There already are laws which outlaw elective 3rd trimester abortions. That’s one of the reasons they don’t happen. Another reason is that it’s almost impossible to find a doctor who will perform one.
Can you cite a single case of a purely elective third trimester abortion? I don’t think you can.
While that is true in some states, it is not true in all states. *Roe *allowed, but did not require, states to ban 3rd trimester elective abortions, and *Casey *changed the criterion to “viability” anyway.
The point is we don’t have a good way of knowing. So saying they “don’t happen” is B.S. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I will agree that that there is no evidence they occur very often, as some pro-lifers would have us think.
That works out to about 400-700 abortions per year in the US which are performed in the third trimester. There is no evidence that any of them are performed for elective reasons since a.) that’s already illegal in most states and b.) it’s virtually impossible to find a doctor to perform them even where it isn’t illegal. I’ve been searching and I can’t find a single case of a purely elective 3rd trimester abortion. It’s kind of hard to search for this stuff online because so much of what’s out there is anti-abortion propaganda which continually tries to pack the third trimester into the made-up category of “late term” abortion.
I’m not sure, but I think there are 50 states. I’ll have to look that up…
Who is going to advertise that they had a 3rd trimester elective abortion? And “purely elective” is subjective anyway. If I want to end my pregnancy at 6 months because I get headaches, is that “elective” or medical? Or, if I find out the child will be handicapped, is that “elective”?
And there simply aren’t statistics on what term the abortion was performed in after 20 weeks, as I noted above, so we just can’t know.
I’m sorry if that doesn’t mesh with the hard-core, pro-choice political agenda, but those are the facts.
I have a relative who had an abortion late in the second trimester. The sequence of events went something like this:
She got pregnant.
She found an OB.
She was exposed to German Measles (which can cause severe birth defects).
She got tested to see if her baby would be affected by the disease.
Her doctor (a devout Catholic) told her “not to worry” about the baby, but refused to release the test results.
She spent a while badgering the doctor to give her the actual test results, to no avail.
She went to a different doctor, who redid the test.
The test showed that the baby would be severely damaged, and likely would not live until adulthood.
She had a “late” abortion.
Nowadays, there probably would be another step of “She sued the first OB for malpractice,” but this was quite a few years ago.
On the actual law in the recent decision, I don’t think the choice is actually between IDX and D&E. It prohibits IDX on a living fetus, but not a dead one, and I’m sure I have read (although I can’t find the cite right now) that the doctor can (and often does) inject the fetus to kill it before performing the IDX.
Let’s just say 'non-medical," then. When it come sto 3rd trimester abortions, it isn’t just the woman making the decision, it also has to be legal (which it isn’t in most states) and the doctors and hospitials have to go along with it, and they DON’T go along with it for non-medical reasons.
I just cited a statistic. Only .04% (4/100 of 1%) are performed in the third trimester, and those are only performed for medical reasons. The hypothetical 8 months pregnant woman who gets an abortion because she just doesn’t want to be pregnant any more is a figment of imagination and rhetoric. I can’t swear that it’s never happened, but no one has been able to cite a shred of evidence that it has and the nexus of variables which would have to fall into place for it to occur (The afore-mentioned pregnant woman who changes her mind, her need to be in a state where it’s legal and the ability to find a doctor or hospital staff which is willing to do it) would drop the likelihood to an absurdly low level.
If anyone else wants to assert that it happens, though, they’re the ones who have the burden to prove it. I find the idea ridiculous.
You need to give this up, Dio. Seriously. Your cite is an estimate, so acting like it’s some hard and fast fact just sounds like rabid pro-choice propaganda. (My wikipedia cite had the same statistic, btw). I am not saying they happen frequently or that they happen at all. I’m just saying we can’t say, as you did, that the “don’t happen”. It’s not even so much that we don’t know, but that we can’t know. And surely you’re not going to suggest that it’s impossible to find a sympathetic doctor who will write up a “medical reason” for an influential client, or someone the doctor knows and wants to help out. Just like the medical deferments some kids got back in the 60s.
A friend of mine who I’ve lost touch with had an abortion fairly late. I don’t know all the details and I can’t ask her, but her reasons were not medical.
She was living with her lover, who had isolated her from all her friends and family and taken her abroad to a place where she didn’t know anybody or speak the language. He was also playing mind games on her, trying to convince her that she was insane (see movie Gaslight), and kept changing his mind about whether the baby would be a great asset to the relationship or whether the baby would ruin everything. That’s what I remember. Anyway, I think he finally decided that she’d have an abortion.
Sorry I don’t have more details. Anyway, there’s an example for you of a late-term abortion for non-medical reasons. In this case, it was the man’s decision more than the mother’s. But my friend came out of it all right. She has two children and has been happily married for a long time.
Under the circumstances both legal and otherwise. I think the odds of the scenario happening are too small and/or infrequent to waste any mental energy on. My point still stands that it’s a fake problem. The pro-life side would like people to believe such scenarios are routine when the reality is that they are exceptionally rare at best and if they happen at all.
OK, that I can agree on. But saying they “don’t happen” just sets you up as someone pushing an agenda and not considering the facts. All the evidence we have suggests that such abortions are very rare, and we certainly shouldn’t use the fact that they might happen from time to time be the basis for setting policy broadly. But we stray into GD territory there…
Actually, the evidence only suggests that it could theoretically happen, not that it has, and I think the circumstances are such that simply saying “it doesn’t happen” is a fair characterization as far as what is normal or routine.
“60 Minutes” once did a piece on "late term abortions."The only part I remember was a woman who was carrying a child with severe birth defects that, while it would be born alive if carried to term, would in all likelihood die soon afterwards. Carrying it might also have affected her future fertility, so she had an abortion at six months.
When Morley asked an anti-aborttion activist what she would have done in that situation, she said “Well, I would have turned to my family. And I would have prayed.”
So what? Most Americans when faced with a personal crisis would probably do the same thing. Just because that personal crisis happens to be a pregnancy, are we supposed to ridicule the person for his or her faith? The guy asked what she would have done, and she gave an honest answer. Good for her.
I think the point was that she gave a non-responsive answer. Prayer is not a decision. She didn’t say what choice she would actually make. She avoided the question.
No. Do you think she meant she would pray first, and then go have an abortion? It’s clear that she would not have an abortion and would use her family and her faith to help get thru a difficult time. Nothing wrong with that, even if it’s not what I would do. Some people really do think abortion is wrong, you know, and are willing to live with the consequences of that decision.
Well, we really don’t know what she was thinking, but I see no reason (absent evidence to the contrary) not to take her at her word.
“These people”, huh? I guess that’s a good reason to assume that they’re all like that. Dude, the pro-choice abortion side is winning in the big picture. You don’t need to have that bunker mentality. It’s OK to accept that many, if not most, pro-choice people stand by their principles.
A lot of them don’t, and I think this post shows a little bit of a misunderstanding of what people pray for. I just had a baby at the age of 40. Of course, my doc talked to me about all kinds of tests I could take to determine if my baby would have any number of possible birth defects that are much more likely at my age. We decided we didn’t want to know, but would accept and love the baby regardless of any possible problems. But I’m no saint…I was pretty worried the whole time, and the prayers I made were those asking for strength to deal with the issues if they occurred.