The situations you describe, with a unborn fetus’s health issues are the rare cases that can often times be understood by pro-lifers, like myself. I believe it is what Roe V. Wade had in mind, those rare situations that are truly life and death. So serious that you are acting to “save a life”, not take a life.

However, the majority of abortions are not for those reasons you describe. And the pro-choice community doesn’t help to educate the general public about the seriousness of the decision to end a life and choose abortion. See the following post regarding the missing information in the book ‘Our Bodies, Our Selves’. http://fetalfactsdotnet.wordpress.com/category/our-bodies-our-sevles/

You didn’t mention these scenarios in your post, but in the cases of elective abortions, as I mentioned in my previous post- I am not one of the those who feel the unborn human deserves to take the brunt of the situation. The unborn human loses his or her life.

First, I never said “Healthy mothers have healthy babies” - I was quoting Ron Fitzsimmons when HE said, “the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along.”

Second, You may want to check your stats on the gestational age of abortions when they occur. The data from the CDC I have states otherwise:

“Of all abortions for which gestational age was reported, 61% were performed at less than 8 weeks’ gestation and 88% at less than 13 weeks. And 4.2% were perfomred at 16-20 weeks and 1.4% were performed at less than 21 weeks.”

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm

Third, You seem to be shooting the messenger here… don’t blame me (or other anti-abortion women) who simply state the reality of what is happening. I mean, abortion DOES kill a human. If you don’t think abortion kills a human (and I’ve encountered pro-choicers who insist it does not kill a human- not even the “person” or “being” adjective… just a human.) then you should probably review human life and human development resources/books.

Just because because I am not one of those pro-choicers who insist on ignoring the fetus altogether (like he or she is invisible) doesn’t mean I’m demonizing women: just that I am addressing the issue of that there IS actually another human in the “unwanted pregnancy” scenario. (Something pro-choicers refuse to do).

Please don’t confuse my acknowledgement of the life of the fetus with having a lack of empathy or concern for a woman with a challanging pregnancy or situation.

As Patricia Heaton (actress) once said,
“Every 36 seconds in America a women lays her body down, forced to choose abortion out of a lack of practical resources and emotional support. Abortion is a reflection that society has failed women.”

This is the essense of what I am discussing here. Quite often there are 2 victims in an abortion, and there is ALWAYS at least 1.

There are some women who have late-term abortions while they are healthy and have had an unplanned pregnancy. Let us say, hypothetically, that in six months hypothetical-woman Maria and I both become pregnant and are carrying fetuses over 20 weeks old that are each diagnosed with a severe birth defect. As a result of these congenital conditions, if they are born the fetuses will be expensive to care for, and there is a slim-to-none chance for these potential infants to survive past the age of three.

Even though I’m a college student and don’t want children in the near future, I’m economically privileged and interested in parenting enough that I would probably be willing to keep my fetus if I had an unplanned pregnancy. Even so, I don’t know if I could handle the medical expenses of a severely disabled young child. Moreover, the psychological and emotional cost of watching my first baby die would be tremendous, and I don’t know if I could deal with that. I also want to finish college and have a stable partner and income before trying to raise kids - having this baby might prevent me from graduating on time. At this point in the hypothetical situation, I’m debating aborting my fetus.

Maria is married with one child already, and works as a schoolteacher. Dramatically transforming her life, her husband’s life, and her son’s life for the next few years to handle the demands placed on them by a severely disabled infant would be quite difficult. Leaving her job and trying to subside on only her husband’s salary would make things even harder, but specialized nurses for disabled infants are rare and difficult to afford. Even though she wants a second child and even though she values infant lives, Maria is also considering abortion.

Maria and I are different people, with different lives, with different potential children. Her choice, no matter what it is, will be heart-wrenchingly difficult for Maria and her husband. My choice will be similarly painful, and will have an enormous impact on whomever I conceived the child with, my close friends, my family, and me. These decisions aren’t easy - and they aren’t for bystanders or courts to make. Only Maria gets to decide whether she will carry her child to term or not. The same goes for me.

I’m not pro-choice because I would personally want to have an abortion - I’m pro-choice because I don’t want the decision to abort made by people other than the mother.

Yes, most procedures done after 20 weeks (which is not viability, by the way) are done because of FETAL malformations, and the mother is apparently healthy. In fact, most of these moms are devastated about their wanted pregnancy ending with a fetal malformation.

How heartless of you, sara, to demonize these women and their doctors as murderers.

Arguing about the rarest of abortions is really grasping at straws. States are already allowed to regulate second and third trimester abortions. All you are doing is kicking some of the saddest women when they’re down. 90% of abortions are done in the embryonic stage, before 8 weeks. The later ones are heart wrenching for all involved, and having ignorant melodramatic busybodies turn every conversation about legal, safe abortion into demonizing these women and their practitioners makes me sick.

Definition of “late-term” Abortion (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-term_abortion)

A late-term abortion often refers to an induced abortion procedure that occurs after the 20th week of gestation. However, the exact point when a pregnancy becomes late-term is not clearly defined. Some sources define an abortion after 12 completed weeks’ gestation as “late”.[1][2]

Some sources define an abortion after 16 weeks as “late”.[3][4] Three articles published in 1998 in the same issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association could not agree on the definition. Two of the JAMA articles chose the 20th week of gestation to be the point where an abortion procedure would be considered late-term.[5] The third JAMA article chose the third trimester, or 27th week of gestation.[6]

The point at which an abortion becomes late-term is often related to the “viability” (ability to survive outside the uterus) of the fetus. Sometimes late-term abortions are referred to as post-viability abortions. However, viability varies greatly among pregnancies. Nearly all pregnancies are viable after the 27th week, and no pregnancies are viable before the 21st week. Everything in between is a “grey area”.[6]

By the way:
Because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual study on abortion statistics does not calculate the exact gestational age for abortions performed past the 20th week, there are no precise data for the number of abortions performed after viability.[13]
————–

For references go to link above.

If you don’t want people to come across as condescending, perhaps you should discuss a matter of medicine and law with medical and legal terms. A good start would be explaining whether you’re referring to a post viability abortion, which in some states requires the pregnant woman’s life or health to be at risk, or if you just mean “late term abortion” to cover whatever category of abortions you find especially easy to get people het up about. I’ve already pointed out that in this discussion thus far, “late term abortion” has gone undefined and is thus a meaningless term. Either define your term or use one that has meaning in law and medicine.

“I reasoned that I had worked too hard to get where I was in my life, and I didn’t want to just throw that away. I decided that I would terminate the preganancy.”

Do you know what depression is and the signs and symptoms of depression? Not even covert messages given in this account even hint to depression. Let’s keep it real and acknowledge the times late term abortions occur - when they do no follow the law’s guidelines.

And let’s be clear about it. The doctors at this clinic have no reason to feel otherwise about the human fetus. The unborn fetus has no value on it’s own. It’s a clump of cells that are not a baby until the woman has her *magic* thoughts and it turns into a *baby*.

It’s pretty clear if you read Elena’s account that she was seriously depressed after finding out she was pregnant. Although she didn’t say that she was overtly suicidal, it sounds likely from her account that she was. “Pro-lifers” like to scoff at the idea that the mental health of a woman should be considered in determining whether a pregnancy continues or not, but depression has a 20% fatality rate. Should someone be forced to continue a pregnancy that has a 20% chance of killing her? Yes, say those who claim to be pro-life.

If the second account is true* then the doctor who performed the abortion broke the law. Why that should be used to argue that the law doesn’t exist is not clear to me.

Finally, even if these two women both had abortions in the third trimester for no apparent reason, all that says is that laws can be broken and sometimes are. It has no bearing on how often the laws are broken or whether the cases presented are typical or rare. Do you have any data on how frequently this sort of event occurs? (Preferably from a site that does not advocate on the issue of abortion from either position.)

*The source is a clearly biased one and so the veracity is open to question.

Hmmm… I sense some denial of FACTS of late term abortions… it doesn’t surprise me. The proabortion crowd is fully versed in how to deny any sort of truth about abortion: from the human life it kills, to the procedures they use and also to the very reasons they do abortions.

Sara, are you even aware of how rude your tone is? You’re giving the impression that you have total contempt for anyone who doesn’t agree with your position. If you don’t honestly view all the pro-choicers here with contempt, then the sneering, lecturing, condescending tone of your writing is giving a false impression, and maybe you should work on that.

Please try to keep the tone of sneering derision down to a minimum if you want to continue to be welcome to post comments on this blog.

Just ONE of MANY TRUE accounts of the REAL REASONS late term abortions are done. This account is from ‘Elena’. Elena is ONE of MANY who chose to abort their fetuses for reasons OTHER than HEALTH of mom or baby (she wanted to finish school).

Deny all you want. It just cannot cover up what is really happening to these senate, feeling, fully developed unborn babies.

An excerpt from Elena’s story (imnotsorry.net/elena.htm)

“I scheduled a surgical abortion with Planned Parenthood in between my crazy school schedule and multiple exams. But during the ultrasound portion of my scheduled abortion I discovered that I was so much further along than I thought. I was in my 23rd week of pregnancy. I was completely devastated and I felt like an idiot. Here I was training to be a doctor myself, and I had no idea that I had been pregnant for so long! There was only one place that could help me at that stage and it was hundreds of miles away in Wichita, KS. It took almost 16 hours to drive to the clinic in Wichita. It was a long and relatively silent drive. I could feel the fetus moving inside me, kicking me. The entire process took three days. ”

Who knows how far along she was by the time she got to TIller’s clinic in KS. (Way past 23 weeks). So much for “cases of threat to the mother’s life or severe fetal anomolies inconsistent with life”.

Elena’s story is on a Pro-choice website, by the way. Another story, from a pro-life website, talks about Michelle Arnesto-Berg, who gave testimony before a joint interim legislative committee in September 2007 about her late term abortion at Tiller’s Clinic.

Here’s an excerpt from Michelle’s story
(clinicquotes.com/site/story.php?id=143):

“Michelle requested her medical records from Women’s Health Care Services and was shocked to learn that her healthy 26-week baby had been diagnosed as “not viable” (by the abortion doctor). This designation allowed the clinic to circumvent the Kansas ban on abortions of viable babies after 21 weeks, a gestational milestone that is considered the earliest a baby can survive outside the womb if born. Michelle did not receive a second opinion as required by law for post 21-week abortions, and she was never diagnosed with any condition that would have met the “substantial and irreversible impairment” standard in the law. Michelle agreed to make her medical records available to the committee. Rep. Jene Vickery commented that it seemed her abortion was done without any consideration of the laws of Kansas.”

These two accounts don’t jive with what you continue to claim?… contact Elena and Michelle. Not me. They are the ones telling their truths. And, they are two of many.

Actually, abortion of ale fetus is illegal in Kansas except for cases of threat to the mother’s life or severe fetal anomolies inconsistent with life. Tiller’s home page, when it was up, specifically stated that he did NOT perform elective abortions after viability.

Except, of course, that’s not even what he claimed. He was referring to the conditions under which a specific procedure is performed.

Not only that, PG, it was also his impression of how often and when that procedure is used. There was no gathering of data other than “talking to” doctors who perform that procedure.

Try again. I stated the legal standard in Kansas for obtaining a post viability abortion. Your meaningless, non-medical and non-legal phrase “late term abortion” was not one I used.

To which I responded that, according to someone who would know… the Executive Director for the National Coalition of Abortion Providers…

Ah, yes, a lifelong lobbyist for 200 independent clinics without a medical degree who claims to have had a sudden impulse of conscience must know the conditions under which all post-viability abortions are performed.

Except, of course, that’s not even what he claimed. He was referring to the conditions under which a specific procedure is performed.

To which I responded that, according to someone who would know… the Executive Director for the National Coalition of Abortion Providers…

“HEALTHY mothers and HEALTHY unborn babies”….

You can make of that what you want. The facts are presented.

The reasons women choose to abort their fetuses? Unfortunately, it is NOT always a “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function”. Please don’t act like you don’t know this.

The reasons to abort a non-viable fetus, sure. The reason many state legislature require in order to abort a fetus after it becomes viable? “Substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

I can’t tell if you sincerely believe that a 20 or 21 week old fetus is viable — i.e., could survive past infancy after being delivered at that stage — or if you’re just throwing that quote out there for the heck of it.

“In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along. The abortion-rights folks know it, the anti-abortion folks know it, and so, probably, does everyone else.”
- Ron Fitzsimmons
Executive Director for the National
Coalition of Abortion Providers
The New York Times, February 26, 1997

no abortion may be performed after viability unless the attending physician and another financially and legally independent physician determine that an abortion is necessary to preserve the woman’s life or continuation of the pregnancy would cause a “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” of the woman. Kan. Stat. Ann. § 65-6703(a) (Enacted 1992; Last Amended 1998).

So you think that a woman should have a major bodily function impaired?

Thirdly, “taking a woman’s body captive”? Is that the intent of the unborn human?

Not at all. A fetus can’t have intent. It’s entirely the intent of you and people who think like you, and who, if they form a sufficient majority to change the law (or murder enough abortion providers) can prevent women from obtaining abortions and thereby hold them captive to your preferences regarding the fetus.

Secondly, my point is that… if Diane’s justification (of choice at this moment) is that the “brain is the seat of personhood” and if that brain functioning isn’t developed enough THAT is reason enough to be able to abort the unborn human… then the repercussions of that belief will transcend onto newborn humans as well. Not speaking about “wanted or unwanted” necessarily. This reasoning is flawed, not comprehensive and can have consequences for all of us and all of humanity.

Thirdly, “taking a woman’s body captive”? Is that the intent of the unborn human? Did that human have an intent and request to be placed in that woman’s uterus? (I’m not talking about the small % of abortions from rape or incest)

Why is it when it comes to creating life… we act like we should get “baby insurance” like we buy “car insurance”? How can we think we should be able to kill our developing humans once we create them? Did it ever occur to us that in this scenario… there is birth control to help PREVENT a pregnancy… but if we have a developing human being maybe shouldn’t be able to get “baby insurance” to “undo” the “mistake”(especially when the end of the 1st trimester comes around and that developing human is so developed)… like getting our cars into the shop to fix a fender bender?

Maybe, just maybe, a human baby isn’t a “car accident” that the shop can repair for a deductable. This is a serious matter. The matter of ANOTHER human beings life is at stake.

Actually, the rationale behind the law’s effectively prohibiting abortion after viability is that at the point the pregnant woman no longer has to carry the fetus for it to survive, someone who wants to take care of the resulting baby can do so (that “someone” probably being a state-paid functionary), instead of taking an unwilling woman’s body captive to do it. So your rhetoric about killing newborns is a bit beside the point.