In a recent Atlantic article spotlighting abortionist Warren Hern, writer Elaine Godfrey explained how Hern, who commits abortions late into pregnancy, feels that he is not respected within the medical industry. Together, the pair dehumanized preborn children, comparing them to “clots of phlegm.” They also spoke about late-term abortions, spreading long-debunked myths about why women choose to undergo abortions in their second and third trimesters — including the false argument that abortion is safer than pregnancy. Hern went as far as to call pregnancy itself a ‘life-threatening condition.’
Myths of late abortions
Godfrey compared preborn children in the first trimester to “alienlike ball[s] of flesh” and “clots of phlegm,” but she said by 22 weeks they are recognizably human. “The procedures that Hern performs result in the removal of a body that, if you saw it, would inspire a sharp pang of recognition. These are the abortions that provide fodder for the gruesome images on protesters’ signs and the billboards along Midwest highways, images that can be difficult to look at for long,” wrote Godfrey. “Many of the women who visit Hern’s clinic do so because their health is at risk—or because their fetus has a serious abnormality that would require a baby to undergo countless surgeries with little chance of survival. But Hern does not restrict his work to these cases.”
This is a persistent myth, typically used to make the idea of a late-term abortion more palatable.
A 1988 study from the Guttmacher Institute — the pro-abortion organization which previously served as the research arm for Planned Parenthood — found that just two percent (2%) of women who had abortions did so because of a health problem with the baby. More than 20 years later, a 2013 study, also published by the Guttmacher Institute, said, “[D]ata suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”
Additionally, pro-abortion researcher Diana Greene Foster stated, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service, that abortions for fetal abnormalities “make up a small minority of later abortion.” And a 2010 paper from Julia Steinberg, of the pro-abortion Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, said, “Research suggests that the overwhelming majority of women having later abortions do so for reasons other than fetal anomaly (Drey et al., 2006; Finer et al., 2005, 2006; Foster et al., 2008).”
Godfrey did admit that Hern was willing to commit abortions at any point in pregnancy for any reason, as long as he believes it is safe for the woman to undergo the procedure. It’s a position that, Godfrey noted, even Frances Kissling, the founding president of the National Abortion Federation, disagrees with. “Later-term abortions are more serious, ethically, than earlier abortions,” Kissling told Godfrey. “My ethics are such that I would say to them, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I cannot perform an abortion for you. I will do anything I can to help you get through the next two or three months, but I don’t do this.'”
Pregnancy as a threat to women
Yet for Hern, pregnancy itself is reason enough to commit an abortion. Godfrey explained:
“So if a pregnant woman with no health issues comes to the clinic, say, at 30 weeks, what would you do?” I asked Hern once. The question irked him. “Every pregnancy is a health issue!” he said. “There’s a certifiable risk of death from being pregnant, period.”
It’s a recurrent theme for Hern, at least in this interview. “This [abortion] is a grotesque conversation to many people,” he said at the bar. “But this is a surgical procedure for a life-threatening condition.”
Abortion advocates frequently claim that pregnancy is dangerous, and therefore, abortion is necessary. Yet the one study they often cite, which found abortion to be 14 times safer than childbirth, has never been able to be replicated, was authored by pro-abortion researchers, and did not include statistics from Maryland, Washington D.C., New Hampshire, New York City, or California. And there is no federal requirement that complications from abortion be reported. Legalized abortion also does not decrease maternal mortality rates.
Ultimately, the reality is simple: abortion is never medically necessary, neither for the mother’s health nor because a preborn child has a disability.
