Media and Cultural Representations
Morgentaler was the subject of a 1984 National Film Board of Canada documentary Democracy on Trial: The Morgentaler Affair, directed by Paul Cowan.
In 2005, the CTV television network produced a television movie documenting Morgentaler's life and practice called Choice: The Henry Morgentaler Story. The movie is described thus: "It chronicles how the physician defiantly began his fight for women's reproductive rights in 1967, even serving time in a Quebec prison in 1975 on abortion charges. The story culminates with the Supreme Court of Canada deciding to strike down this country's abortion laws in 1988." In an interview with CTV, Morgentaler explains: "I got involved because this was, for me, a fight for justice, for fundamental justice, and the fact that I could possibly do something to help women in spite of a law which did not allow me to do it." "I was willing to go to jail, I was willing to die for it," he told CTV's Canada AM Wednesday. "So when I look back on it, I look at a life of achievement because I achieved a great deal and I'm very proud of it."
A famous Montreal Gazette editorial cartoon by Terry Mosher lampooned Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau's infamous prediction that "the Montreal Olympics can no more have a deficit, than a man can have a baby." After the financially disastrous 1976 Summer Olympics, a pregnant Drapeau is shown placing a telephone call to Morgentaler.
The alternative rock band Me Mom and Morgentaler used the doctor as the inspiration for its name.
Read more about this topic: Henry Morgentaler
Famous quotes containing the words media and, media and/or cultural:
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values.... Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)