UWO's Dishonourable Morgentaler Decision

The University of Western Ontario's decision to award Henry Morgentaler with a Doctor of Laws degree on June 16, 1005, prompted Mr. Don McDougall, chair of the UWO Board of Governors, to write an open letter to the University, criticizing this decision, saying that the process followed by the Senate Honourary Degrees Committee was irregular and "corrupted." In the letter, Mr. McDougall stated, "It is my firm conviction that this decision will depreciate the honour, adversely effect fundraising, recruiting of students and faculty, relationships with the Affiliated Colleges and alumni, and do irreparable harm to the reputation of the University." Mr. McDougall called the Senate decision and its endorsement by President Davenport, ". ill-advised in the extreme," a decision that will inflict " . a permanent scar . on our well- earned reputation for good judgment."

Canadian Physicians for Life president, Dr. Will Johnston, sent the following to Mr. McDougall, thanking him for speaking out against UWO's dishonourable Morgentaler decision.

May 12, 2005

Mr. Don McDougall
Chair, Board of Governors
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario

Dear Mr. McDougall,

You are to be congratulated and thanked for your firm stand against the recent action of a committee of your university Senate.

If Henry Morgentaler had become notorious for illegally supplying women with a drug which 17 studies have linked to breast cancer and which increases the chance of dangerous future premature delivery, placenta previa, ectopic pregnancy and low birth weight, and which is harmful to the point of increasing the suicide rate for depressed or thought-disordered women, it is not likely the Senate of the University of Western Ontario would have been fooled into honouring him. Strangely, because that "drug" is the procedure called induced abortion, he will be declared a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa . The UWO press release which announces this reads like a tract full of the shrill euphemisms of the abortion partisan, where the concepts "child" and "dead" need not intrude.

Up until now, people who celebrate Henry Morgentaler have been narrow ideologues of the abortion subculture, and so it is a surprise to see a university body, which could be expected to represent a broader constituency, so eager to identify its university with such extremism.

Morgentaler is indeed an unusual man. Little over 20 years after narrowly escaping death at the hands of a system which operated by obtaining a tacit public agreement to ignore the humanity of its victims, Henry Morgentaler turned away from the practice of medicine to do abortions.

His disregard for the law was lauded by some as courage, while for others it seemed more obviously a shrewd calculation of the lie of the land, the way the wind was blowing through that part of the power elite who were impatient to endorse a disregard for the unborn child far beyond anything for which they could obtain a democratic mandate. That elite protected him and admired the transgressions which could soften the ground for their own legislative agenda. After his Supreme Court conviction, then-Justice Minister Ron Basford ordered a retrial to obtain the preferred result.

One does not have to doubt his motivation to note that the abortion procedure was easy and lucrative for Morgentaler. On one occasion he was arrested after doing 6 abortions between 10 am and noon. For the years 1969 to 1972, a court calculated he had evaded $354,799 in taxes.

Morgentaler's medical competence had come into question more than once. In 1974 the Montreal Gazette reported that he had been reusing cheap throw-away instruments which were not possible to safely sterilize. In removing his license to practice in 1976, a medical review panel censured him for "not holding a valid interview before an abortion, for failing almost completely to gather a case history of his client, for failing to perform the necessary pregnancy test or blood test, for not obtaining pathological examination of the "tissues" removed and for failing to follow up the state of health of his patients afterward".

Morgentaler's insight into, or perhaps state of denial about, his life's work is illuminated by this relatively recent conversation between him and prolife activist Peter Ryan in the counselling room of the Fredericton abortion clinic:

'"Why do you call it a baby? It's not a baby when there's an abortion. There's no real baby." [Morgentaler] then lectured Ryan briefly, claiming that the preborn child is "just a bunch of cells."

Ryan pulled out from his pocket a plastic model of a 12-week-old pre-born child.

"So you're saying that at this stage, it would not be a baby?' said Ryan.

"Oh no, that there looks like a baby," Morgentaler replied.

Surprised at the response, Ryan pressed further. "You realize that this is of 11 or 12 weeks' gestation?"

Incredulous at the claim, Morgentaler took the model from Ryan's hand. "No," he said. "Give me that."

Morgentaler eyed the model for a moment and turned it over in his hand, before handing it back to Ryan without saying anything further.'

- reference : http://www.theinterim.com/2002/dec/01prolife.html

The perversion of UWO's honourary degree granting process which could deliver an endorsement to Henry Morgentaler is typical of the perversion of our public life which the prevalence of abortion has caused. Honesty is replaced by euphemism, serious political discourse on many other issues is distorted by irrelevant allusions to the participants' opinions about abortion, women truly harmed by the procedure are marginalized by the very feminists one would expect to be most supportive of them. The collegiality and integrity of the medical profession have been impaired. Eugenic concepts which fell into well-earned disgrace during the course of the twentieth century have been surreptitiously revived.

Meanwhile, the well over 100,000 Canadian abortions per year represent roughly a third of the shortfall in births needed to continue Canada's population. The UWO senate committee has merely played its role in a culture which celebrates, in effect, its own inability to sustain itself.

Across our nation there are playgrounds empty of the voices Henry Morgentaler stilled forever, there are schools bereft of the striving of the young who were made into nothing by him, there are women injured not just in ways they can feel every day but in ways they have no way of knowing. A university is a place from which to reach for everything that is honourable and beautiful and true, but on the day you are visited by Henry Morgentaler the ill-advised applause will make yours into something less.

Yours sincerely,

Will Johnston MD
President
Canadian Physicians for Life

An edited version of this letter appeared on June 1, 2005, in The London Free Press.