Thursday, May 4, 2023

Correcting misinformation about abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation

I found this in Wikipedia on Abortion in Canada.
"The general rule is that few providers offer abortion care beyond 23 weeks and 6 days, but there can be exceptions in certain cases".

Unfortunately I couldn't access this paper, but I'd love to see information on these later than 24 week abortions. In fact why do they hide the info from the public?

  1.  Demont, Carly; Dixit, Anvita; Foster, Angel M. (March 4, 2023). "Later Gestational Age Abortion in Canada: A Scoping Review". The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality. University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress). doi:10.3138/cjhs.2022-0046ISSN 1188-4517.

Then we have this reference from Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, who, as we have seen before, states that abortions in Canada don't happen past 23 weeks and 6 days. 

  1.  "Access at a Glance: Abortion Services in Canada | Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights". Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights. While abortions after 20 weeks are statistically very rare (<0.5% to 2.5% of all abortions), there are people in Canada who require abortion beyond 20 weeks for serious medical reasons. There are only three service locations in Canada that offer abortion up to 23 weeks and 6 days (one in British Columbia, one in Southern Ontario, and one in Quebec). No providers in Canada offer abortion care beyond 23 weeks and 6 days.

Of course Canada does perform abortions past 24 weeks, some of which are born-alive abortions. As I have stated many times before, these are abortions that are greater than 20 weeks gestation and greater than 500 grams, where a child is born alive. 

There are two sources for this fact. One is Statistics Canada. The description for these abortions is 

"Cause of death (ICD-10: Termination of pregnancy, affecting fetus and newborn [P96.4]"

The second source is the Canadian Centre for Health Information ( see 2021-2022, 2020-2021, 2019-2020, 2018-2019, 2017-2018, 2016-2017, 2015-2016 below). 

"Newborns from Termination of Pregnancy are defined by: - entry_code = 'N' - P96.4 Termination of pregnancy, affecting fetus and newborn is captured as the MRDx, with Z38.- Liveborn infants according to place of birth, as diagnosis type (0)...Liveborn abstracts are not expected for gestational age < 20 weeks. Tables 2 and 3 only include livebirths with gestational age =>20 weeks." 

The numbers below detail these live-birth abortion from 20 weeks gestation onwards. Also included are the numbers of live-birth abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation. It is important to note that excluded from these totals are any late-term live-birth abortions from the province of Quebec, and only include hospital late-term live-birth abortions, but nor from clinic settings. Therefore the numbers would be higher than reported.

There are also documented numbers for still birth abortions > 20 weeks gestation, but these stillbirth abortions are not broken down further. Unfortunately,

2021-2022 (19 born-alive abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation)

2020-2021 (16 born-alive abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation)

2019-2020 (10 + born-alive abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation)

2018-2019 (20 born-alive abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation)

2017-2018 (8 + born-alive abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation)

2016-2017 (Unknown born-alive abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation)

2014-2015, (Unknown born-alive abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation2015-2016 (8 + born-alive abortions greater than 24 weeks gestation)

No comments:

Post a Comment