In recent weeks, Republicans across the country have expressed outrage over so-called “late-term abortions.” During his State of the Union address, President Trump went as far as to suggest that lawmakers in New York and Virginia, who have been…
In recent weeks, Republicans across the country have expressed outrage over so-called “late-term abortions.” During his State of the Union address, President Trump went as far as to suggest that lawmakers in New York and Virginia, who have been working to make the procedure more accessible, are actually trying to enable abortions up until the moment a person gives birth. However, advocates explain to Bustle that “late-term abortions” are a misleading term used by abortion opponents to spread misinformation.
According to Dr. Jennifer Conti, a fellow with advocacy group Physicians for Reproductive Health, “late-term abortion” is “not an actual term that has any clinical or scientific meaning.” Conti says that the term avoids specifying a time period in which the abortion procedure is performed, whereas physicians divide pregnancies into trimesters rather than terms.
“Really what makes the most sense in terms of thinking about when we provide abortions is this idea of viability,” Conti explains, noting that the idea of a “late-term abortion” is therefore also medically inaccurate . “That term is very specifically crafted to incite a very visceral negative feeling to really play on people’s emotions, and instead of referring to a finite period within the pregnancy, it specifically leaves it very big so that you don’t know the difference between second trimester and all the way up until the baby is being delivered at term,” she says.
