When women appealed to him for help, Dr Morgentaler decided to begin performing abortions, in defiance of existing laws. After about a year, he publicly challenged Canada's abortion law by openly declaring, at a public speaking engagement in Toronto, that he had performed numerous abortions in his clinic in Montreal for quite some time. As a result, he was imprisoned at Bordeaux jail in Montreal in 1975, even though all juries had found him not guilty in court. Eventually, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women had the right to control their own bodies and today there exists no law in Canada concerning abortions. Some provinces have tried to get around the absence of abortion laws by refusing to provide funding for free-standing abortion clinics and this continues to be challenged by Dr. Morgentaler.
Canadian humanists are fully behind the more open abortion policy.
In general, humanists are leaning towards the training of other humanists to become counsellors for addicts and alcoholics, and perhaps attend to those confined to hospitals or prisons who have left religion and find themselves isolated or discriminated against. HAC has always played a strong role in lobbying for support for various causes such as the Newfoundland referendum on transferring schools from control by religious organizations to provincial supervision. According to Statistics Canada, there are 3 million people in our country stating they have no religious beliefs. These citizens are looking for something to take over the role that religion has played in the past. There is also the fact that, as we move into the 21st century and our scientific knowledge of the way the world really works increases, it is becoming more obvious that the many things disseminated by dogmatic religious instructions are no longer valid.