Henry Morgentaler movie.

In conjunction with the bestowal of an honorary doctorate to Henry Morgentaler by the University of Western Ontario, London, ON (see C.I., May 2005, p. 35) we print a commentary on CTV's recent movie about him.

I heard some media type say liberals watch CBC and conservatives watch CTV. It seems plausible, but it would also seem that in the past couple of seasons CTV has had broader ambitions and has been triangulating to include the salacious and the ideological left. Shows like The Sopranos, The O.C., and Desperate Housewives are a direct challenge to the programmers at CBC and Global....

In keeping with this not so subtle agenda, CTV's latest Signature Series movie presentation Choice: The Henry Morgentaler Story is classic sombre Canadian hagiography. But in spite of an expensive promo ad blitz days beforehand, it aired on January 5 to a relatively small audience. There's something very sniffy and Victorian high dudgeon about Canadian docu-movies. They are so "on a mission." The only complexity in CTV's portrait o)' a hero was the self-serving sub-plot of Morgentaler as Lothario. I met Morgentaler several times while protesting at his abortuary in Toronto and he never struck me as very dashing but, as CTV would have it, women find him irresistible.

It's not as if there's a lack of material with which to portray Morgentaler as "complex". Throughout the movie he is lionized for bringing unrestricted abortion to Canada, but somehow there's no discussion of what abortion is, how it's done, what it does to the baby or what it does to the mother. As well, CTV completely missed a fascinating and well-documented history of Morgentaler as medical pioneer. Pro-life website Lifesite.com has compiled a far-ranging collection of articles which would have made CTV's little movie much more interesting.

A 1974 article in The Montreal Gazette reported that Morgentaler reused disposable polyethylene vacurettes on patients. Total savings per re-use: $3.44. In 1976 the Professional Corporation of Physicians of Quebec suspended Morgentaler's medical licence, not for performing abortions, but for performing them badly. The panel declared that Morgentaler's behaviour reflected "an attitude which is primarily directed to protecting his fees." In 1983 the Edmonton Journal quoted Morgentaler on how his clinic disposed of unborn babies after he has aborted them: "It is just flushed down the garburator into the sink. We do not consider it to be a human being." In 1985 the Toronto Star quoted a woman who claimed that she changed her mind about the abortion at the last minute in Morgentaler's operating room, but they shoved a sanitary napkin in her mouth and did it anyway.

As of 1999, Morgentaler's annual revenue was estimated at $17 million, based on figures for the number of abortions performed by Morgentaler listed on the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League website. To date some $5 million in taxpayers' money has been spent to pay the rent for Morgentaler's clinics. In 2003 Heather Mallick of the Globe and Mail lobbied vigorously, but to no avail, to have Morgentaler granted The Order of Canada. Coincidentally both the Globe and Mail and CTV are owned by Bell Globemedia. An Ipsos-Reid CTV poll conducted November 12-22, 2004 of 461 Canadian women aged 18-34 found 73 % had either not heard of Morgentaler or couldn't accurately indicate his professional identity.

Journalistic integrity, balance, truth: these are all antiquated concepts which obviously no longer have a place at CTV. Marshall McLuhan observed a peculiar "cool media" interaction between television and viewer When we are watching TV, brain activity languishes somewhere between consciousness and sleep. We are passive-receptive. It is difficult for us to turn the channel, let alone turn the TV off. But maybe we really should. (Joseph Bissonette)

Editor:

CTV has had a long love-in with Morgentaler. It was in 1975, on Mother's Day, that CTV televised Morgentaler committing an abortion illegally. As for the Morgentaler women, he seems to have been married three times and in addition he has had several mistresses.