Late Abortions Rarely Happen, but They Still Dominate Politics
The New York Times
Both sides are trying to make their opponents sound extreme. Here is what studies and data show about when and why abortions happen later in pregnancy.
More than 80 percent of abortions in the United States happen before 10 weeks, in the embryonic stage of pregnancy. But in the politics of abortion, the arguments and almost all of the ads focus on the other end, on the much rarer abortions later in pregnancy.
This has never been more evident, or consequential, than this year. It’s the first presidential election year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Ten states are voting on abortion rights ballot measures, including states that are battlegrounds for the presidency and control of Congress, and polls show that abortion has newly energized Democrats and women.
The closing weeks of the campaign have become a race to paint the other side as more extreme.
Republicans and groups that oppose abortion rights argue that Democrats are pushing abortions “for any reason” in the seventh, eighth and ninth month of pregnancy, even after birth. “Jon Tester supports aborting a healthy, full-term baby the day before it’s due,” Tim Sheehy, the Republican challenger for Senate in Montana says, falsely, on his campaign website. Donald Trump went further into inaccuracies, saying Democrats would allow women to “execute the baby.”
Democrats and sponsors of abortion rights ballot measures have leaned into graphic stories of women with much-wanted pregnancies who sought abortions in medical emergencies or because of fetal anomalies diagnosed late in pregnancy. In stark ads, women tell of being denied abortions until they were close to death. “I remember the doctor handing me a baby boy that was blue, and I just held him, because he was so cold,” says Deborah, a Florida woman who carried a pregnancy to 37 weeks after being told at 23 weeks the child would not survive. “This ban is torture.”
Both sides play to emotion and ambivalence: Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly support abortion in the first trimester, but, beyond that, their answer is some version of “it depends” — on why women seek abortion, and how late.
