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OTTAWA, April 24, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – On April 17, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) released data on induced abortions committed in Canada for 2010 that appear to show a significant drop in abortions from the 2009 report

According to the 2009 report, 93,755 children were aborted that year, with 30,268 abortions committed in Ontario and 27,139 in Quebec.

Meanwhile, the 2010 report indicates a total of only 64,641 abortions were carried out in Canada, with 28,765 committed in Ontario.

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However, in keeping with past reports on the number of abortions committed, the 2010 report has gaping holes in the data, with no abortion data at all for the province of Quebec, making it impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions about abortion trends.

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“What a joke,” Campaign Life Coalition BC president, John Hof, told LifeSiteNews.com. “If CIHI kept stats on breast cancer like they keep on abortions, the country would be outraged.”

“Congratulations to the province of Quebec for being the first province in Canada to end abortion,” Hof quipped. The pro-life activist pointed out that closer scrutiny reveals Quebec is not mandated to report abortions to CIHI.

“The politicization of abortion stats has taken a deadly turn with these new numbers,” Hof argued. “Abortion supporters can now legitimately send out a press release saying the numbers of abortions in Canada have dropped by 30% 40% or even 50%. Meanwhile the truth is CIHI has stopped counting the corpses.”

Compounding the inaccuracy of the data made available by the government agency is the lack of legislation requiring private abortion clinics, in contrast to hospitals, to report data.

“Hospitals are mandated by their provincial/territorial ministry of health to report all hospital activity (not limited to abortions); therefore, coverage of abortions performed in Canadian hospitals can be considered complete (except for Quebec in 2010),” the CIHI states in its report. “However, there is no such legislative requirement for clinics to report their activity (reporting is voluntary). For 2010, clinic data for British Columbia is incomplete.”

The true number of abortions may also be skewed because Ontario clinic data includes only induced abortions covered by Ontario’s health insurance plan. Data from all other provinces/territories, including Ontario hospital data, includes all induced abortions, whether paid for by the patient or by a different health insurance plan.

As a result, while the CIHI reports 28,765 abortions for Ontario in 2010, statistics obtained by Patricia Maloney of the Run With Life blog through a freedom of information request with the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, indicated that there were 18,330 abortions committed in doctors’ offices, 16,055 in private facilities and 9,612 in hospitals, for a total of 43,997 abortions committed in Ontario during 2010.

“This kind of shoddy statistic keeping would be unacceptable in any other industry,” Hof commented.

“If one adds in all of the mitigating factors in the CIHI statistics and totals up all of the under and unreported estimates, Canada’s abortion rate could be well over an astounding 150,000. Even when records were kept more diligently by Statistics Canada, we never went over 120,000. For them to now say Canada only had 64,641 abortions in 2010 is laughable to the extreme.”

The 2010 abortion statistics report is available at the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s website here.