National Post - Focus on the fetus

(Opinion piece by Margaret Somerville, founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill) Over 100,000 abortions take place each year in Canada, which, uniquely among Western democracies, has no law restricting access to the procedure.

It is legal throughout pregnancy, although the vast majority of physicians will not carry it out after viability of the fetus (the time at which the fetus has a chance of living outside the womb, which the Canadian Medical Association sets at 20 weeks gestation), except for serious medical reasons. Other exceptions to the 20 week limit do, however, occur and are probably not uncommon.