The head of the MUHC Centre for Applied Ethics is defending the hospital's decision to not grant a late-term abortion to a woman and her partner.
Dr. Eugene Bereza calls the case "an unprecented one" after the woman learned at 30 weeks that the fetus was severely malformed.
The MUHC does do later second and early third-term trimester abortions, but in this case Dr. Bereza says the medical team consulted the College of Physicians. Its guidelines state that after 23 weeks, abortions should only be provided for fetuses "with serious congenital anomalies" or under "exceptional clinicial situations".
Dr. Bereza says the team determined this case did not meet those critieria. But the woman's lawyer Jean-Pierre Menard disagrees, and points to a 1998 Supreme Court decision that indicates there is no legal ground to refuse an abortion, and that a woman has a right to one at any time before birth.
The MUHC agrees, but Dr. Bereza says it merely means a woman cannot be prosecuted for having an abortion and has nothing to do with a doctor being required to terminate a pregnancy.