Politicians have been lying about abortion later in pregnancy. With an agenda to ultimately ban ALL abortion, they’re manufacturing stories of horror to scare voters into voting for them. They’re not sharing the facts. And they’re not sharing the true stories behind these abortions later in pregnancy — stories of medical complexity and difficult life circumstances.
We are here with the facts.
- Doctors OPPOSE bans on abortion later in pregnancy. Both Physicians for Reproductive Health and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists condemn these bans.
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The same politicians who are trying to ban abortion later in pregnancy have restricted abortion access at points earlier in pregnancy.
- They’ve also often limited access to birth control, sex education, and health care programs for women who earn lower incomes.
- Bit by bit, politicians are working to ultimately outlaw all abortion AND other sexual and reproductive health care nationwide.
- Inflammatory language and false information about abortion later in pregnancy are designed to stigmatize abortion, shame patients, vilify doctors, and ultimately manipulate voters.
- Politicians should not use patients as scapegoats for a political agenda.
- Abortion later in pregnancy is a valid choice, no matter the reason.
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No matter when a person gets an abortion, they must have access to the appropriate care.
- Abortion is essential health care that everyone should be able to access when they need or want it.
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Attacks on abortion later in pregnancy come as the U.S. faces a maternal mortality crisis.
- When patients consider abortion later in pregnancy, they’re often looking for ways to safeguard their health and lives.
- Issues that threaten a pregnant person’s health can arise later in pregnancy, at the time doctors need all the options available to provide the best care for their patients.
- But doctors can become trapped between providing sound medical care and adhering to medically unnecessary, state-mandated policies — under the threat of legal repercussions.
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Bans on abortion later in pregnancy hurt Black women most.
- Black women’s maternal mortality rate is about three times higher than that of non-Hispanic white women. Abortion bans make those inequities much worse and create additional risks for Black mothers in a maternal health crisis.
All abortion bans – regardless of when they start – are extreme and put politicians in control of people’s personal medical decisions. State politicians will try to pass off bans on abortion later in pregnancy as “reasonable,” but the truth is that this will harm patients, especially those with complex pregnancies. And the bottom line is that we should never compromise on people’s fundamental rights.
Stories from people who had abortions later in pregnancy
Christie B., Virginia
Christie was pregnant with her second child, a planned and wanted pregnancy.
My husband and I were confronted with two equally horrible options — carry the pregnancy to term and watch our baby girl suffocate to death upon birth, or end the pregnancy early and say goodbye to our much-wanted and much-loved baby girl.
After a 20-week ultrasound, she found out her daughter would be born with a complication called congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) and would suffocate at birth. She made the difficult decision of ending the pregnancy at 21 weeks.
Phil W., Missouri
Phil and his wife had tried to get pregnant for several years, and they were thrilled when she finally became pregnant with twins through a GIFT procedure at a fertility clinic.
Decisions about abortion need to be made with families and with the best medical information available. There is no one-size-fits-all situation for all pregnancies.
But their twins, who were identical, were diagnosed with twin-twin transfusion syndrome, a disease of the placenta. In week 21, Phil and his wife learned not only that both twins would die but that they had to abort because otherwise Phil’s wife was at risk of a ruptured uterus.
Their doctor could not provide the abortion because he was affiliated with a Catholic hospital, and Phil’s wife was unable to fly because no airline would fly someone with a high-risk pregnancy. They drove to Kansas for induced labor and delivery, and Phil participated in a baptism for the twins.
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Why put people like these through more trouble? Because this is not about abortion. It is about control.
Anti-abortion politicians need the public to be angry at people like Christie and Phil and misinformed about what compels them to seek later abortions. But we know that Americans can hear their stories and see the complicated truth about abortions later in pregnancy with love and understanding.
If you want to learn more — including updates on North Carolina’s laws on abortion — sign up for our email.