Dr. Henri Morgentaler, one of the heros of the safe, legal abortion rights movement has long been honored by the people of Canada as the champion of women's and family's rights to make their own decisions about when and if and under what circumstances to have children. In Canada, Roe v. Wade is called the Morgentaler Decision, and was rendered after Henri had suffered several arrests a had been in prison in Canada for several months. (I suppose that after being imprisoned as a Jewish child and losing all his family members except his younger brother in Nazi death camps, perhaps the Canadian prisons didn't seem so awful.) Anyway, this story demonstrats why so many Americans consider Canada a land of tolerance and rationality.
Morgentaler to receive Order of Canada today
Marianne White, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, October 10, 2008
Prominent abortion-rights activist Dr. Henry Morgentaler will receive the Order of Canada at a ceremony in Quebec City today, the Governor General's office said.
His nomination to the Order in July sparked controversy and highlighted the divide over abortion rights in Canada. It also prompted a handful of Canadians to return their insignia, including Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Montreal.
But few protesters are expected to disrupt today's ceremony in a province where support for abortion is high.
And here is how Canada treats their antiabortion crazies.
The Campaign Life Coalition, a pro-life group that has been a vocal opponent of the nomination, said Thursday it won't send a significant contingent to Quebec City.
"If we get a dozen, that will be good, because we are busy everywhere working on the election campaign of pro-life candidates," said the group's national president, Jim Hughes.
Joanne Byfield, president of anti-abortionist group Life Canada, said the government caught them off guard by giving the Order to Morgentaler in Quebec City in the midst of a federal election campaign and on the eve of the Thanksgiving long weekend.
"I think the whole thing has been designed to stifle protest," Byfield said.
Poor Mr. Hughes and Ms. Byfield. Unable to create a firestorm at an event meant to honor several prominant Canadians and a true hero and Holocaust survivor. In our United States, our Republican presidents since the Repugnicans most honored RR, and Geo. H. W. Bush, the father of our current idiot president, the infamous W., have done everything they can to create martyrs among our abortion providers. And have succeeded more than once.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean acknowledged ceremonies of the Order of Canada are rarely held outside Rideau Hall, but stressed it isn't a precedent.
Today's ceremony, where the Order of Canada will also be bestowed on 19 other Canadians, is taking place at the Citadel in Quebec City as part of the ceremonies surrounding the 400th anniversary of the founding of the city, said the Governor General's office.
Morgentaler's publicist said the location of the ceremony isn't a concern and noted he is particularly fond of Quebec since he first settled in Montreal when he arrived in Canada in 1950.
I have been in the Citadel. It will take pretty serious protesters to penetrate those walls. Somehow, I don't think they will have even a dozen who storm those walls.
In British, American and Canadian history, the Citadel played a major role. It was the fall of that battlement that allowed the British to wrest what was then the French colony to their own control and in turn led to the United States eventually taking control of a significant part of former French territory that was not a part of Jefferson's Louisian Purchase. (Does anyone remember 54/40 Or Fight?)
Anyway, perhaps with the election of Barack Obama, this country can conquer the GOP's Citadel of the "Religelous" Right and finally take our country from the theocrats and theives that have held sway since they stole the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. With Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama this morning, it should be a little more difficult to them to steal this election, and with a second passage of the federal bill to eliminate the state imposed legal obsticals that have been passed in more than a score of states since Roe v.Wade, American's women and their families, and the physicians who serve them, will once again be granted what Dr. Morgentaler achieved for the families and women of his nation in the 1980s
If we can prevent their steeling this election by casting millions of voters from the roles or invading the voting machines in those few states where their are no longer paper ballots.