There were 491 abortions, of 20 weeks gestation and greater, that resulted in live births. This means that the aborted child died after it was born. These abortions are coded as P96.4 or ‘Termination of pregnancy, affecting fetus and newborn’.” The question that should immediately present itself is, why has there not been 491 homicide investigations or prosecutions in connection with these deaths?

Figures from Statistics Canada, a federal government agency, show 491 babies were born alive following botched abortions during the period from 2000-2009. The numbers have pro-life advocates up in arms.

Andre Schutten, legal counsel for ARPA Canada, noticed the numbers and blogged about them recently.

The blog Run with Life has reported that, from 2000 to 2009, 491 babies have been born alive following a failed abortion procedure, and subsequently left to die. And those are only the ones that are recorded by Statistics Canada.

The blog explains that “there were 491 abortions, of 20 weeks gestation and greater, that resulted in live births. This means that the aborted child died after it was born. These abortions are coded as P96.4 or ‘Termination of pregnancy, affecting fetus and newborn’.”

The question that should immediately present itself is, why has there not been 491 homicide investigations or prosecutions in connection with these deaths? Section 223(2) of the Criminal Code (the accompanying subsection to the now infamous subsection that Mr. Woodworth’s motion 312 was examining) reads “A person commits homicide when he causes injury to a child before or during its birth as a result of which the child dies after becoming a human being.” That is to say, anyone who interferes with a pregnancy such that the child dies after it is born alive due to that interference, is guilty of homicide.

So again, why have there been no criminal prosecutions? Why no outcry? And why are the provinces funding this explicitly criminal activity?

Some might argue that these procedures need to be protected in order to protect women’s health. Those who defend such actions or procedures are undoubtedly grasping at the defense for the crime listed in 238(1). Subsection 238(2) provides this defence: “This section does not apply to a person who, by means that, in good faith, he considers necessary to preserve the life of the mother of a child, causes the death of that child.”

Read More