Many Canadians were saddened and outraged last week on our national holiday, July 1st., 2008. Canada Day is traditionally the day the highest civilian award in the land, the Order of Canada, is presented to those "who have enriched the lives of others and made a difference to this country."

One of the recipients this year was Dr. Henry Morgentaler. He was recognized "for his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations."

That was the official pronouncement. To many Canadians, he is the man responsible for the legal murder of over 96,000 Canadian babies every year. As a doctor, sworn to protect life, and as a man with a tragic past, he should know better.

Henry Morgentaler was born to Jewish parents in 1923, in Ldz, Poland. His father was killed by the Gestapo. In 1944, he was imprisoned in Auschwitz, and emerged weighing just 70 pounds. He went to medical school in Germany, under a United Nations scholarship offered to Jewish survivors. Upon graduation, he refused to go to Israel, because he opposed Zionism.

He came to Canada in 1950 and set up practice in Montreal. He worked there for twenty years before his opinion about abortion caused him to have serious conflicts with others. In 1969, Morgentaler gave up his family practice and began to openly perform illegal abortions.

By 1973, he claimed to have performed 5,000 illegal abortions. After a series or arrests, appeals, and acquittals, he was convicted in 1974 and served ten months in prison. He suffered a heart attack while in solitary confinement, but recovered.

In 1982, as part of the Canadian Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted. Under this legislation, Morgentaler's next charge was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada. He has since owned and operated abortion clinics across Canada.

At present, Dr. Morgentaler earns about $11 million dollars annually from six free-standing clinics across the country. He was hardly a disinterested party in the fight for legalized abortion. He is now 85 years of age and has recently suffered a severe stroke.

One would think that the young Henry Morgentaler would have learned respect for the value of human life as a result of the horrors he must have encountered inside Auschwitz, However, perhaps his experiences had the opposite effect. Did they convince him life is cheap,

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