Former President Donald Trump made false claims about late-term abortions during Thursday’s debate with President Joe Biden, experts say.
Abortion is likely to be one of the biggest issues defining this year’s presidential election.
Trump repeated the claims he made in 2016 about late-term abortion during a debate with then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday.
He argued: “They will take the lives of children aged eight months, nine months and even just after birth.”
By definition, a late-term abortion takes place after 21 weeks of pregnancy. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than 1% of abortions are performed at this stage of pregnancy. More than 80% occur by the 9th week of pregnancy, and only 6% occur between 14 and 20 weeks, or in the second trimester. Abortion does not end the life of a born baby.
Dr. Dara Kass, a New York emergency physician and former regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told NBC News that claims to the contrary are false.
“What he’s talking about is murder and it has nothing to do with abortion,” she said.
Trump also specifically targeted former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, saying he “is out to rip so-called nine-month-old babies out of the womb and kill them.”
In a 2019 interview, Northam was pressed about a state bill that would have lifted restrictions on first- or second-trimester abortions having to be done in a hospital. The bill would have also lifted the requirement that three doctors agree that a second-trimester abortion is medically necessary.
Northam said he supports decisions being made between families and their doctors, rather than legislation making the decision for them.
“Late-term abortions are performed with the consent of the mother and her doctor and are used when there is a severe fetal abnormality or there is a possibility that a fetus may not be viable,” Northam said in an interview.
“What Northam was talking about is babies being born with severe abnormalities, and finding out about them late in the pregnancy,” said Jill Weaver Lenz, a law professor at the University of Iowa and an expert on reproductive justice.
A full-term pregnancy lasts 39-40 weeks. If a woman begins to experience life-threatening symptoms, such as pre-eclampsia, later in pregnancy, a doctor may induce labor. Even if the baby is extremely premature (before 28 weeks), it has a good chance of survival. This induction is not an abortion, and experts say it is infanticide if a healthy baby born this way is killed.
In many cases, tests don’t reveal these serious complications until later in pregnancy, or pregnant women may not realize there’s a serious problem with their fetus or their own health until then. In fact, according to CDC data, the number of women who didn’t receive prenatal care during their pregnancy or didn’t receive prenatal care until the third trimester (7-9 months) rose to a record high of about 7% in 2021.
When a fetus isn’t expected to survive, doctors and families may need to have conversations like “whether or not we should continue with life support if it’s ultimately futile,” Weaver Lenz said of perinatal hospice. “Northam wasn’t talking about abortion, he was talking about how to care for a non-viable baby.”
Weaver Lenz said she expects more families will be faced with choices about perinatal hospice in the future, especially in states that don’t have legal exemptions for abortion due to birth defects.
Complications may require difficult decisions
“Most late-term abortions are elective and are performed on healthy women and healthy babies for the same reasons as early-term abortions,” a representative for SBA Pro-Life America said in an emailed statement to NBC News.
There is no technical definition of a late-term abortion, but when pressed for a definition, SBA Pro-Life America said it would classify anything after 15 weeks as a “late-term abortion.”
Medically, “late pregnancy” refers to pregnancy after 41 weeks, i.e. beyond full term.
It’s true, experts say, that many abortions performed during the second trimester, which lasts from 13 to 27 weeks of pregnancy, are likely not medically necessary.
“There will still be a significant number of abortions because women discover their pregnancy late, their partners lose their jobs or they have a very difficult time deciding whether to have an abortion,” said Greer Donley, an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in abortion law.
Others may have a hard time accessing an abortion, forcing them to make the decision later in the pregnancy when abortion becomes available, she said.
“One of the reasons abortions are occurring after 12 weeks is because states make it very difficult to get an abortion early in pregnancy,” Weaver Lenz said.
In some cases, abortions after 12 weeks are considered medically necessary.
When Donley was 20 weeks pregnant, tests revealed that her son had a severe brain abnormality that was preventing brain tissue from forming. As a cancer survivor, Donley’s pregnancy was already high-risk. At 22 weeks pregnant, she made the difficult decision to have an abortion.
“It was tragic,” she said.
Late-term abortions are rare and expensive and usually performed when a woman’s life is at risk, and even in states without abortion laws, it can be hard to find a doctor willing to perform an abortion at this stage, Donley said.
In the third trimester, which includes weeks 29 to 40 of pregnancy – the seventh, eighth and ninth months of pregnancy – “we’re mostly talking about medically necessary abortions,” Donley said.
These abortions “are almost always due to complications, such as fetal abnormalities, or a medical condition that puts the woman’s life at risk,” says Amita Vyas, an associate professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health and director of the Maternal and Child Health Program in the George Washington University School of Public Health’s Master of Public Health program. “There are so many nuanced medical reasons, from congenital abnormalities to genetics. Most of these diagnoses don’t happen early in pregnancy.”
