Commentary published in a top Canadian medical journal argued that the inclusion of abortion in stillbirth data is misleading.

Key Takeaways:

• The Canadian Medical Association Journal, the leading medical journal in Canada, published commentary analyzing stillbirth data.

• Stillbirths occur much more frequently in Canada than elsewhere in the world, statistically.

• The reason, however, is that the vague definition allows elective late-term abortions to be counted as stillbirths.

• The journal authors want this determination changed.

The Details:

Canada has been counting abortion deaths after 20 weeks as stillbirths. The commentary was recently highlighted by Right Now HQ, a pro-life nonprofit organization in Canada, in a video posted to social media. Right Now's Alyssa Globe said in a Facebook video:

"Those of you who aren't glued to the Canadian Medical Association Journal, they actually admitted earlier this year that Canada's stillbirth rate appears unusually high because abortions after 20 weeks are included in the country's stillbirth data, not abortion data."

Globe said that this explains how pro-abortion groups can claim that there are no late-term abortions unless a woman's life is in danger. "They point to abortion statistics which show that virtually no abortions happen in the late trimester," she said. "Yeah, that's all crap."

She continued:

"The Canadian Medical Association is telling you that it's all crap. Just to reiterate, abortions after 20 weeks are recorded in our country's data as stillbirths, not abortions, and they're so high that our stillbirth data is double compared to other high-income countries. The article literally says that a key contributor to Canada's international outlier status is the inclusion of the stillbirth count of fetal deaths that follow late termination of pregnancy, so after 20 weeks.

So the Canadian Medical Association is telling us that late-term abortions happen so often that they're being recorded as stillbirths, and now our stillbirth ratio is so high it's double that of other countries, and you're trying to tell us that late-term abortions don't happen in Canada?"

She then added that she went undercover into the Vancouver Women's Hospital at nearly 24 weeks pregnant and was told that after 20 weeks of pregnancy, regardless of if the baby dies by abortion or naturally, that death is counted as a stillbirth.

"Any type of end of pregnancy," she said, "however it happens, is considered a stillbirth."

Zoom In:

She's right. Authors of the peer-reviewed commentary published earlier this year in the Canadian Medical Association Journal say the system for measuring stillbirth in Canada is outdated and misleading.

Because of this, the rate of stillbirth in Canada appears significantly higher than in other developed nations.

"Canada’s stillbirth rate is more than double that of comparable high-income countries and rising, in part because of stringent stillbirth registration criteria," the authors said, adding, "Canada requires the registration of all fetal deaths with a birth weight of 500 g or greater or a gestational age of 20 weeks or greater."

The authors noted that there is no international standard for measuring stillbirth, but that alone does not account for the discrepancies in Canada's high stillbirth rate. Instead, it is the inclusion of late-term abortion, despite this not being in line with international medical standards:

"A key contributor to Canada’s international outlier status is the inclusion in stillbirth counts of fetal deaths that follow late termination of pregnancy (at 20 to 24 weeks’ gestation). Widespread uptake of prenatal diagnosis and, consequently, in terminations of pregnancy for serious congenital anomalies has meant that late fetal deaths (at ≥ 28 weeks’ gestation) and infant deaths have substantially reduced in recent decades.

Yet these terminations undertaken at 20 to 24 weeks’ gestation are included in Canada’s stillbirth counts.

Current WHO recommendations advocate for the exclusion of terminations of pregnancy from stillbirth counts. Countries such as Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the United States simply exclude all such cases from their counts, and the use of a 24 weeks’ gestation registration threshold similarly results in the exclusion of virtually all such terminations in the statistics of countries such as the Netherlands and United Kingdom."

Furthermore, the authors say that so-called "selective reduction" abortions — in which a woman carrying multiple babies chooses to abort one or more of the preborn children — are included in the stillbirth data, even though the abortion procedure is usually committed in the first trimester. The authors explained, "Although the procedure is carried out at 10 weeks’ gestation, the reduced fetus requires registration as a stillbirth in Canada if the pregnancy ends at 20 weeks’ gestation or later, distorting Canada’s stillbirth rates."

People who undergo late-term abortions are legally required to record their abortions as stillbirths, which the authors said was insensitive and traumatizing:

Beyond distorted statistics, outdated processes associated with the registration of stillbirth in Canada may be traumatizing, culturally insensitive, or, at the very least, unkind.

The contemporary laws and regulations of several provinces and territories require parents to complete a stillbirth registration form soon after stillbirth, modelling the process for registering livebirths.

Unlike death registration, which is deemed a physician responsibility, the requirement for parents to register stillbirth reflects a bygone era when the impact of pregnancy loss was typically minimized. Traumatized patients may leave hospital without completing registration and other procedures that would amplify their emotional and psychological distress. Patients seeking abortion due to personal, social, or traumatic circumstances — for example, pregnancies resulting from sexual assault — experience added distress when required to comply with stillbirth registration and funeral home mandates.

Furthermore, the current processes perpetuate systemic cultural insensitivity by dismissing the deeply personal and diverse ways individuals and communities process grief. Current legislation also conflicts with the constitutionally protected rights of Indigenous Peoples, particularly in relation to ceremonial practices and culturally specific burial traditions.

Despite all of this, the Canadian government has refused to institute a nationwide standard. The authors rightly argued that late-term abortions need to be tracked and recorded separately from stillbirth.

Why It Matters:

As noted by the authors of the article, late-term abortion data can be difficult to determine, as it is frequently included with stillbirth data. But the information that is available is often disturbing.

Last year, for example, it was reported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Information that 133 late-term abortions were committed in the province of Alberta between 2023 and 2024; of these, one-fourth survived. Seventeen babies were born alive after attempted abortions in 2025. No active care was given to abortion survivors before 23 weeks, meaning these babies were often left to die.

Alberta is not an outlier, though it holds its place as having one of the highest numbers of late-term abortions committed. One recent study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, found that 11.2% of second-trimester abortions committed in Quebec between 1989 and 2021 resulted in live births. There were a reported 1,541 live births out of 13,777 abortions. Of these, 25% of the babies were sent to the NICU, and 5% were given palliative care; what happened to the rest is unknown.

Ultimately, what can be known for sure is that late-term abortions occur far more often than many believe, typically not for medical reasons, and abortion survivors are vastly underreported.