In a recent appearance on “Meet the Press,” Senator JD Vance, Donald Trump’s newly-announced 2024 running mate, discussed the abortion pill with host Kristen Welker. During the conversation, Vance contrasted Donald Trump’s more “pragmatic” stance of leaving abortion laws in the hands of the states to the Democrats’ stance that abortion should be taxpayer-funded, and allowed up to birth.
“We want to make it easier and more affordable for young women and parents to have families to begin with. We want to lower housing costs, eliminate the surprise medical bills that so many families see after they have a baby,” Vance said in the interview. “That’s the Trump and Republican approach to this issue. Meanwhile, Joe Biden wants taxpayer-funded abortion up to the moment of birth. It’s so crazy to me how the Democrats frame this, as Republicans— let me finish, Kristen. They frame Democrats as being reasonable and pragmatic when in reality, Republicans are the ones trying to find some common ground here.”
As Vance was speaking, Welker interjected. “Senator, as you know, abortions, very few abortions take place later in pregnancy and almost always because there is a medical emergency,” she claimed.
Senator J. D. Vance tells “Meet the Press” that he supports access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
Senator Vance is widely reported to be on the shortlist for Trump’s VP pick.
Prolifers, get ready. All signs point to a fight over abortion in the GOP platform. It looks like… pic.twitter.com/7k2PJ3HPPg
— Denny Burk (@DennyBurk) July 7, 2024
Abortion without limits?
A proposed budget from President Biden earlier this year endorsed taxpayer funding for abortion through all three trimesters. Democratic lawmakers have often been reluctant to give a concrete answer as to which, if any, limits on abortion they support. However, pro-abortion lawmakers have been quick to publicly claim that 1) abortions that happen late in pregnancy are rare, and only for the most serious of reasons, and 2) abortions just don’t happen all the way up to birth.
Hmm. Let’s take a look at what the Guttmacher Institute had to say in January 2024 (emphases added):
- Only six states (Alaska, Colorado, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont) and the District of Columbia do not prohibit abortion at a specific point in pregnancy.
- While abortions after 20 weeks represent about 1% of all abortions, it is critical that people have access throughout pregnancy to protect bodily autonomy and ensure equity. Any gestational age ban may delay or deny access to abortion care.
And KFF (the Kaiser Family Foundation) stated in February 2024 that seven states plus D.C. have no restrictions on abortion.
In other words, while the media and pro-abortion politicians are busy claiming that abortions don’t happen up to birth and that no one is advocating for it, or diverting people with the red herring about the “rarity” of late abortions, 6-7 states plus D.C. allow abortion without any restrictions at all if a woman wants it, and Guttmacher (Planned Parenthood’s former research arm and “special affiliate”) appears to wish that ALL states did the same.
“Equity” is the key buzzword here — if “ensuring equity” means that people should have “access” to abortion “throughout pregnancy,” this means somebody has to PAY for that access if people can’t afford it. And logically, this means other taxpayers will have to — in the name of “equity” — pay for other people’s preborn children to be killed (of course, if you’re forcing taxpayers to pay for things they oppose, it negates the idea of bodily autonomy, doesn’t it?). And abortion must also be allowed at any time, since “any gestational age ban” might mean that the woman does not get the abortion she wants.
So, is it accurate to characterize a pro-abortion politician’s position as supporting taxpayer-funded abortion up to birth? It appears so.
In addition, other bills have appeared to open the door to even legal infanticide, according to legal experts, due to questionably broad language regarding “pregnancy outcomes” — such as bill in Maryland, Colorado, and California.
The official Democratic National Committee party platform, meanwhile, calls for abortion to be legal and easily accessible, even if that means undoing any laws that might be deemed a “barrier” to abortion.
READ: Mom flown from Idaho to Utah for pregnancy complications wakes to learn they dismembered her son
Are late abortions rare?
The majority of abortions take place in the first trimester, but that does not make the number of abortions committed in the second and third trimesters insignificant.
The CDC’s most recent Abortion Surveillance Report states that one percent (1.0%) of all abortions committed in 2021 were carried out after 21 weeks gestation — when preborn children are increasingly able to survive premature birth. With 378,395 total abortions committed, that equals roughly 3,790 babies aborted late in pregnancy. However, not every state reports its abortion data to the CDC, so the true number is almost certainly higher, as the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute shows. Its data offers a much higher number of abortions; in 2017, it reported 862,320 abortions, while the CDC data for the same year was significantly lower, at 368,044. The number of late abortions being committed remains the same for both reports, however, at around one percent (1%). Guttmacher’s report noted a very specific 1.3%. Using this percentage, this equates to approximately 11,210 abortions late in pregnancy that year alone.
Again, these are children old enough to potentially to survive outside the womb.
This is hardly an insignificant number of preborn children being killed late in pregnancy. Those are over 11,000 dead children who very well could have survived outside of the womb — every year. Children born as early as 21 weeks are capable of surviving when given medical assistance.
Why are late abortions committed?
Welker repeated the common claim that late abortions are only committed due to medical necessity — the fallacious “red herring” that has become a talking point echoed by media and politicians when anyone speaks about “abortion up to birth.”
Whether late abortions are done for frivolous reasons or solely medical emergencies fails to address the claim that “abortion up to birth” is a position supported by countless lawmakers in this country. This tactic is a diversion from the original claim.
However, let’s address what Welker said, because that, too, is inaccurate.
First of all, if a woman is experiencing a medical emergency late in pregnancy, her child can be delivered without being killed prior to delivery. No child has to be intentionally dismembered or injected with feticide when he or she can be delivered and given the best of care in an effort to save his or her life. Dr. Jeffrey Wright explains further here about what is not an abortion — something sorely needed in society’s convoluted conversations about so-called “medically necessary abortions.”
A 1988 Guttmacher study found that just two percent (2%) of women who had abortions late in pregnancy did so because of a health problem with the baby. More than 20 years later, a 2013 study also published by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute said, “[D]ata suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment” (emphasis added).
Another study from the pro-abortion Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) stated, “The reasons people need third-trimester abortions are not so different from why people need abortions before the third trimester… [T]he circumstances that lead to someone needing a third-trimester abortion have overlaps with the pathways to abortion at other gestations.”
That research also found that “[t]here are thus many reasons – financial, logistical, and social – why third-trimester abortion care is exceptional compared to first-trimester abortion care. However, there is reason to believe that the circumstances that lead to someone needing a third-trimester abortion are not exceptional. Several studies have highlighted the importance of the timing of pregnancy discovery, with later discovery associated with later presentation to abortion care. Other research has identified how laws that complicate people’s ability to access abortion, including parental involvement laws and laws that contribute to the reduction of abortion clinics, are associated with later presentation to abortion care for patients.”
Some women in the study also said that they didn’t know they were pregnant until later in pregnancy, which is why they underwent late abortion procedures.
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.” In addition, 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).”
And again, women experiencing their own health emergencies late in pregnancy don’t have to have their babies directly and intentionally killed; killing the child is not the standard of care for any pregnancy related emergency.
The rhetoric surrounding later abortions can be confusing, but the facts are clear. Later abortions are more common than people realize, and are committed for reasons other than fetal diagnosis or maternal illness.
Editor’s Note, 7/17/24: This post has been updated with information from KFF.
