Undercover investigation reveals Canadian clinics routinely perform third-trimester abortions on healthy, viable babies for any reason—or none at all.
Newsroom (26/11/2025 Gaudium Press ) In a nation that prides itself on compassionate healthcare, a disturbing truth has emerged from the shadows of Canada’s abortion industry: viable unborn children in the third trimester—babies who could survive outside the womb—are being legally ended without any requirement of medical necessity, often simply because the mother has changed her mind.
Though Canada has no statutory gestational limit on abortion and official guidelines from the Canadian Medical Association and provincial colleges of physicians suggest late-term procedures (after 20–24 weeks) should be reserved for “serious fetal anomalies” or “grave threats” to maternal health, a 2023 undercover investigation by pro-life activist Alissa Golob demonstrates that these theoretical safeguards are honored only in the breach.
Golob, co-founder of the Canadian pro-life political organization RightNow, posed as a woman 25–30 weeks pregnant seeking an abortion for non-medical reasons. Over several months she visited abortion referral centers and private clinics in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver, recording hours of conversations with counselors, social workers, and administrative staff.
The results were chilling in their consistency.
In Toronto, staff informed her that while finding a willing physician becomes “a little more difficult” after 35 or 36 weeks, abortions remain readily available up to 30 weeks and beyond. When Golob directly asked whether proof of risk to her health or the baby’s was required, the response was unequivocal: “No, not at all.” The employee added that the clinic could proceed “no problem” well past 24 weeks’ gestation.
In Vancouver, a clinic social worker was even more explicit: “There doesn’t have to be a reason. It could simply be ‘I don’t want to be pregnant.’”
Similar answers echoed in Quebec and Alberta. At no point was Golob asked to provide medical documentation, ultrasound evidence of anomaly, or psychiatric evaluation. Staff repeatedly assured her that whatever reason she offered—however slight—would be accepted without question.
“You can tell the clinics anything and they’ll accept it as a valid reason to abort a viable baby in the third trimester,” Golob summarized after the investigation.
While the vast majority of abortions in Canada (over 90 percent) occur before 12 weeks, Statistics Canada data confirm that several hundred procedures take place annually after 20 weeks, with a smaller but non-trivial number performed in the third trimester. Because abortion is treated as a private medical act rather than a criminal one since the 1988 Morgentaler decision, and because late-term cases are not separately tracked by indication, the true scale of non-medically-indicated terminations remains obscured.
Catholic moral teaching has always held that direct abortion is a grave evil at every stage of pregnancy, and the intentional killing of a viable unborn child constitutes nothing less than infanticide by another name. The Fifth Commandment—“Thou shalt not kill”—admits no exception for convenience, personal circumstance, or state sanction.
Yet in Canada today, a child who could cry, breathe, and be cradled in his mother’s arms minutes after birth can be legally injected with digoxin or potassium chloride to stop his heart, then dismembered and removed—solely because continuing the pregnancy has become undesirable.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is unambiguous: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law” (CCC 2271).
When viable children are destroyed for no reason other than a change of mind, society crosses a line from which recovery grows ever more difficult. Canada’s practice of unrestricted late-term abortion represents not compassion but a profound dehumanization—of both the child and the civilization that tolerates his destruction.
As bishops, priests, and faithful Catholics continue to pray outside abortion facilities and accompany women in crisis pregnancies through ministries of mercy, investigations like Alissa Golob’s serve as a prophetic wake-up call. A nation that claims to defend the weak and vulnerable cannot in good conscience look away while its smallest members are eliminated without even the pretext of medical justification.
The culture of life begins with truth. And the truth, painfully documented in clinic waiting rooms from Vancouver to Montreal, is that in Canada today, a healthy third-trimester child has no legal protection whatsoever—only the fragile hope that his mother will choose life.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Infocatholica
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