In every revolution there is some watershed moment that crystallizes the conflict and then changes it, irreversibly. In Canada’s debate over abortion rights, that moment came when a Montreal gynecologist, Dr. Henry Morgentale, declared openly and proudly that he had performed hundreds of abortions in contravention of the law at that time. Canadian law allowed therapeutic abortions – those that threatened the health of the mother – and left it up to the hospital three-doctor panels to decide what procedures met that standard;. Morgentale, who believed that any woman who desires an abortion should have one, did not clear his procedures with any panel.

On this day, January 28, in 1988, thanks in large part to Dr. Henry Morgentale’s work, Canada’s Supreme Court overturned the therapeutic panel requirement, striking down the last legal barrier to abortions in the country.

It was Morgentale’s case that went to the Supreme Court. After his illegal abortion practice was predictably challenged in court, which ruled in favor of the government, Morgentale appealed to the highest judicial body in the land. There, a seven-judge panel agreed in a 5-2 decision that the abortion panels violated an article of the constitution regarding the “security of persons.”