Abortion Rights in Canada are Under Attack

Forced-birth groups are testing their strategy

NurPhoto / Contributor/Getty Images

My friends in Canada, and anyone else who cares about human rights and not descending into fascism, The National Post sounded a right-wing dog whistle about abortion, and you need to pay attention. We have lived this in the United States, and trust me when I tell you, this is how it starts.

The cause for alarm? The National Post, a right-wing national rag, ran a piece featuring an undercover forced birther allegedly visiting four clinics, claiming she was 22 weeks pregnant and trying to arrange an abortion. The videos were highly edited and apparently filmed two years ago, when the person who made them claimed to have been pregnant. I make no excuses for not taking the word of someone who shoots clandestine videos about abortion. When someone publicly admits to misleading multiple people, their word is meaningless.

We are apparently supposed to be shocked that compassionate staff who took this person at face value tried to help. Wow, no one wants that in a medical professional, she said, dripping with sarcasm.

There are several major issues that should have all Canadians concerned, not just those who vocally support abortion rights.

Language as Propaganda

We Canadians who believe that pregnancy does not strip a person of their human rights must all get on the same page, so say it with me now: There is no such thing as a late-term abortion. Editors at the National Post, take note.

Here’s an excellent chart from the American College of OB/GYN (ACOG) about gestational ages and what they mean:

Late term means 41 weeks and beyond. It does not mean after 24 weeks.

Why do forced birthers use the phrase “Late-Term”? Facts are not their strong suit, so there’s that. But mostly it’s to create confusion, so the public, who doesn’t think about abortion frequently, (because unlike forced birthers, they don’t have a fetal fetish), will believe that women are routinely showing up for abortions at 40 weeks because… reasons.

When I first started writing about abortion in the United States, about 15 or so years ago, I admit that I used the wording “Late-Term” a few times when referring to a third-trimester abortion, much in the same way I used to use the phrasing, ‘Pro-Life.” I quickly became wise to the insidious nature of forced-birth propaganda. They don’t get to change definitions, and we shouldn’t let them.

As a result, I am careful to only use the correct terminology when writing about abortion, and there is no excuse for other writers and editors not to do the same. When you see the words “Late-term Abortion” used as if it is a thing, know that you are dealing with propaganda.

Clandestine Videos are an Effective Forced Birth Tactic

Part of the assault on abortion rights in the United States included clandestine and heavily edited videos recorded at Planned Parenthood clinics and released in 2015 by the forced-birth group, the Center for Medical Progress. These videos became a significant talking point in the lead-up to the Republican Primary. Yes, the primary that gave us the first Trump Presidency, where Trump promised the forced-birthers everything they wanted, and so they got the Supreme Court.

This appearance of heavily edited videos from a Canadian forced-birther is deja vu, especially as this “story” broke about a week before the United Conservative Party of Alberta’s annual meeting, which is Nov 28-30. Is there an abortion agenda at the meeting? What a great question. Why yes, yes there is. The UCP will be voting on resolution #29, which seeks to stop public funding for third-trimester abortions “except in cases where the physical health of the mother is at serious risk.” You can read more about that resolution and how it is a forced-birth screed filled with disinformation here (fact checked by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada).

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada points out that resolutions at party conventions are not binding, but in 2024, “all 35 resolutions proposed at the UCP AGM passed, with 10 already in the process of becoming government policy.”

I don’t believe in coincidences. The most plausible explanation is these videos were released at a time when they would have the most political impact in Canada. The goal of forced birthers is to get any forced-birth propaganda into law, and this becomes the thin edge of the wedge. The press is wholly unprepared to appropriately report on this propaganda about third trimester abortion, and can even be incentivized to spread propaganda, so disinformation spreads. People rarely speak about the importance of third-trimester abortions, because they have been led to erroneously believe they are bad or shameful, and so there are few opportunities to correct the record. Over time, people become accustomed to restrictions. And so the cycle continues.

Abortion Restrictions are the Thin Edge of the Fascist Wedge

Abortion is about bodily autonomy, and the person who is pregnant must have more rights than the fetus; otherwise, being pregnant strips you of personhood. A government that claims half the population could be non-persons is dangerous, but especially to those who can get pregnant.

Here’s how abortion restrictions fit neatly into a fascist agenda:

• They “other” those who can get pregnant, casting them as bad. And when you can “other” one group and get the collective to think of them as bad, you can do it to more groups.

• Controls the roles women can have in society.

• Increases poverty for women.

• Makes reproductive labor a duty for women, not a choice.

But Other Countries where Abortion is Legal Have Abortion Restrictions

When you talk about what might happen in Alberta with family and friends, this question will come up, so let me give you some answers.

First of all, these other countries with different abortion laws are not Canada, and they have different laws about many things. And none of them are sitting next to a forced-birth, wannabe fascist regimen that is inconvenienced by a neighbor to the North with no abortion law.

By the way, these countries shouldn’t have abortion restrictions either. Having abortion laws does not make them more enlightened; it is Canada that has set the standard worldwide, because abortion is a human right. Patriarchal societies create laws about abortion to control women. By getting rid of its abortion law, Canada is the only country to have unshackled itself from that specific link in the patriarchal chain.

Why Do People Need Abortions after 24 weeks?

I don’t need to know why someone is having their fifth pregnancy, or having IVF, or having a hip replacement instead of more physical therapy. I just want them to receive competent, compassionate medical care.

We do not have precise abortion statistics to know how many abortions happen in the third trimester in Canada. The best guess is that there are about 960 abortions that occur at or after 21 weeks, which includes part of the second trimester. Most of these abortions will happen before 24 weeks. From personal experience as an abortion provider, I can tell you that most people who seek to terminate a pregnancy at or after 24 weeks are terminating close to 24 weeks, and most are for severe fetal anomalies that went undiagnosed until the third trimester. Pregnancy is always a higher risk than abortion, and many don’t want to endure weeks of people asking when they are due, knowing their delivery is going to end with a baby dying in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). As someone whose premature baby died at birth, I can tell you that if I had the option of having a general anesthetic so I didn’t have to experience any of it, it would have been a blessing. It’s so perverted to want to take that choice away from people who have already had so much taken away.

Are there a few abortions after 24 weeks that are not fetal anomalies? Possibly, but since we don’t have statistics, we can’t know. But consider a child who is raped by a brother or father, and by the time the case makes it through the courts (because some families tend to keep these crimes a secret until the pregnancy is apparent), the pregnant child could be past 24 weeks. Who are we serving by forcing this eleven-year-old to carry this pregnancy to term?

And we need to consider what happens to women who want an abortion, but can’t get one. We know from the Turnaway study in America that followed women at or after 15 weeks of pregnancy who sought abortion care that being unable to access an abortion because the pregnancy was past the gestational age limit of the clinic meant enduring a higher rate of poverty, and their children were more likely to have developmental delays. Women who were turned away were also more likely to suffer health complications than those who had second-trimester abortions, and two of the 143 women who were turned away died from a pregnancy-related complication.

Canada, We Cannot Afford to Treat this as a One-off Media failure or a Fringe Stunt

Look where things are now in the United States. Abortion is essentially illegal in multiple states, women are dying from sepsis because they can’t get the terminations they need, and several states proposed bills that would that would treat abortion as homicide and South Carolina lawmakers have proposed a bill that would leave women who have abortions open to the death penalty. No, really.

Canadians should not be confident that they are protected from attacks on abortion. The American abortion fiasco didn’t happen all at once; it happened over decades and is the direct result of the persistence of forced-birthers and settling for the concept of gestational age limits, which enshrined into law the idea that some abortions are bad, paving the way for the gradual erosion of abortion rights. As legislation that further restricted access cropped up, there were plenty of people who said, “Abortion rights will be protected, don’t be so alarmist.” And now abortion is banned in 13 states, and illegal after six weeks in four more states.

These forced-birth videos, their amplification, and their timing follow a tested strategy designed to attack third-trimester abortion to soften the ground for harmful abortion restrictions. Forced-birth groups aren’t subtle, and they aren’t original. If Canadians don’t recognize what’s happening, they will sleepwalk into the same nightmare the United States is living. The antidote is vigilance and unapologetic clarity. Abortion is health care, and it is a human right. Pay attention, don’t spread forced-birth propaganda, and speak up, which includes defending third-trimester abortions. And in Alberta, that also means working on recalling UCP MLAs (14 are now facing recall petitions).

This is the moment to bolt the door before it has a chance to crack open.

References

Gerdts C, Dobkin L, Foster DG, Schwarz EB. Side Effects, Physical Health Consequences, and Mortality Associated with Abortion and Birth after an Unwanted Pregnancy. Womens Health Issues. 2016 Jan-Feb;26(1):55-9. doi: 10.1016/j.whi.2015.10.001. Epub 2015 Nov 11. PMID: 26576470.

Lauren J. Ralph, Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, Daniel Grossman, et al. Self-reported Physical Health of Women Who Did and Did Not Terminate Pregnancy After Seeking Abortion Services: A Cohort Study. Ann Intern Med.2019;171:238-247. [Epub 11 June 2019]. doi:10.7326/M18-1666