OP-ED: A minister’s denial meets the record

Richard Dur writes, "28 infants lived. Alberta won’t say what happened to them."

Source: Wikimedia Commons

28 infants lived. Alberta won’t say what happened to them.

By Richard Dur

She said there was “no evidence.”

That was the line in a letter from Alberta’s Health Minister, Adriana LaGrange: “Please know that there is no evidence of live-birth abortions occurring in Alberta.”

She may even be right, in the narrowest, most technical sense. There is no medical category called a “live-birth abortion.” On paper, what doesn’t exist cannot occur. Denial begins with definition: call it something else, and conscience can rest easy.

But outside the paperwork, there are infants – real, living, newborn children – born alive after late-term abortions in Alberta. And that, as her own ministry’s follow-up correspondence and federal data confirm, is not speculation. It is fact.

This is not a debate about Alberta’s abortion policy. It is a question about its treatment of living newborns.

When pressed about her categorical denial, LaGrange referred the matter to officials at Alberta Health. CIHI’s hospital discharge database documents live births following abortion in Alberta (and across Canada) every year, a fact her ministry would acknowledge in writing just days later. Their written response conceded what LaGrange’s statement denied:

“You are correct that the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) is an independent national agency that compiles hospital discharge data… CIHI data for 2023-24 does indicate that 28 live births occurred following termination of pregnancy in acute care settings.”

Those aren’t activists’ numbers; they’re the government’s.

Even without those sobering statistics, Alberta Health Services’ own “Termination of Pregnancy Policy (PS-92, Section 6.4)” explicitly states that a Do-Not-Resuscitate order may be considered “in anticipation of a possible live birth.” In other words: live births from late-term abortions are a known occurrence, significant enough to warrant formal procedural guidance..

LaGrange also writes: “Medical professionals in Alberta are legally and ethically required to provide appropriate care to any infant born alive. Under Canadian law, such infants are recognized as legal persons and are entitled to medical care.” She is correct.

Under Criminal Code section 223(1), any child born alive, breathing or not, with or without a severed umbilical cord, is a legal person. Every one of the 28 infants documented by CIHI met that threshold.

LaGrange’s statement was meant to reassure. Instead, it highlights the line her department, and the system it oversees, may already have crossed.

LaGrange insists that AHS follows “consistent, established clinical guidance for all infants born at the threshold of viability.” In one sense, she is correct: there is consistency. Buried in Section 6.5 of AHS document HCS-183-01 is the line: “A non-interventional approach is recommended.” A cold, bureaucratic consistency that makes no distinction between a premature delivery and a failed abortion. The same policy applies “regardless of the circumstances of birth,” withholding help from every child below the same gestational threshold, no matter how desperately some parents may plead.

LaGrange adds that these decisions are made “in consultation with families.” That sounds compassionate until one faces the reality: in many cases, the very family that sought to end the child’s life in the womb is now consulted on whether the newborn who survived should receive care outside the womb.

It places a newborn’s – now constitutionally protected – right to life in the hands of those who moments earlier consented to his or her killing.

The Ministry’s own correspondence admits that “…feticide may be recommended… to prevent distressing outcomes, such as a live birth in the context of a termination.” Why is feticide (literally the “killing-of-a-fetus”) recommended? Because a live birth obligates medical care, and because the “distressing outcome” being avoided is the baby emerging alive. The purpose is to ensure the child dies inside the womb so that no care is legally required outside it.

Yet the same correspondence notes: “…some families choose to proceed without feticide so they can hold and meet their baby, even briefly.” In other words: a deliberate live birth following a labour-induced abortion. The dissonance is staggering. A system that sanctions ending a child’s life then speaks tenderly of “meeting” that same child as it dies, not by tragic accident, but by design.

Late-term abortions are often justified as involving “severe anomalies incompatible with life.” But prenatal testing is far from infallible. False positives occur, and some babies labeled “incompatible with life” have survived for decades.

And many so-called anomalies are not even fatal at all. Children with Down syndrome, spina bifida, or other manageable conditions are often targeted for termination - not because they cannot live, but because society has decided they should not. Diagnosis becomes judgment; care becomes culling. It is eugenics in everything but name, the selective erasure of those deemed unfit to live.

And as Alberta Health’s own correspondence confirms, these live births are not speculative or always inadvertent. They are foreseen – sometimes planned – and all too often dismissed by officials and “experts” as “far-fetched,” or “easily disproved.” And yet, here they are.

LaGrange reassures Albertans that “abortions beyond 21 weeks’ gestation are generally considered only in cases involving serious or fatal fetal conditions, or when the pregnancy poses significant risks to the mother’s life or physical health.”

That may sound generally reassuring. But the data tells a more complete story.

A 2023 study from Quebec found that nearly one in three abortions (30.9 percent) performed between 20 and 29 weeks were done for “other” reasons: not for fetal anomalies, nor for life-threatening maternal emergencies.

But even in the tragic cases involving severe fetal conditions, the logic collapses the moment a baby survives the abortion. A child born alive outside the womb is no longer a “fetal anomaly.” They are a newborn with a disability, entitled to care, protection, and a chance at life, as any other newborn.

In maternal emergencies, the rationale to end the life of the fetus ends the moment the child is delivered and outside the mother. Whatever maternal emergency that precipitated the abortion, the newborn is no longer a part of it. At that point, the infant is a patient in his or her own right, and a person experiencing a medical emergency of their own.

According to CIHI’s records, 28 infants were born alive after late-term abortions in Alberta. CIHI does not reveal why those abortions were performed, how long those infants lived, or what care, if any, they received. It simply establishes that they were alive.

Only Minister LaGrange can answer the remaining questions.

If Alberta Health believes these numbers have been misinterpreted, it should release the evidence needed to clarify them. Its refusal to do so deepens mistrust and undermines trust in Alberta’s Health Ministry.

Without breaching patient confidentiality, the Minister should be able to tell Albertans plainly and publicly:

• How many of the 28 live-born infants received resuscitation or any form of active medical care?

• What was the shortest and longest survival time recorded among those infants?

• Were death certificates issued in every case, as required under Alberta’s Vital Statistics Act for any live-born child who dies?

Until Minister LaGrange tells Albertans what became of those 28 children – whether they were comforted, cared for, or simply left to die – her silence is not merely damning. It is the evidence itself. And if even one of those twenty-eight children was left to die without care, it is not merely a failure of compassion. It is a crime.

Further documentation is available at LeftToDie.ca.