Richard Dur is the volunteer Executive Director of Prolife Alberta and an award-winning political consultant with experience on campaigns across Canada.Part I – The DenialShe 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.”No qualifiers. No equivocation. A complete denial.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, breathing infants — 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 case of ignorance or oversight. The issue of live births following late-term abortions was brought directly to Minister LaGrange’s attention in early May. Concerned citizens, including representatives of Prolife Alberta, provided her with documentation, including Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) hospital-discharge data and Alberta Health Services (AHS) policy references, outlining precisely what the Minister would later deny. The CIHI data, which catalogues every hospital discharge in the country, had already documented multiple cases of live births following abortion in Alberta (and across Canada) – a fact her ministry would acknowledge in writing just days later.Nor is this an Alberta-only occurrence. Apart from the national CIHI data, a 2023 Quebec study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, found that 1,541 abortions — 11.2% of all second and third trimester procedures between 15 and 29 weeks — resulted in live births.The likelihood was highest between 21 and 23 weeks, when roughly one in four abortions ended with a live-born infant (22.9% at 21 weeks, 26.7% at 22 weeks, and 27.0% at 23 weeks). The authors noted that live-birth rates “increased over time for every gestational age,” with the sharpest rise between 20 and 24 weeks.The evidence — both national and provincial — was not only available, it was compelling. And it was brought to the Minister’s attention. Her denial, then, did not precede the evidence; it followed it..The First ContradictionWhen pressed about her denial, Minister LaGrange referred the matter to officials at Alberta Health. Their written response conceded what her statement denied:“You are correct that the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) is an independent national agency that compiles hospital discharge data… In Alberta, 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. CIHI’s hospital discharge data includes cases coded under P96.4 — “Livebirths resulting from termination of pregnancy.”Even without those statistics, Alberta Health Services’ own Policy PS-92 anticipates such outcomes. Section 6.4 explicitly states that a Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) order may be considered “in anticipation of a possible live birth” (Policy PS-92, Alberta Health Services).That language, too, acknowledges what the minister’s statement denies: babies are, in fact, sometimes born alive following late-term abortions. A known occurrence, significant enough to require formal policy and clinical direction.For the minister to claim “no evidence” while her own department confirms that evidence elsewhere undermines public confidence and raises a deeper question of accountability: Was the Minister misinformed, uninformed, or knowingly misleading Albertans?She cannot claim ignorance; the matter was placed squarely before her months ago. Alberta Health, responding at her direction, confirmed in writing the very facts her statement denied. The only remaining question is whether she is willing to confront the truth her own department has already verified. If she will not, Albertans deserve to understand what that refusal means: a Minister who substitutes narrative for law, and silence for oversight.Whichever the answer, the result is the same: a government that continues to evade the truth about the most vulnerable lives in its care. But the contradictions do not end there. They extend from bureaucratic doublespeak into the very language of the law itself. .Part II – The Law and the Next ContradictionIn her letter, Minister LaGrange wrote: “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…”It’s a strong statement, and it should be. Under Section 223(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada:A child becomes a human being… when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not it has breathed, has an independent circulation, or the navel string is severed.Once born alive, that child is a person under the law. By that definition, every one of those 28 infants met the legal threshold of personhood.But the minister’s clarity also exposes the next contradiction. If these infants are, as she acknowledges, “recognized as legal persons and entitled to medical care,” then Alberta’s own data — showing 28 live births following late-term abortion — demands an accounting.Either those children received care, or they did not. If they did not, then Alberta’s policies are in conflict with the very law the Minister herself has just affirmed.LaGrange’s statement was meant to reassure. Instead, it highlights the line her department, and the system it oversees, may already have crossed.If Alberta’s policies truly comply with that definition of personhood, then the Minister’s department should be able to tell Albertans — without breaching patient confidentiality — 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? These are not complex questions; they are the minimum transparency and law demand. Their answers would show whether Alberta is following the laws it claims to recognize or merely asserting them in print.Until those answers are provided, Albertans can reasonably conclude that some of these children were born into abject indifference — breathing, moving, and then quietly dying while the system looked away..The “Guidelines” that Sanction SilenceLaGrange also writes: “I want to assure you that Alberta Health Services (AHS) follows consistent, established clinical guidance for all infants born at the threshold of viability, typically under 22 weeks’ gestation. These guidelines apply regardless of the circumstances of birth.”So, what is this “consistent, established clinical guidance”?The answer lies in AHS document HCS-183-01: Preterm Clinical Assessment for Infants at Risk. Buried in Section 6.5 is the line: “A non-interventional approach is recommended.”Translated from policy-speak, that means no resuscitation, no medical support: in other words, death by omission. This is not medicine; it is management of death.On this point, the minister is quite correct: there is consistency — a cold, bureaucratic consistency that makes no distinction between an abortion that failed and a delivery that came too soon. The same policy applies “regardless of the circumstances of birth.” It is impartial only in the bleakest sense — a rule so uniformly applied that it withholds help from every child below the same gestational threshold, no matter how desperately some parents may plead for their baby’s life. It imposes a blanket “non-interventional” rule based solely on gestational age, not on medical condition or will to live.It is a policy that denies compassion, forbids hope, and withholds even the chance to try — all in the name of consistency.These policies do not exist in a vacuum. Behind every “non-intervention” order stand doctors, nurses, and staff who must watch as a child struggles and fades. To witness a newborn’s final moments in silence is not neutrality; it is a moral injury inflicted on everyone – inside the room and out..The Ethical DilemmaLaGrange adds: “Decisions about resuscitation and intensive care are made in consultation with families.”That sounds compassionate, until you think about what it means in practice.In cases where a family — or more precisely, the baby’s mother — has already consented to ending the child’s life in the womb, can that same person now decide whether the child who survived that attempt should now be allowed to live and receive care outside the womb?To frame that choice as “consultation” is to pretend neutrality where neutrality does not exist. It places a newborn’s — now constitutionally protected — right to life in the hands of those who moments earlier consented to its death, and then calls that consultation and care.And yet, even these quiet acts of omission are only part of the story. Behind the shadow of “guidelines” lies something darker — a logic that decides who is worthy of life at all..Part III – The “Logic” of Feticide, and the Return of Eugenic ThinkingMost late-term abortions in Canada, those after about 20 weeks, are labour-induction procedures. Medication is used to trigger contractions and deliver the baby prematurely. The intended outcome is an intentional stillbirth.To ensure that outcome, doctors sometimes perform feticide (literally “death of the fetus”) beforehand, injecting potassium chloride or digoxin into the baby’s heart or amniotic fluid to stop the heartbeat. When feticide is not performed, or fails, the baby may be delivered alive. That is how the “live births following termination of pregnancy” recorded by CIHI occur.The Ministry’s own correspondence admitted what its Minister flatly denied:“…it is true that feticide may be recommended in certain cases to prevent distressing outcomes, such as a live birth in the context of a termination… However, this is not mandated, and 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. It is a contradiction both moral and ritualized: the deliberate ending of life described in the language of longing and love. These cases are often justified as involving “severe anomalies incompatible with life.” The phrase sounds clinical, maybe even compassionate — as though ending the child’s life were an act of mercy. But prenatal testing is far from infallible. False positives occur, and some babies labeled “incompatible with life” have survived for hours, days, even years. And many so-called “anomalies” are not 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. What begins as diagnosis becomes judgment; what begins as care becomes culling. It is eugenics in everything but name: the selective erasure of those deemed unfit to live.Even when the diagnosis is accurate, what kind of compassion demands that death be accelerated? These are not spontaneous stillbirths or natural losses; they are induced labours, planned and executed with intent.It is the same logic that underlies Canada’s ever-expanding euthanasia regime: a sliding scale of “appropriate” death. What began as rare and tragic “exceptions” has hardened into routine policy: a system where some lives are judged too short, too sick, or too inconvenient to be lived at all.And as Alberta Health’s own correspondence confirms, these live births are not speculative or accidental. They are foreseen — sometimes even planned — and all too often dismissed by officials and “experts” as “far-fetched,” “conspiratorial,” or “easily disproved.” And yet, here they are. .The Myth of the “Exceptional Case”Minister LaGrange insists: “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 reassuring, generally. But in practice, the data tells a more complete story.The 2023 population-based study from Quebec — the same dataset that documented hundreds of live births following late-term abortions — found that nearly one in three abortions (30.9%) performed between 20 and 29 weeks were done for “other” reasons: not for fetal anomalies, nor for life-threatening maternal emergencies. And even in the tragic cases involving severe fetal conditions, the logic collapses the moment a baby survives the abortion procedure. A child born alive is no longer a “fetal anomaly.” Once alive outside the womb, that child is a newborn with a disability — and therefore entitled to care, protection, and a chance at life, not neglect and abandonment.For procedures justified as maternal emergencies, the rationale ends the moment the child is delivered and outside the mother. Whatever medical crisis may persist for the mother, the newborn is no longer part of her emergency. At that moment, the newborn is not a maternal complication, but a patient in its own right — and a person experiencing a medical emergency of his or her own..The Silence and the ReckoningAccording to CIHI’s hospital-discharge records, 28 infants were born alive after late-term abortions in Alberta. But the data does not reveal why those abortions were performed, how long those infants lived, or what care, if any, they received. Those are not questions CIHI can answer — but the Government of Alberta can. The province holds the records that could resolve those questions — files showing whether these infants were resuscitated, how long they survived, and what kind of medical orders governed their care. Surely Alberta Health knows how many of those babies received active intervention and how many were given only palliative “comfort” measures, if at all. It knows whether Do-Not-Resuscitate orders were written in advance, who authorized them, and whether any exceptions were made when an infant showed signs of life. It knows whether death certificates were issued, as required under the Vital Statistics Act, and whether internal ethics reviews or morbidity audits were ever conducted. The province cannot claim compliance with federal law while concealing the very data that would prove it. These are not obscure details. They are the most basic indicators of whether Alberta’s health system treated those 28 infants as patients — or as problems to be managed. Yet despite repeated inquiries (including formal FOIP requests), those details remain withheld.If Alberta Health believes these numbers have been misinterpreted, it should release the evidence needed to clarify them. Its refusal to do so only deepens public mistrust. The truth, however brutal, will fall into one of only two columns: they received care, or they did not. Until Minister LaGrange tells Albertans what became of those 28 children — whether they were comforted, cared for, or simply left to die — that silence is not merely damning. It is the evidence itself. Twenty-eight lives are not a clerical abstraction. They are children who entered this world — alive. The minister can no longer hide behind language, nor can Alberta Health hide behind bureaucratic walls. The next step is simple: release the records, account for each of those 28 infants, and tell Albertans the truth of their fate. The truth cannot bring them back — but it can stop this from happening again. Because 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.Source Note: This investigation is based on official correspondence between citizens of Alberta, Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, and Alberta’s Ministry of Health, along with publicly available provincial and federal records, including Alberta Health Services policies (PS-92 and HCS-183-01) and the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s hospital discharge data (code P96.4). Additional data referenced from: Dahan et al., American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (2023). All quotations are drawn directly from government communications or published documents. Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange was asked for comment but has yet to respond.Further documentation is available at LeftToDie.ca. Richard Dur is the volunteer Executive Director of Prolife Alberta and an award-winning political consultant with experience on campaigns across Canada.
