THE TRUTH ABOUT LATE TERM ABORTIONS - Dec 2018

"Guttmacher published a 2013 paper entitled “Who Seeks Abortions at or After 20 Weeks?” ….The authors of this study admit even though about 1% of abortions are done at 21+ weeks and 7% done at 14-20 weeks gestation, that over 15K per year. The authors make a statement which spells disaster for the claim most people make about late-term abortions: “But data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”

From what limited data there is, the reasons are mostly the same as for women seeking an abortion in their first trimester. Additionally, the same reasons for delay between finding out about the pregnancy and decision to have an abortion and then going through with the abortion were present in both first-trimester and 22+ week abortions. More women who got a late-term abortion found out about the pregnancy about a month later than women who got a first-trimester abortion (8-9 weeks vs 4-5 weeks, respectively). The paper also pointed out women seeking later abortions compared to women seeking a first-trimester abortion were more likely to be young (20-24 years old), unmarried, and unemployed.

Additionally, let’s take a quick look at if it makes sense medically to say abortion can save a woman’s life and if fetal abnormalities can even be diagnosed with certainty.

Dilation and evacuation (D&E) and dilation and extraction (D&X), two methods of abortion which can be used at 20+ weeks gestation, would never be able to save the life of a mother because these procedures can take 12-48 hours to prep for — far too long in an actual life-or-death situation to do any good.

However, if at 20+ weeks a woman’s life was in danger because of her pregnancy, an emergency c-section can be done in 5-60 minutes. An emergency c-section would also allow the child a chance to live. Technology has come sufficiently far that preterm babies born just under 22 weeks and older now have at least a fighting chance at life in neonatal intensive care units, or a chance of comfort in neonatal palliative care. The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists put together a resource outlining the numerous reports, research, and data showing abortion of a still-living human fetus is never necessary to save the mother’s life.

Even most post-abortion-choice advocates can agree a human fetus should have the right to life at the point he or she can feel pain or is viable outside the woman’s body. A 21+ week old fetus fulfills both those criteria.

Detection of fetal anomalies is not a perfect science, either. False-positive rates using ultrasounds to find structural abnormalities range from 5-20%, even into the third trimester. One study done on aborted fetal remains after a diagnosis of a fetal abnormality found 4% of the children had no abnormality and 11% of the children had less severe abnormalities than diagnosed. The most common over or misdiagnosed abnormality were brain and central nervous system disorders such as hydrocephalus.

Genetic screening tests using maternal blood can also show false positives, leading women to consider and undergo an abortion when in reality, their baby may have no genetic anomaly at all. Genetic screens only tell the likelihood of the possibility of a genetic anomaly, they are not diagnoses.

We can confidently say the claim, abortions after 20 weeks are usually done to save the life of the woman and/or because of fatal fetal abnormalities, is categorically false. There is just no data to support it; in fact, there is data to the contrary."

https://humandefense.com/the-truth-about-late-term-abortions/