Why Are Third Trimester Abortions Done? Part II
What are the reasons for third-trimester abortions?
Abortion supporters often say that doctors only do third-trimester abortions when there's a serious risk to the pregnant person's life or health. The evidence, however, contradicts this claim. Why are third-trimester abortions done?
One Politician on Third-Trimester Abortion
One example is from pro-abortion politician Pete Buttigieg. In an interview, he was asked, "Just to be clear, you're saying that you would be okay with a woman well into the third trimester deciding to abort her pregnancy?"
At first, Buttigieg tried to evade the question, saying, "Look, these hypotheticals are usually set up in order to provoke a strong emotional response—"
The interviewer cut him off with the claim that 6000 abortions a year are committed in the third trimester. I've seen this statistic before, but I haven't been able to find its source.
Buttigieg responded by pointing out that this makes up just 1% of all abortions, and the crowd applauded.
He then said these cases involve wanted babies whose mothers have already named and bought cribs. Third-trimester abortions, he claimed, are only done for families that:
get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice.
And the bottom line is, as horrible as that choice is … that decision is not going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.
Again, this led to applause from the crowd.
However, this is not true.
Why Third-Trimester Abortions Aren't Done to Save the Mother's Life
In this video, a former abortionist explains how abortionists commit third-trimester abortions.
The abortionist injects poison into the preborn baby to kill him or her before inducing labor or otherwise removing the child intact. To get a live birth, the steps would be the same, except the injection wouldn't be done. The doctor could dilate the cervix and remove the baby or induce labor. This would result in a living child rather than a dead one.
To turn a third-trimester abortion into a delivery, all the doctor has to do is not give the injection. The direct act of killing the baby in the womb is what separates a third-trimester abortion from a birth.
In a third-trimester abortion, the abortionist slowly dilates the cervix over three days. A pregnant person whose life is in danger would have to endure three extra days of being pregnant. In contrast, a doctor could end the pregnancy immediately with a cesarean section, resulting in a living child. Or he or she could induce labor.
Studies Reveal the Reasons for Third-Trimester Abortions
Two studies reveal why late-term abortions are done.
The first study was done by pro-abortion researchers Diana Greene Foster (who later worked on the infamous Turnaway Study) and Katrina Kimport. The study concerned the reasons people seek abortions after 20 weeks and included women who aborted in the third trimester of pregnancy.
The authors state:
[D]ata suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment…
They gave a breakdown of the following reasons (some women chose more than one):
· 45% didn't know they were pregnant.
· 40% had trouble deciding whether to have an abortion.
· 20% disagreed with the father of the baby about whether to have the abortion.
· 38% didn't know where to go for the abortion.
· 27% had difficulty getting to the abortion facility.
· 65% had difficulty raising money for the abortion and related costs.
· 41% had difficulty getting insurance coverage to pay for the abortion.
One example was a woman who had an abortion at 28 weeks while her boyfriend was in jail. She waited until he was incarcerated because she wanted to keep the abortion a secret from him.
A more recent study (2022) focused just on third-trimester abortions. It found that the reasons given for third-trimester abortions were the same as those given for earlier abortions.
Again, there was no pro-life bias. The pro-abortion group ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) funded the study. ANSIRH describes itself as "Providing the evidence you need to advance reproductive well-being."
It says of the study's results:
The reasons people need third-trimester abortions are not so different from why people need abortions before the third trimester.
The study gives no detailed breakdown of women's reasons or concrete numbers. It found that people have abortions in the third trimester for one or more of the following reasons:
· They didn't know they were pregnant earlier.
· They had difficulty arranging an abortion.
· The baby had a health problem or disability.
None of the women in the study aborted for any reason related to their health. They were all physically healthy and in no danger from pregnancy.
The study mentioned four cases in which the baby had a disability, which was 14.3% of the total. However, the study didn't clarify whether these were the only cases.
One woman was homeless. The abortion facility took her money, killed her baby, and sent her back to the streets with no intervention or help. She was still homeless and now has a late-term abortion on her conscience.
Another woman discovered her pregnancy early but "took no immediate action toward obtaining an abortion."
This woman had been sexually assaulted in the past, though that wasn't the cause of her pregnancy. Kimport claims the emotional trauma of the past assault was the reason she didn't arrange an abortion until the third trimester.
One woman couldn't afford an abortion and started prenatal care. Then, her (now) ex-boyfriend got a work bonus, and she had an abortion in her third trimester.
All the women in the study aborted because they didn't feel they could cope with a baby or simply didn't want the child. While their reasons may have seemed serious to them, they weren't any different from the reasons people seek earlier abortions.
Statements from Doctors who Specialize in Third-Trimester Abortions
Further evidence comes from third-trimester abortionists themselves.
Abortionist Warren Hern, who specializes in third-trimester abortions, gave the following interview:
Interviewer: Do you ever get any women in their second half of the second trimester or in the third trimester that say they have no medical problems, they just don't want the baby? They change their mind? Would you do it?
Hern: Well, of course, if a woman doesn't want to be pregnant, there's no justification for forcing her to continue the pregnancy.
Interviewer: Okay, has that happened?
Hern: That happens all the time.
Hern has repeatedly said that because women can die from pregnancy complications, every pregnancy threatens their lives, and, therefore, abortion is always medically justified.
Shelley Sella is another abortionist who does third-trimester abortions. In an article in the Irish Times, a reporter who interviewed her says:
The women Sella treats fall into two categories: those who discover foetal abnormalities; and those with healthy, viable babies whose maternal circumstances mean they could not cope with the baby.
She gives the example of one mother of three whose husband was killed in a car accident while she was in her third trimester. She didn't feel she could raise her children and the new baby alone, so she had an abortion. Now, besides grieving for her husband, she has to deal with the loss of his nearly full-term baby.
A healthy, 16-year-old girl, also in the third trimester, chose abortion even though her parents, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's parents wanted her to have the baby. Sella killed the healthy, viable child.
When asked about whether adoption would've been appropriate in this case, Sella stated that adoption "causes lifelong trauma and psychological problems."
Another third-trimester abortionist, Susan Robinson, said of her patients:
Women whose fetuses have terrible abnormalities are a lot easier for people to understand. The husband and wife want to spare their baby whatever suffering that baby would have.
Then there's the group of women who didn't know they were pregnant. They were told they were not pregnant for one reason or another and they are just as desperate.
Some people really don't discover their pregnancies until the third trimester. In a previous article, I quoted abortionist Susan Poppema, who described a woman who came to her abortion facility nine months pregnant and in active labor. The woman had come for a routine exam and didn't know she was pregnant.
The Practice of Dr. George Tiller
The late Dr. George Tiller specialized in third-trimester abortions. In an article in the Kansas City Star (quoted here) Peggy Jarman, spokeswoman for Dr. Tiller, said:
About three-fourths of Tiller’s late-term patients, Jarman said, are teen-agers who have denied to themselves or their families they were pregnant until it was too late to hide it.
Though young, these girls were healthy, and their babies were healthy.
In a speech to a friendly crowd at a National Abortion Federation conference, Dr. Tiller said:
We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years.
This would mean that 4% of the abortions Tiller did over that period were for fetal anomalies. If those statistics hold true, 96% of his abortions were done on healthy babies. And many of the “fetal anomalies may have been non-fatal disabilities like Down Syndrome.
This aligns with what his former employee Luhra Tivis wrote:
From May to November 1988, I worked for an abortionist. He specializes in third-trimester killings. I witnessed evidence of the brutal, cold-blooded murder of over 600 viable, healthy babies at seven, eight- and nine-months gestation. A very, very few of these babies, less than 2%, were handicapped…
I thought I was pro-choice, and I was glad to be working in an abortion clinic. I thought I was helping provide a noble service to women in crisis….
I was instructed to falsify the age of the babies in medical records. I was required to lie to the mothers over the phone, as they scheduled their appointments, and to tell them that they were not ‘too far along’
Then I had to note in the records that Dr. Tiller’s needle had successfully pierced the walls of the baby’s heart, injecting the poison that brought death…
Mine was the agony of a participant, however reluctant, in the act of prenatal infanticide.1
It was true in 1988 and it’s true today—many, if not most, third-trimester abortions are done on healthy mothers with healthy babies.
Footnotes
1. Luhra Tivis “Where is the Real Violence?” Celebrate Life Sept/Oct 1994
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Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 900 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies.
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This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.