heroes. It’s nice to live in a country where most people, and the media, agree to honor people like him with an award like this.

I was so pleased to see this headline this morning.  Of course, according to the Globe and Mail, the government has hastily disavowed all involvement and one charming MP is openly badmouthing the appointment…but I guess there’s only so much you can expect from Harper and co.

I guess there’s only so much you can expect from Harper and co.

Harpy is a far better politician than Bu$h, which makes him on a smaller scale more dangerous. He knows that this is a dead issue in Canada, and he has no intention of trying to swim with a manhole cover just to please a few nuts who will vote for him anyway. Even his own Conservative party has officially abandoned support for re-instituting controls on abortion, despite the wailing from the fringe de la fringe.

he has no intention of trying to swim with a manhole cover just to please a few nuts who will vote for him anyway.

Yeah, and I got the sense that the liberals had the same Not Touchin That With A Ten Foot Pole attitude towards the issue anyway.  Still, if we’re going to give Dr. Morgentaler a gov’t honour, it would have been nice to see the gov’t stand behind it instead of washing their hands.

Then again, he did get it, and the media at least seems to be supportive.  So maybe I shouldn’t be bitching.

When I was in university in the mid and late 80s, I lived just around the corner from Morgentaler’s clinic near the University of Toronto. We literally shared the same back alley.  There was some desultory picketing most days, including appearances from some rather bored-looking Catholic high school students in uniform who were probably getting extra credit for trudging back and forth in front of the steps. It was an incredible shock that someone actually got up and firebombed the place a few years later. It just didn’t seem Canadian (Yeah, I’m a little less idealistic now.)

I remember being a teen in the pre-Morgentaler days and having my GP start setting up my appearance before the hospital board that would allow me to have my abortion (which turned out not to be needed—false alarm). He was fairly sure that a 16 year old would be guaranteed an abortion, but we also knew it was not a given. If I had been pregnant, and if I hadn’t been able to get an abortion, I know my life would have been a lot different. I know that a lot of women had very different lives—sometimes shorter ones—because of our old abortion laws.

Damn straight, the man deserves the Order of Canada. Damn straight.

Yes, he deserves it, of course; the man single-handedly changed Canadian law and did so at considerable personal cost.  I remember the board days, too: a friend of mine had to wait 6 weeks to get ‘board approval’ from a very conservative Saskatchewan board.

The Globe & Mail has a poll link—did Morgentaler deserve the order of Canada —which seems to be targeted by anti-choicers.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page: it’s on the right.