Late-term abortions are being performed in Canada without a serious medical reason
In 2013, former longtime Liberal MP Dr. Carolyn Bennett, in a terse letter to the National Post , said no doctor in Canada can terminate a pregnancy after 24 weeks unless the mother’s life is at risk or the fetus has serious complications.
“The assertion that late-term abortions can be performed ‘for any reason, or no reason at all’ is just not true,” wrote Bennett, who challenged a columnist to find a single late-term abortion performed in Canada “to a healthy mother with a healthy fetus.”
In fact, there need not be a medical reason for later gestational age abortion in Canada, according to Abortion Care Canada, formerly the National Abortion Federation of Canada.
“There does not have to be a specific medical concern that is named” to get an abortion beyond the first trimester, said executive director TK Pritchard.
Pritchard was responding to secret videos allegedly taken at abortion clinics in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver by Alissa Golob, co-founder of the anti-abortion group RightNow, in 2023, when Golob was more than five months pregnant with her third child. The videos are less than 10 minutes each and contain edited excerpts from conversations with clinic staff that sometimes lasted an hour or two. Three of the videos have been posted on the group’s website and shared on social media. A fourth, from Calgary, has yet to be posted. National Post has chosen not to name the clinics.
Golob said she went undercover to see if it was possible to get a late-term abortion, “no questions asked, specifically for no medical reason.”
In the Toronto video, Golob was allegedly told that the clinic’s limit was 24 week’s gestation, but that women seeking abortions later in the pregnancy could be referred to a nearby hospital that, an employee believed, “sometimes go up to 32” weeks. Pregnancy is normally 40 weeks.
When Golob later met with the what she says was the clinic’s abortion provider and asked if her health had to be at risk for a hospital referral, the doctor responded that “abortion care like that hasn’t existed since the 1960s.”
In terms of limits, “that’s a different answer depending on who’s answering it,” the doctor said, according to the video. “The law in Canada and the U.S. overall doesn’t have a ‘too far,’” she said.
“I can tell you that once things reach 35, 36 weeks, it might be impossible to find someone that would do it, OK? Twenty-four, up to 30 weeks, it’s very possible. The system certainly doesn’t think it’s too far.”
When asked if she had to prove her health had to be at risk, the video shows Golob was told: “No, absolutely not.”
According to another video, what appears to be a social worker at a Vancouver abortion clinic told Golob, who was then just under 24 weeks pregnant, that about 60 per cent of unplanned pregnancies end in abortion “because people are like, ‘It’s not the right time, I’m not ready, life has been so uncertain these last few years’ or ‘I have health concerns’ or ‘I already have kids.’ Just any reason you can think of.
“But there doesn’t have to be a reason,” the employee allegedly said. “It could just be, ‘I don’t want to be pregnant.'”
There was no medical necessity required for a late-term abortion at the clinics visited, Golob said. “You can tell the clinics anything, and they will accept it as a valid reason to abort a third-trimester, viable baby.”
Pro-abortion groups said the videos are an attempt to create a “demonized” view of abortion.
“They’re a good example of something that is heavily edited, deceptive, heavily narrated and they’re basically built to elicit an emotional response from the public to support an effort to restrict abortion and gain support to make that happen,” said Frederique Chabot, executive director of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights.
“They are presenting bits of the conversation. We don’t know what they have presented to those health-care providers.”
Golob said the videos were edited to focus on “the pieces where they were specifically talking about late-term and third-trimester abortions.”
Later this month, at their annual general meeting in Edmonton, members of Alberta’s United Conservative Party will be voting on a resolution to stop public funding for third-trimester abortions “except in the case where the physical health of the mother is at serious risk.”
The timing of the hidden camera videos “is not super mysterious … they are targeting health-care providers who offer specialized care to people who are vulnerable,” Chabot said.
“Who and how does it happen that people need that care?” Chabot said. “It’s not someone who wakes up randomly and frivolously and says, ‘You know what? I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want this pregnancy.’ Usually, there’s some pretty good complex, either medical or psychosocial reasons, that make some people, in rare cases, need that care.”
Those can include barriers to care that made it more difficult for a woman to access an abortion earlier. “Or it can be someone who’s in an abusive relationship and doesn’t manage to go to early appointments because of power and control in their own relationship,” Chabot said.
“Maybe it’s because they are facing a mental health crisis … because of economic situations, or homelessness or drug addiction.”
“The question becomes, do we punish them or do we help them?”
“In Canada, we have nothing that criminalizes abortion care at any point in the pregnancy,” Chabot said. “There is no criminal law that says, ‘At this random time, this is when abortion will not be provided.'”
The Post was not able to independently verify where the videos were filmed and who is speaking in them. The Toronto and Montreal clinics did not respond to requests for comment. The Vancouver clinic said it was reviewing a request for comment but did not respond by publication deadline.
“Our position is clear: the government considers abortion to be a health issue and has no intention of introducing limits or conditions regarding access to it,” Caroline Proulx, Quebec’s minister for seniors and status of women told CBC/Radio-Canada in a French statement after the Montreal video was published.
Pritchard, of Abortion Care Canada, said Bennett wasn’t necessarily wrong when she made her remarks in 2013. “I think that one of the important things to remember is that abortion care is evolving all the time, and slowly (there are) more people who can provide later care, and are being trained and able to offer that care, so this is a shifting and moving conversation.”
Federal officials appear to have backed away from Bennett’s never-without-a-medical reason assertion. The government’s website states that late-term abortions “ usually occur ” because of medical risks.
“But I also think there’s an important conversation around what we define as ‘risk,’ particularly to the pregnant person,” Chabot said.
With no legal boundaries on abortion in Canada, there are also no legal restrictions on gestational age limits — how far along in the pregnancy is too far. Legally, a woman could have an abortion at any stage of pregnancy. A Leger poll in May 2024 found a majority of Canadians strongly (63 per cent) or somewhat (17 per cent) support a woman’s right to abortion if she so chooses. However, abortions late in pregnancy can be particularly ethically and morally challenging.
In 2023, 101,553 abortions were reported by hospitals and clinics in Canada, according to data compiled by CIHI, the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Just over half were surgical abortions, the others medical abortions using abortion drugs that first became available in 2017 and that can be used up to nine weeks of pregnancy.
Most abortions in Canada occur before 12 weeks of gestational age, which is based on the number of weeks from the first day of a woman’s last normal menstrual period.
The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada defines a later-term abortion as one that takes place after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
In 2020, of 14,815 induced abortions reported by hospitals outside Quebec that provided information on gestational age, 4.4 per cent (652) were performed after 21 weeks’ gestation, according to CIHI. In 23 per cent of abortions, the gestational age was unknown.
The agency no longer reports gestational age due to “low coverage,” meaning those tables in the past “were derived from a very small proportion of total abortions” and the data may be too small to meet privacy and reporting standards, a CIHI spokesperson said in an email to National Post.
According to a recent scoping review, abortion care “is only consistently available in Canada up to 23 weeks and six days” gestation and women who need abortion care beyond 24 weeks’ pregnancy typically have to find it in the U.S. Because the federal government considers abortion a medically necessary service, out-of-country abortion care is covered by most provinces (women are expected to cover travel and accommodation costs).
One study published earlier this year involving interviews with 28 clinicians providing second or third trimester abortions for medical reasons in Canada found that some sites only offered termination for “clearly lethal” fetal malformations. Others had an “open door policy” where termination was offered for any condition “other than social termination.”
“Many participants reported that options for termination were not offered to patients when not medically indicated (i.e. ‘social terminations’) and that the provision of this care was a ‘completely different’ process or pathway from the participants’ services,” t he researchers wrote.
With most second, and almost all third trimester (28 weeks or more) abortions, a drug is injected under ultrasound to stop the fetal heart and reduce the risk of a live birth. Later-term abortions are performed via instruments — dilation and evacuation — or induced labour. Medication is used to soften and dilate a woman’s cervix beforehand. With induced labour, women are also given a drug to induce contractions. They experience labour the same way they would if they were delivering a live baby.
Golob has worked in the anti-abortion movement for 15 years. “I knew the line that (late-term abortions) were only done for serious medical situations wasn’t true, but it’s really impossible to prove that. You can try to say that’s not the case, but it’s better if it comes out of the horse’s mouth, which is kind of what I wanted to do.”
At the Toronto clinic, “I specifically asked if I needed to prove that I was at risk and (the abortion provider) said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ It obviously seemed like I wasn’t the first woman to come in and ask about that,” Golob said.
“I think it’s kind of hard to stick to your talking points when the abortionists are contradicting them in the videos.”
A 2020 DART & Maru/Blue poll conducted for National Post found seven in 10 Canadians say abortion should be generally illegal in the last three months of pregnancy, from 28 weeks on.
Pritchard said access to abortion later in pregnancy is “a pretty complex issue and not one that can be explained in a soundbite” or a “snapshot moment in one individual’s circumstances.
“That’s not the dominant narrative, that’s not what most abortion care looks like.”
While abortions beyond the first 12 weeks are much less common, and most abortions happen in the first trimester, “absolutely there are abortions that happen beyond the first trimester,” Pritchard said.
Most abortions that happen later in pregnancy are shown through research to be based on several common factors, Pritchard added, including a woman not being able to find an abortion provider, a diagnosis of a fetal or maternal health complication and experiences of marginalization “that can make access to care difficult.”
But does there have to be a fetal or maternal health risk? “No,” Pritchard said.
Studies suggest young, single women with lower education levels and those who already have children are more likely to seek late-term abortions than older, married women who have never given birth.
The videos include disturbing discussions concerning the three to five per cent risk of the woman aborting at home. The cervical preparation can increase the risk before the scheduled procedure. “It’s rarely dangerous but it is horrible in terms of the experience,” Golob was allegedly told. “We try to avoid it of course as much as we can.”
Pritchard said “sharing some of what a complication might look like, and making sure people are aware of that — that is simply good health care.
“You should, as a client, receive information about the risks and concerns and what might happen and what it might look like so that you can make an informed decision. But it’s framed as not good health care, and I think this is really trying to create a moment where we are suggesting that the providers are not being responsible and that is simply not the case.”
While Pritchard said it’s “not particularly easy” to access late-term abortions, hospital-based providers provide “up to around 26 weeks across the country. That’s a more common number. Whether or not providers do at points provide beyond that, there are often very individual circumstances and decisions that are made by entire health-care teams.”
According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, deliveries at 24 weeks’ gestation have a 42 to 59 per cent survival rate. Deliveries at 25 weeks have a 67 to 76 per cent survival rate.
Deliveries before 23 weeks have a five to six per cent survival rate. The risk of serious health conditions is “universal” among the rare survivors.
Golob said she was struck by “how nonchalantly and almost cavalierly they were talking about referring me” for a possible third-trimester abortion.
“I made up softball excuses that were entirely vague” as to why she was considering a late-term abortion, she said. “That was always my goal, to say I was on the fence to see how late they would offer me the abortion.”
She added: “I think the more information we have about this subject, and that we’re not deceived by claims that have flagrant disinformation in them, like the fact that (late-term abortions) don’t happen unless it’s medically necessary…. Is important to the conversation.”
According to the video of what appears to be a Toronto clinic, Golob was advised not to proceed if she was uncertain. “A lot of people … they think, ‘I’ll just get it over with’ and then they’ll be done and that means my brain will just accept it and it’ll shut off all of these doubts and all of these thoughts,'” a doctor allegedly said.
“That’s not what happens when you’re not ready … that’s what happens when we know, ‘I had to do this, I had to do this.'”
The apparent doctor said the referring hospital would also be uncomfortable. “If it’s kind of a coin toss whether this should happen or not, they’re also going to encourage you to wait longer,” she said. She added that the hospital “has the ability to take the fetus out and to complete the abortion well beyond 24 weeks.
“They just do it a little bit differently in that case.”
National Post
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.
Comments
Be the first to comment