I suggest you all read/listen to people who’ve had “late-term abortions” – a totally undefined term – and revisit the question.
I’m not saying that because I believe it’ll make you come down on “my side” – just saying that it’s worth listening to what people who’ve done it have to say about their decision and their reasons.
I’ve done some of that, and come away from it unimpressed by arguments for banning such abortions. YMMV.
I’m pro-choice because I think bodily autonomy is (or should be) inviolate, such that anyone and everyone has the right to expel/evict anything or anyone they want from inside their body, at any time, and for any reason.
I’ll note that this doesn’t necessarily mean killing whatever is inside the body. This bodily-autonomy philosophy wouldn’t preclude a law that allowed a woman to end her pregnancy any time she wanted, and for any reason, but require that the fetus/baby be delivered alive (and kept alive) if possible. I’m not sure how I’d feel about such a law, but the principle I use for judging abortion laws wouldn’t be involved in my determination.
I’m trusting that you’re arguing this in good faith and this is your position. Can you explain how a woman having an 8th month abortion can avoid going through labor or a C-section? The one case I found where there was a 32-week abortion, she had to go through labor anyway to deliver the dead fetus.
Of course, the problem with this is that we can keep babies alive when they are really young, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have serious problems later. My son was born at 26 weeks. He was alive, but had brain bleeds, needed a tracheostomy and a feeding tube and at 10 years old still isn’t able to eat solid foods and must be tube fed. The brain bleeds caused mild cerebral palsy and all of the complications that that brings and have caused mild cognitive disabilities. Not enough to ruin his life, but enough to make things harder than they need to be. We know other kids in similar situations with severe developmental disabilities. It’s one thing to subject a kid to that because of a random quirk of nature and quite another because ‘your mom had bodily autonomy.’
I’m not sure what it is you’re arguing against.
The argument is that taking a ‘Mother has full bodily autonomy, the state can require the fetus be born alive rather than killed.’ can lead to a class of people that have severe and serious disabilities and problems that are completely preventable all in the name of preserving the mother’s right to bodily autonomy.
Do you think that it’s ethically just to say to a person, “Hey, I’m sorry that your IQ is 90, you can’t talk or walk and you’re confined to a group home, but your Mom got tired of you at 25 weeks and decided to evict you. If she had waited a couple of months, you’d probably be perfectly healthy, but them’s the breaks.”
I’m not arguing in favor of the hypothetical law I described – I was just explaining my position on abortion, and how my position is entirely separated from my views on the sanctity of life or fetal personhood. I don’t know how I’d feel about such a law.
THIS is why it’s worth listening to women who have actually had “late-term” abortions. They – unlike all the men who are talking here – do not talk about the issue this way.
EDIT: oh, also – listen to the doctors who perform those abortions. Who are, from what I’ve read, mostly women. For a reason.
A woman undergoing an abortion at 8 months is not doing so “electively,” as we men choose to describe it. She has a reason. ALMOST CERTAINLY A MEDICAL REASON.
But hey, prove me wrong with a cite. Are women just getting pregnant and having 8-month abortions for fun? They went through 8 months of pregnancy and then changed their minds about having a kid? “My pregnancy has been fine, but this last month will be a bitch – never mind”?
**
EVERYBODY: listen to women who’ve had late-term abortions. And the people who’ve performed them. It’s a lot more complicated than “cut the baby out at 26 weeks, it’s viable!” If it doesn’t change your mind, fine – but listen to, or read, what these women and doctors have to say.**
How do you perceive they talk about it? I have read the studies for the reasons why which largely track with the reasons for any time according to Guttmacher. The biggest differences are largely failure of our healthcare system to provide money and transportation. In comparison to early aborters, late aborters (20+ weeks) found out about their pregnancy later (At an average of 12 weeks as opposed to 5 weeks for early aborters), had more difficulty deciding whether to abort and had more disagreements with the father. The largest what we can call ‘systemic barrier’ was not realizing where they could go to get an abortion, while early aborters were more likely to know. Largely this factor was due to how long they waited and local clinics would no longer abort. Transportation was the second largest ‘systemic barrier’ for the late ones and again this was largely related to few facilities that would perform the procedure, so much longer distances to get to the ones that would. The biggest issues that probably actually ‘caused’ a late term rather than early term abortion are insurance access and cost. Abortions are relatively cheap, but at roughly 700 dollars are still out of reach to many at short notice and that causes delay that sends them to late term abortions, but even that is a minority of late term abortions.
In the Guttmacher study, they interviewed late termers, but they didn’t sound all that different from other anecdotal people who had abortions. Largely they just took a lot longer to make up their minds. Maybe more anecdotal relationship drama, but early abortion-havers (what’s the correct term, that sounds sloppy) also had lots of relationship drama. A big issue is the number that have mental health or substance abuse disorders. They may find out they are pregnant during a good time and really want the child, but then they crash later and abort. In UK studies, late terms were much more correlated to relationship changes (Got a new boyfriend, didn’t want the baby. Divorced the father. etc.) than we see in the US. The belief is that in the US, access overwhelms the relationship change dynamic.
Cite:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/4521013
I’m pretty sure we’re on the same side here. The OP mentioned that a woman may want to have a 8 month abortion to avoid labor or a C-section and I was asking the OP how that was possible. As far as I know, if the pregnancy is that far along, you’re going through some sort of birthing process even if the fetus is dead.
In the article I reference, she had to go through a 32 week abortion because of severe abnormalities they found in the fetus. It certainly wasn’t something she wanted to do, it cost $10k, she had to fly to Colorado to get it done, and then went through labor anyway to deliver the now dead fetus. Doesn’t sound like a fun hobby to me either. She was devastated.
It is human nature that they want absolutes. In this case it’s either allow abortions any time for any reason or never allow them at all.
The Real World doesn’t work like that. So a compromise has to be worked out. Unfortunately our society is becoming increasingly dominated by the “absolute” types. (Esp. note people who are constantly saying something they like is “the best” and something they don’t like is “the worst”. They are not helping in any way shape or form.)
Stuff is fuzzy. Get used to it.
Can you tell me who is advocating for abortions any time for any reason? It seems to me that the one who has trouble with absolutes is you.
The laws I’m familiar with under discussion lately get rid of the time period limits for abortions but would still restrict very late term abortions to cases where the woman’s life or health is in danger. From a practical standpoint, there aren’t really doctors out there who would assist a woman with an abortion “for any reason”, except maybe that PA doctor who is currently serving life in prison. Nearly every other doctor would have to have a damn good reason to allow an abortion at 30+ weeks.
This is made clear in Canada where there is no abortion law at all, and yet there aren’t 30+ abortions-for-fun clinics. I would be fine with getting rid of abortion laws and relying on medical licensing rules, hospital oversight, regular laws, ethics rules, and so one, to make sure that the woman and her doctor are making medically valid decisions for late term abortions.
I’d love to hear from the OP again, since I think there have been several questions sent his/her way.
I agree with you. The framing of this as a political argument is ridiculous. There just IS NOT an army of shadowy baby murdering doctors out there, slicing up unborn children because their (poor! brown! unwed! teenage!) mothers have suddenly flaked out. There are some few cases where medical and moral circumstances prevent positive outcomes, but they don’t deserve this kind of insane scrutiny.
Any time an anti-abortion activist makes this argument, they should be instantly shut down.
(I’m almost 41 weeks pregnant, so maybe this isn’t the best time for me to be thinking about this stuff. I’m sure it’s not doing my blood pressure any good.)
Any specific recommendations? My current impression is that the reasons they usually offer for seeking an abortion late in pregnancy are unimpressive.
I haven’t researched really late term abortions much, so I’m genuinely curious about where you got those impressions from. I found one case at 30-plus weeks, and it was pretty heartbreaking, and that’s it. What have you seen?
Would it be possible to avoid really pro-life cites? Because I’ll discount those pretty heavily.
I’d support a law that says a woman can have an abortion legally any time she wants one, no qualifiers. Not after the birth, mind you—no post-delivery reconsiderations once it’s no longer (also) part of her body—but right up until then, yeah, sure.
This piece by Jia Tolentino at Jezebel: Interview With a Woman Who Recently Had an Abortion at 32 Weeks
Good luck getting a doctor to perform that, though, with no qualifiers.
This Wikipedia article has a listing of reasons for late term abortions in the US:
Note, this is just 16+ weeks, not 21+ weeks, which are extremely rare. I find it ironic/disturbing/depressing that some large portion waited because of barriers placed in their way – they had problems making arrangements (maybe at the only remaining one in the state, when they had to make two visits with a waiting period, etc.), they were pressured not to, or they didn’t even know they could get one. So, some portion of these later term abortions likely could have happened earlier if there weren’t so many restrictions.