While women are giving birth less than in previous years, they are also giving birth at older ages than before. It has become increasingly normal for women to give birth over the age of 35, and for women to continue giving birth past the age of 45. And while most people would find this to be a positive, Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams argued that this means women need abortion.
Williams noted that, according to U.S. Census data, there has been a 132% increase in births by women over the age of 40 since 1990. And thanks to medical advancements, Williams admitted that these pregnancies are largely safer than ever. Yet somehow, she believes these successful pregnancies are also a reason that abortion should be legal.
Children with disabilities
“Concerns about fetal abnormalities — often a concern among those who have children at an older age — also need to be thought about in context,” Williams said.
She interviewed fertility specialist Cynthia M. Murdock, who criticized the notion of women having babies with their own eggs at older ages. Why? Because they might have children with disabilities. “The reality is… when you’re using a donated egg, you don’t have the risk of Down syndrome, of chromosomal problems, that you would with a 45-year-old who uses her own eggs,” Murdock said. “The risk of Down syndrome is associated with not the age of the woman, but the age of the eggs.”
In an article framed around how women ‘need’ abortion, the point is made clear: older women might conceive a child with a disability, and therefore, abortion is deemed necessary.
But killing a child in the womb who has a disability is not ‘necessary’ just as killing people outside the womb with disabilities is not necessary.
While some argue that it’s a matter of “choice” because someone might not want to raise a child with Down syndrome or another disability, that choice does not give someone the right to end another human being’s life. The driving force behind eugenic-based abortions is ableism. According to one survey, just 11% of women reported having a positive diagnosis experience, while another survey found that 13% of doctors admitted to purposely overemphasizing the negative aspects of Down syndrome in an effort to pressure parents into abortion.
Meanwhile, medical advancements are allowing people with Down syndrome to live longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives than ever before. Yet, to abortion advocates, if able-bodied adults feel that preborn children with Down syndrome cannot have lives worth living, then they have no right to life.
Maternal complications
Williams also interviewed doctors who talked about higher risks of complications in older pregnancies — which, again, somehow equals a ‘need’ to be allowed to deliberately kill undelivered humans — by pointing out that women over 40 are more likely to be diagnosed with complications like pre-eclampsia or gestational diabetes.
“With age over 40, or really even age over 35, most risks go up,” Dr. David N. Hackney, an associate professor in the Department of Reproductive Biology at Case Western Reserve, told Salon. “The risk of developing gestational diabetes goes up. The risk of stillbirth goes up. The risk of having a C-section goes up. We tend to accumulate diseases with age so as time goes on. We tend to develop diabetes, we gain weight, we have higher rates of high blood pressure.”
Yet this also does not mean women need the ability to deliberately kill their undelivered children.
Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, the media has inundated the American people with stories of abortions that were supposedly ‘medically necessary,’ citing things like pre-eclampsia or incompetent cervix. But induced abortion is not the medically-recommended treatment for such complications; even in true life-threatening situations, an early delivery is indicated — not the intentional, targeted killing of a preborn child.
As the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) has explained (emphasis added):
There are times when separating the mother and her unborn child is necessary to save the life of the mother, even if the unborn child is too premature to live. In those tragic cases, if possible the life of the baby will be attempted to be preserved, and if not possible, the body of the unborn child is treated with respect, recognizing the humanity of the life which is lost in the separation. In contrast, the purpose of an induced abortion is to produce a dead baby.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defined legal induced abortion as an “intervention performed by a licensed clinician (e.g., a physician, nurse-midwife, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant) that is intended to terminate a suspected or known ongoing intrauterine pregnancy and produce a non-viable fetus at any gestational age.”
Mayo Clinic also describes treatment for pre-eclampsia, and it is not an induced abortion. The standard of care is to give medications to lower blood pressure, or, if necessary, perform an emergency delivery. But an emergency delivery is typically a c-section, which takes approximately one hour… while a dilation and evacuation, or D&E, is meant to be a multi-day procedure. (Some abortionists attempt same-day D&Es, but this increases the risks of injury to the mother.)
Induced abortion — the intentional taking of a preborn child’s life — is not medically necessary, and a child’s unintentional (though possibly expected) death due to legitimate medical treatment is not an induced abortion. Capitalizing on people’s potential fears to scare them into supporting the intentional homicide of undelivered human beings is not a scientific, evidence-based position. It’s prioritizing ideology at the expense of science.
