Throughout history, attitudes towards abortion have been influenced by religious beliefs, social mores, and attitudes towards women and the family. Abortion is a taboo subject that has troubled Canadian society because it involves widely varying viewpoints about individual rights, societal responsibilities, moral norms and the role of women in society. In 1969, Parliament amended the Criminal Code by specifying in section 287 when can an abortion be legally performed. Procuring the miscarriage of a pregnant female was made as an offence but the Criminal Code stated that the criminal sanctions against abortion would not apply when a doctor performing an abortion or if the abortion had been previously approved by the therapeutic abortion committee of an approved hospital, and was also carried out in an …show more content…
v. Morgentaler, Morgentaler was accused of setting a clinic to perform abortions for women who had not obtained a certificate from a therapeutic abortion committee of an approved hospital. My role in researching about the case is to offer an overview of the argument of the appellant and the respondent for the case R. v. Morgentaler and review the viewpoints of both parties using new pieces. Morgentaler argued that section 251 of the Criminal Code violates a woman's right to "life, liberty and security of the person" under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In the end, the decision of R. v. Morgentaler agreed that section 287 of the Criminal Code infringed a woman's right to security of the person, therefore, it is not a reasonable limit demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society; the process by which a woman was deprived of the right to abortion was not in accord with fundamental justice. The Supreme Court also concluded that in practice, the therapeutic abortion committee system imposed excessive psychological pressure on women seeking abortions and made the medical procedure more dangerous by delaying