During last week’s presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris inaccurately said, “Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening. It’s insulting to the women of America.”
Shortly after, ABC News moderator Linsey Davis wrongly stated that it is not legal to execute a baby in any state.
Denying that late abortions are happening every day in America is insulting to the healthcare community that receives them for emergency care. Denying that babies are sometimes born alive is simply callous and delusional. Abortion proponents hope to socially conceptualization abortion, not by gestation or trimesters but, rather, as “care” that can be needed throughout pregnancy.
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What procedures are used for later abortion?
In the distant past, only surgical procedures were offered to women whose pregnancies were more than 15 weeks gestational age. This was typically a two-day event that started with dilation of the cervix and ended with an in-office surgery.
For nearly 20 years, abortion providers have been moving towards chemicals to end pregnancies in all stages.
Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for only the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, mifepristone, the first drug in a chemical abortion, is now used through advanced gestational ages. Currently these drugs are promoted well beyond 13 weeks, despite the increased risks for women at each week of pregnancy.
The second set of drugs in chemical abortion is typically comprised of four misoprostol tablets. This drug has never been approved for abortion. However, this abortion cocktail has been promised as a private, convenient, less invasive and more natural abortion process. Instead, women have been handed chemicals that are four times more physically dangerous while being abandoned by the government organizations tasked with tracking and reporting these adverse events.
A well-set pregnancy and advanced gestational age of a baby produce some challenges for the abortion providers. Laminaria is often needed to prepare the woman’s body to pass a larger baby through her cervix and multiple rounds of abortion drugs are sometimes needed to complete an abortion.
Tweet This: Denying that late abortions happen every day in America is insulting to the healthcare community that receives them for emergency care
How many late abortions are happening?
The number of late abortions is largely unknown due to underreporting of states and avoidance of reporting by abortion providers, but some estimate at least 50,000 abortions occur in the U.S. each year that are over 15 weeks gestational age. The heartbreak for women is that second trimester abortions are responsible for two-thirds of major abortion-related complications.
At advanced gestational age, are babies born alive?
Babies born alive during abortion are a liability for abortion providers. To avoid this “complication of abortion,” the child’s heart is often stopped early in the process. Women are commonly told a lethal injection of digoxin at the start of the abortion process simply “stops the baby’s growth”. In reality, the shot to the brain or heart abruptly ends the life of a child.
It’s understood that in abortions beyond 10 weeks, neither mifepristone nor misoprostol ends the life of the baby. Instead, the trauma of labor usually results in the death of the baby up through 21 weeks of pregnancy.
However, babies born at 22 weeks' gestation or after may survive labor associated with medical abortion creating legal and medical challenges for the abortion provider who must decide if care will be continued.
It’s largely unknown how many children are born alive during later abortions, especially as some are self-managed outside of medical or abortion facilities. The former CDC Director of Abortion Surveillance estimated 400-500/year in the U.S. However, the Charlotte Lozier Institute reports that fear of public opinion and legal action hinder reporting.
One abortion provider admitted “it’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point.” And a former Planned Parenthood medical director said medical intervention for these babies is determined by who else is present. “You need to pay attention to who’s in the room.”
Former Governor Ralph Northam openly stated in 2019 that the decision to keep the child comfortable until death or resuscitated after an abortion is determined by the preference of the mother and family. The actions required by the healthcare community are seemingly dependent on the value the family places on the child’s life and the state where the birth takes place.
Are there protections for babies born alive during abortion?
Thirty-five states maintain some protections for babies born live following an abortion. Three states, New York, Illinois, and Minnesota—the latter under Gov. and current vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz--have actively removed protections for babies born alive following an abortion, and an additional 12 states have never had protections for babies born alive.
What happens if multiple rounds of chemicals are unsuccessful in ending the pregnancy?
For the late abortions that are not complete with chemicals, the woman must also endure a surgical abortion to dismember and remove her baby. The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) reports the risks of D&E abortions include “hemorrhage and cervical laceration (3.3%) and retained body parts and/or placental tissue (1%). Non-intact D&E (9%) is commonly referred to as a 'dismemberment' abortion because the pre-born baby is removed in a piecemeal fashion with instruments."
Without a specific standard of care in the U.S. for these second and third trimester abortions, providers are free to create their own gruesome regimens especially in states without gestational limits.
Tweet This: Denying that babies are sometimes born alive is simply callous and delusional.
Are late abortions medically necessary for a mother or baby?
Contrary to the depiction of abortion in the media, a Guttmacher study concluded that women seeking abortions after 20 weeks were not for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.
In this study, the reasons woman sought abortion involved the hardships of raising other children, depression or illicit drug use, conflict with a male partner, domestic abuse, difficulty making the abortion decision until later in pregnancy, or were young and had never had children. None of these reasons give imminent threat to the life of the mother or child.
A report for the Congressional Research Service, stated “abortions for fetal anomaly ‘make up a small minority of later abortion’ and that those for life endangerment are even harder to characterize.”
Are women physically harmed from late abortion?
AAPLOG reports a woman’s risk of death from abortion increases by 38% for each additional week beyond eight weeks gestation. They state that abortion after 15 weeks uses “extreme and inhumane procedures and unnecessarily inflicts severe pain on a pain-capable living human being and presents continually increasing risks to the mother.”
Are medical associations stepping up to protect women and children from these barbaric practices?
Sadly, rather than shielding women and children from this violence, abortion in later pregnancy is approved and encouraged by:
- American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists - World Health Organization
- Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
According to ACOG's Ethics Statement 385, "Abortion is standard practice healthcare" and "Abortion is an essential component of women’s health care."
However, many healthcare professionals are opposed to this radical pro-abortion opinion and hope to protect the health of both patients in a pregnancy – mother and baby.
In a pregnancy, there are two autonomous heartbeats, two sets of DNA, and two unique human beings who both require care and compassion. Abortion, at any gestation, stops a heartbeat, shuts down a developing brain, and ends a separate life created in the image of God.
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
