Former President Donald Trump made false claims about late-term abortions Thursday‘s discussion Experts say that with President Joe Biden.
She is preparing for an abortion is one of the biggest topics will determine this year’s presidential elections.
Thursday, Trump He made repeated allegations in 2016 on late-term abortions during a debate against then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
He claimed: “They will take the child’s life in the eighth month, in the ninth month and even after birth.”
By definition, late-term abortions occur at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Less than 1% All abortions occur at this stage of pregnancy. More than 80% occur at or before nine weeks of pregnancy, and only 6% occur between 14 and 20 weeks of pregnancy, the second trimester. Abortion does not mean ending the life of the unborn baby.
New York emergency physician and former regional director of the US Department of Health and Human Services Dr. Dara Kass told NBC News that any claim to that effect is false.
“What he’s talking about is murder, and it doesn’t happen with abortion,” he said.
Trump also specifically targeted the former governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam: “He is, as we say, ready to tear the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby.”
One 2019 interviewNortham was pressed proposed state legislation it would remove the restriction requiring second- or third-trimester abortions to be performed in a hospital. It would also eliminate the requirement that three doctors agree that a late-pregnancy abortion is medically necessary.
Northam said he supports making that decision between families and their doctors, rather than having a law make that decision for them.
“When we’re talking about third-trimester abortions, they’re done with the consent of the mother and the doctor, and they’re done in cases where there could be serious deformities, a non-viable fetus,” Northam said in an interview. .
Jill Wieber Lens, a law professor at the University of Iowa and an expert on reproductive justice, said: “What Northam is talking about is a baby born with severe abnormalities that one learns about late in pregnancy. .”
Full-term pregnancy lasts 39-40 weeks. If a woman begins to experience a late pregnancy life-threatening symptoms such as–eclampsia, doctors can cause birth. Although the baby is extremely premature (less than 28 weeks), the chances of survival are good. This induction is not an abortion, and if a healthy baby is killed after birth in this way, it is infanticide, experts say.
Often, tests do not detect such serious complications until late in pregnancy, or pregnant women do not know until then that there are serious problems with the fetus or their own health. In fact, the number of women who either received no prenatal care during pregnancy or did not receive prenatal care until the third trimester—between the seventh and ninth months—increased to nearly 7% in 2021. According to CDC data.
If the fetus is not expected to live, the doctor and family may have to have conversations like, “If it’s inconclusive, do we do life support,” Viber Lens said, referring to perinatal hospice. “Northam wasn’t talking about abortion, he was talking about how we care for non-viable babies.”
Wieber Lens said she expects more families to face choices about perinatal hospice, especially in the states. There are no exceptions in the abortion law for congenital anomalies.
Complications may require difficult decisions
In an emailed statement to NBC News, a representative from SBA Pro-Life America said, “Most late-term abortions are elective, performed on healthy women with healthy babies for the same reasons given for first-trimester abortions.”
When pressed to define late-term abortions, which have no technical definition, SBA said Pro-Life America classifies “late-term abortions” as anything after 15 weeks.
Medically, “Late term” is a term used to describe pregnancy After 41 weeks, it’s more than full term.
According to experts, a significant number of abortions that occur in the second trimester, which lasts from the 13th to the 27th week of pregnancy, are not medically necessary.
“You’re still going to see a significant number of abortions for reasons such as late pregnancy detection, or a partner losing their job, or whether a person has a termination,” Greer Donley said. Associate Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh, who is an expert on abortion law.
People can also struggle to access abortion and force that decision later in pregnancy, she said.
“Part of the reason abortions are happening later after 12 weeks is because states are making it harder to get abortions early in pregnancy,” Wieber Lens said.
In some cases, abortions after 12 weeks are considered medically necessary.
Donley was 20 weeks pregnant when tests revealed a serious brain abnormality that prevented her son’s brain tissue from forming. A cancer survivor, Donley’s pregnancy was already high-risk. At 22 weeks pregnant, Donley made the difficult decision to have an abortion.
“It was devastating,” he said.
Third-trimester abortions are rare, expensive, and usually performed when a life-threatening diagnosis is made. Even in states without abortion bans, it’s often difficult to find a doctor to perform an abortion at this stage, Donley said.
In the third trimester, which covers weeks 29 to 40, or months seven, eight and nine of pregnancy, “we’re almost exclusively talking about medically necessary abortions,” he said.
Amita Vyas, associate professor and director of the George Washington University School of Public Health, says these abortions are “almost always the result of complications such as fetal abnormalities or a life-threatening medical condition.” MPH Maternal and Child Health program. “There are so many different nuanced medical causes, from different congenital anomalies to genetic things. Most of these diagnoses cannot be made early during pregnancy.”