Canada allows third trimester abortions on demand: report

“There does not have to be a specific medical concern that is named” in order to get an abortion after the first trimester, said TK Pritchard, the executive director of Abortion Care Canada.

Pritchard’s response was in reference to videos taken secretly by Alissa Golob, co-founder of RightNow, a pro-life organization, when she was about five months pregnant. Golob was interested in learning whether she could receive a late-term abortion, “No questions asked, specifically for no medical reason,” according to the National Post.

Golob was told by an employee in one video, apparently from a Toronto clinic, that their facility’s limit was 24 weeks of gestation, but that later-term abortions could be referred to a nearby hospital that, the employee believed, “sometimes go up to 32” weeks. Meeting with the clinic’s abortion provider, Golob was told, when she asked if her health needed to be at risk for a referral to the hospital, that “abortion care like that hasn’t existed since the 1960s.”

The provider added, “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.” and was told, “No, absolutely not,” when she asked if her health had to be at risk.

In another video from a Vancouver abortion clinic, someone that appeared to be a social worker told Golob (then just under 24 weeks along) said that about 60 percent 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 just "don’t want to be pregnant,” per the Post. The employee reportedly said, “But there doesn’t have to be a reason.”

While Frederique Chabot, executive director of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights criticized the videos, stating “They’re a good example of something that is heavily edited, deceptive, heavily narrated,” Golob countered, saying that the video edits were made to show “the pieces where they were specifically talking about late-term and third trimester abortions.”

In Canada, we have nothing that criminalizes abortion care at any point in the pregnancy,” Chabot said, adding, “there is no criminal law that says, ‘At this random time, this is when abortion will not be provided.’

On the Canadian government’s website, it says that late-term abortions “usually occur” because of medical risks, and abortions are not limited at any gestation time.

Back in 2013, former Liberal MP Dr Carolyn Bennett said that "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."

In 2020, 14,815 induced abortions were reported outside Quebec and of those, 4.4 percent were performed after 21 weeks of gestation, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.