R v Morgentaler, [1988] 1 SCR 30 was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which held that the abortion provision in the Criminal Code was unconstitutional because it violated women's rights under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ("Charter") to security of the person.

By doing so, they were attempting to bring public attention to their cause, claiming a woman should have complete control over the decision on whether to have an abortion.

Moreover, he found that the administrative system failed to provide adequate evaluation criteria which allowed the committees to grant or deny therapeutic abortions arbitrarily.

Dickson found that the violation could not be justified under section 1, focusing on the means chosen by the government to achieve its objectives.

She emphasized how section 251 violated a woman's personal autonomy by preventing her from making decisions affecting her and her fetus' life.

By removing the women's ability to make the decision and giving it to a committee would be a clear violation of their liberty and security of person.

Wilson scathingly noted the state is effectively taking control of a woman's capacity to reproduce.

Wilson went on to agree with the other judges that section 251 (prohibiting the performance of an abortion except under certain circumstances) is procedurally unfair, adding that the violation of section 7 also has the effect of violating section 2(a) of the Charter (freedom of conscience) in that the requirements for a woman to be permitted to obtain an abortion legally (or for a doctor to legally perform one) were in many cases so onerous or effectively impossible that they were "resulting in a failure to comply with the principles of fundamental justice".

With the abortion law, the government was supporting one conscientiously-held belief at the expense of another, and in effect, was treating women as a means to an end and depriving them of their "essential humanity".

I believe, for the reasons I gave in discussing the right to liberty, that in a free and democratic society it must be the conscience of the individual.In her analysis of section 1, Wilson noted the value placed on the fetus is proportional to its stage of gestation and the legislation must take that into account.

However, here, the law cannot be justified because it takes the decision-making power away from the woman absolutely and therefore cannot pass the proportionality test.

[5]: 516 [6] The Progressive Conservative government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney made two attempts to pass a new abortion law.

The second attempt, introduced by the Minister of Justice as Bill C-43 in late 1989, would be defeated on a tie vote by the time it came to third reading in Senate on January 31, 1991, leaving Canada without criminal legislation governing abortion.

[10] However, Morgentaler is actually much closer in terms of the issues to the decision (also in 1973) of the Supreme Court of the United States in Doe v Bolton 410 U.S. 179, than to those in Roe.