Shock report finds over 11% of late-term abortions in Canada result in live births

A recent study found that 11.2% of second trimester abortions committed in Quebec between 1989 and 2021 resulted in live births — a significantly higher number than previous reports estimated.

Last year, the Abortion Survivors Network (ASN) released research which pointed to a .21% failure rate for abortion, meaning that for every 1,000 abortions committed, 2.1 children survive. The newer study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, found that far more children are actually surviving abortions.

Abortion reporting in Canada is required, unlike the United States, so statistics are easier to come by regarding the number of abortions committed, as well as potential complications – like the so-called “dreaded complication” of abortion survivors.

The Quebec study was conducted by Nathalie Augur, Emile Brousseau, Aimina Ayoub, and William D. Fraser, and the three examined the records of abortions committed during the 30-plus-year time period. Of the 13,777 abortions committed, there were 1,541 live births.

A live birth in Quebec is defined as “the presence of any sign of life, including breathing, heartbeat, umbilical cord pulsation, or muscle movement, in a fetus that is removed from a mother, whether or not the cord is cut or placenta attached.” Live births “must be registered, regardless of gestational age, reason for birth, or length of time before death” under Quebec law.

The average survival time was two hours, though some survived for as long as one day. One quarter (25%) were sent to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and 5.5% received palliative care. It is not clear what happened in the rest of the cases.

Most of the live births took place after an induction abortion, where abortionists forcibly induce labor, often injecting a feticide like digoxin or potassium chloride beforehand to kill the preborn child. The researchers recommended this injection happens every time to avoid a live birth — but even with the feticide injections, 1 in 20 babies still survived.

Quebec is hardly alone in this issue. The Interim noted that other countries have reported significant numbers of abortion survivors. One Austrian study found that over 50% of abortions between 20 and 24 weeks gestation resulted in a live birth; a Swiss study found that 40% of abortions committed between 22 and 27 weeks resulted in a live birth, and a United Kingdom study found that 3.2 per cent of all abortions resulted in a live birth.

Babies are known to survive abortions in the United States, too.

In Florida, there were 16 abortion survivors recorded between 2015 and 2018 alone. In another report, 10 babies were recorded as having been born alive in 2015 in just three states: Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan. More recently in Minnesota, five children were recorded as having been born alive in 2021.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also revealed that over 100 infants survived abortions, at least for a short time, over the course of 12 years. Another report revealed that 100 babies were born alive following abortions in just five states, over the course of about 10 years. And these are just the survivors we know about.

As Live Action News has previously documented, “Only a handful of states require cases of abortion survivors to be documented, and Live Action News found 220 cases of abortion survivors reported from 1999-2023 in just eight states. Because of a lack of consistent reporting, that number is almost certainly substantially higher.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

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