how free we are
Jan. 5th, 2005 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI just watched Choice: The Henry Morgentaler Story, which was very much in the spirit of low-budget made-for-TV biopics. As in it was well-intentioned and decently acted, but not exactly a work of cinematic genius. Never mind my own nerdy pet peeves, though, because I'm glad they made a movie about the guy.
I met Morgentaler once. I was 17 or 18. He was speaking at a Humanist Canada conference. I was invited there because I won second place in their essay contest -- a big deal, considering it was an essay I'd written on a lark and that my English teacher had seen fit to submit to their magazine. Anyway, the conference itself was fairly dull; even given my militant atheism (admittedly, less pronounced at the time) I wasn't particularly fond of listening to dottering old men go on about how there is no God. It's sort of a non-starter for me.
But Morgentaler. Shit. I can't even remember what he talked about; all I remember was how awestruck I was because I got to shake his hand. I'd grown up hearing about him -- this heroic, larger-than-life figure who had gone to jail so that women could have control over their own bodies. I couldn't figure out why he did it. It wasn't like anyone would ever force him to become a baby oven. But he was willing to give up his career, his freedom, even his life if necessary, to protect the rights of all of us.
Shortly after that, a friend of mine had a condom break and wound up pregnant. The clinic that performed her abortion was one founded by Morgentaler. She could have had it done at any hospital, but the clinic was better, more private, more compassionate. It was just a routine thing; one day she was a pregnant teenager; the next day, she had her life back.
Even then, I still didn't get it. I was too young to remember when abortion was illegal in this country. Not just that; I don't think I'd ever met anyone who thought it should be illegal. Sure, friends of mine (mostly the religious ones) were against it, but they weren't exactly going to stop someone else from getting one. It wasn't until I started using the internet that I actually met people who thought that they should have more say over what happens to my body than I do.
It's amazing to watch those clips of protests in front of the clinics and to think of a time when an abortion doctor faced life in prison if convicted. But now, hearing the rhetoric spouted south of the border, listening (as I did recently) to a once-prominent feminist talking on the radio about how she voted for Bush because invading Iraq and bolstering Israel's military were more important to her than the reproductive rights of American women (I can only assume she was post-menopausal)...I am reminded that it's far easier to have one's rights taken away than to gain them back.
One thing I liked about this movie was that they didn't downplay Morgentaler's politics at all. He's a Holocaust survivor, and his father was a socialist, a union organizer, and a member of the Bund. His belief in a woman's right to choose, I suspect, comes out of that tradition -- there was no attempt to turn this into a Great Moment in Canadian History. It was a story as much grounded in the shtetl as in Montréal. The best part of the movie, I thought, comes when he's in prison. He's finally won the respect of a group of fellow prisoners (one of whom had called him a babykiller), when a guard gets pissed off at him and tries to drag him off to his cell. He looks at the guard and says: "I survived Auschwitz and Dachau. I can survive here. I'll be getting out soon, but you? You're in here for life."
So here's to you, Mr. Morgentaler. Womanizing, neurotic, arrogant, and despite all that one of the greatest feminists this country has ever known.
I met Morgentaler once. I was 17 or 18. He was speaking at a Humanist Canada conference. I was invited there because I won second place in their essay contest -- a big deal, considering it was an essay I'd written on a lark and that my English teacher had seen fit to submit to their magazine. Anyway, the conference itself was fairly dull; even given my militant atheism (admittedly, less pronounced at the time) I wasn't particularly fond of listening to dottering old men go on about how there is no God. It's sort of a non-starter for me.
But Morgentaler. Shit. I can't even remember what he talked about; all I remember was how awestruck I was because I got to shake his hand. I'd grown up hearing about him -- this heroic, larger-than-life figure who had gone to jail so that women could have control over their own bodies. I couldn't figure out why he did it. It wasn't like anyone would ever force him to become a baby oven. But he was willing to give up his career, his freedom, even his life if necessary, to protect the rights of all of us.
Shortly after that, a friend of mine had a condom break and wound up pregnant. The clinic that performed her abortion was one founded by Morgentaler. She could have had it done at any hospital, but the clinic was better, more private, more compassionate. It was just a routine thing; one day she was a pregnant teenager; the next day, she had her life back.
Even then, I still didn't get it. I was too young to remember when abortion was illegal in this country. Not just that; I don't think I'd ever met anyone who thought it should be illegal. Sure, friends of mine (mostly the religious ones) were against it, but they weren't exactly going to stop someone else from getting one. It wasn't until I started using the internet that I actually met people who thought that they should have more say over what happens to my body than I do.
It's amazing to watch those clips of protests in front of the clinics and to think of a time when an abortion doctor faced life in prison if convicted. But now, hearing the rhetoric spouted south of the border, listening (as I did recently) to a once-prominent feminist talking on the radio about how she voted for Bush because invading Iraq and bolstering Israel's military were more important to her than the reproductive rights of American women (I can only assume she was post-menopausal)...I am reminded that it's far easier to have one's rights taken away than to gain them back.
One thing I liked about this movie was that they didn't downplay Morgentaler's politics at all. He's a Holocaust survivor, and his father was a socialist, a union organizer, and a member of the Bund. His belief in a woman's right to choose, I suspect, comes out of that tradition -- there was no attempt to turn this into a Great Moment in Canadian History. It was a story as much grounded in the shtetl as in Montréal. The best part of the movie, I thought, comes when he's in prison. He's finally won the respect of a group of fellow prisoners (one of whom had called him a babykiller), when a guard gets pissed off at him and tries to drag him off to his cell. He looks at the guard and says: "I survived Auschwitz and Dachau. I can survive here. I'll be getting out soon, but you? You're in here for life."
So here's to you, Mr. Morgentaler. Womanizing, neurotic, arrogant, and despite all that one of the greatest feminists this country has ever known.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 08:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 04:55 am (UTC)same thing here. oh...& then there was a big hullaballoo when i found out that some front desk staff refused to book appointments for abortions for patients at the walk-in clinic i was at. half the staff refused to do it & then i was a pariah because i told them they were all idiots & booking specialist appointments was their job. then i got the job a the clinic & people refused to speak to me during my last two weeks there. oh, aside from 'i can't believe that you help women kill their babies!' or 'women who have abortions are SELFISH.'
oh! & then there was the catholic woman who told me that i should reconsider my decision because the clinic "took life" & that she'd pray for me.
i'll stop babbling about the anti-choice in yr journal now.
but i enjoyed the movie as much as i could. it was, like you said, pretty low-budget production & i was kinda pissed that they crammed everything in the last half-hour.
but now that he has a movie & a biography about him, where's dr. morgentaler's effin' order of canada award!?
no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 05:00 am (UTC)All of the most awesome Canadians are under-recognized. I want to know when Rick Mercer will make his bid to be PM, personally.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 06:23 am (UTC)Some years earlier, I has done door-to-door signiture collection to get abortion legalization on the ballot in Michigan (before the US Supreme Court struck down anti-abortion laws). The vehemence, vitriol, and irrationality of the people who opposed abortion were my first real exposure to the fanaticism that flows unseen beneath the surface of US society. And all I had to try to answer it with was logic and compassion.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 08:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 11:35 pm (UTC)that icon
Date: 2005-01-06 09:21 pm (UTC)Re: that icon
Date: 2005-01-06 11:22 pm (UTC)Re: that icon
Date: 2005-01-07 04:43 am (UTC)