News

OTTAWA, March 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Statistics Canada today released information that 103,768 babies were deliberately killed in their mothers’ wombs in the year 2003 in Canada. This death toll is added to the nearly three million slaughtered since 1969. There was a slight decline in abortions committed mostly among teen-aged girls,  StatsCan reported.

“The magnitude of this atrocity appears to be lost on the average person in Canada,” said Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC). “Canada likes to brag about its human rights record at home and abroad, while it ignores the mounting death toll that it has refused to stop,” he continued.

“Statistics are cold numbers but each one of these precious babies before birth are human beings who were systematically dismembered by doctors and this was paid for by the taxpayers,” said Mary Ellen Douglas, National Organizer of Campaign Life Coalition. “The death of each of these babies has been recorded in the Book of Life long before they were counted by StatsCan. The fact that the numbers are lower among teenage girls is encouraging, perhaps, but the final figures are staggering,” she stated.

Campaign Life Coalition has called on the federal government to enact legislation to protect the right to live for all Canadians from conception (fertilization) until natural death as they were directed by the Supreme Court in 1988.

Among teen-aged women, the abortion rate in 2003 was 14.5 per 1,000 women under the age of 20, down from 15.7 the year before. The abortion rate for teen-aged women has declined gradually since 1997 when it was 18.4 per 1,000 women under the age of 20.

  The crude birth rate for teen-aged women has also continued to fall. In 1997, there were 16.8 live births per 1,000 women under 20. By 2003,  this had declined to 12.1.

  The number of induced abortions per 100 live births decreased to 31.0 in 2003, from 32.1 in 2002.

  Induced abortions continue to be most common among women in their twenties, who accounted for 53% of all women who obtained an abortion in 2003. On average, 26 women out of every 1,000 in their twenties obtained an abortion.

  Induced abortion rates remained the same or increased for residents of most provinces and territories except for New Brunswick, Ontario and British Columbia, where the rates decreased.

The data is of limited accuracy since there are some abortion clinics which fail to respond to the voluntary government survey of abortions and one province – Nunavit – provided no information.