A couple of weeks ago, the Calgary Herald ran a lengthy editorial pointing out that most nations in the world have some legal restrictions on abortion. Canada does not. There are no legal restrictions on terminating a pregnancy at any time before birth. Until that baby is outside the body of the mother, the child is fair game.

The Herald editorial elicited an angry letter from Calgary abortionist Dr. Ted Busheikin and his colleague Celia Posyniak, who runs the Kensington Clinic, a private, for-profit abortion clinic in Calgary.

They stated in their letter, “There is no such thing as full-term abortion on demand. No doctors, hospitals or clinics in Canada provide it.”

The pair then go on to talk about standards of care, regulations and “ethics and the bounds of good medical practice.” They outline the guidelines instituted by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA) with respect to late-term abortions, that is, those done later than 20 weeks gestation. They claim that less than 1% are performed at that stage.

There are many problems with their letter. First, medical guidelines are just that, guidelines. They do not have the force of law and they can, and are, broken. For example, under the guidelines in Alberta, post-20 week abortions are supposed to be performed in hospitals, not clinics. Yet according to Alberta Health statistics, private clinics have performed these late abortions every year since 1992. For 2002, private clinics did 6 post-20 week abortions.

In addition, although some late abortions are performed surgically, others are done by induction of labour in hospitals. These are usually the so-called “genetic terminations”, abortions done because doctors suspect the baby has some anomaly. These anomalies can range from serious defects, such as anencephaly to less serious and non-lethal conditions like spina bifida, Down syndrome or cleft palate. The tests used to determine these “defects” are often incorrect. These late procedures, though intended to kill the baby, are done by induction of labour so they do not show up in the abortion statistics. They are coded as stillbirths.

We learned about these “genetic terminations” after nurses at Calgary's Foothills Hospital complained to the media in 1999 that they were being forced to assist in these late-term abortions and occasionally the babies did not die in the process. Rather, in several cases the babies survived the procedure and according to the nurses, the babies were given no assistance but left to die. One of the cases, which the hospital initially denied, was a 35-week baby that the nurses said lived for about 12 hours before dying.

The ensuing scandal and investigations led to a revision in the CPSA guidelines to include a provision that for “terminations” after 20 weeks of gestation, “patient and physician may consider feticide prior to initiating the termination procedure. Feticide may be done by intracardiac injection of KCl into the fetus in utero” Translation: Before doctors induce labour to kill the baby in the womb they can inject potassium chloride (a fertilizer which kills humans) into the baby's heart to ensure it will be dead before it is “born.” Dr. Busheikin and Ms. Posyniak failed to mention this guideline.

We have no idea how many of these “terminations” occur or the reasons for them. Alberta Pro-Life spent two years trying to get this information through the province's lame Freedom of Information process but to no avail.

The pair ended their letter by saying, “to state that Canadian women are having ‘full-term abortions on demand' is ignorant and inflammatory. To present an ill-informed opinion is just bad journalism.”

The column was not ill-informed. It spoke about laws and compared the laws on abortion in more than a dozen European nations to the lack of any laws in Canada. Whatever guidelines are in place across the country, they do not have the force of law and it is unclear whether they are applied and monitored with any rigour. The fact remains that Canada has no law protecting unborn babies from abortion at any stage of pregnancy. Even the CPSA guidelines admit that fact. They state: “under Canadian law the unborn fetus does not have status or rights as a person. These rights exist only after complete delivery of the live fetus from the body of the pregnant woman.”

Dr. Busheikin should not pretend otherwise.