Late-Term Abortions

Ever since abortion was legalized in 1973 during the Roe vs. Wade case, thousands of abortions have been performed each day and millions since then. Of those millions, some of them are done in the late term of the pregnancy. Late term abortions are normally defined as when a baby is removed from a mother or aborted after around 23 weeks into the pregnancy. 43 states have laws preventing late term abortions, but the definition is quite lenient. The issue is determining in which cases late-term abortions are necessary or when they become too immoral to perform. I believe that late-term abortions are a problem and the laws and regulations preventing them should be examined. Many people have different opinions on this matter. Pro-Life people are generally against abortions altogether but most pro-life people can agree that late term abortions are wrong. The other side of the coin are pro-choice people. Not all pro-choice people support late term abortions actually, but rather only support the rights of a woman to get abortions early on. Other people support the right to abort a baby whenever in the pregnancy. All have valid opinions and reasoning for their beliefs but even so, if our laws are meant to prevent them why are they still happening? Even though late term abortions are illegal in most states, there are still many performed all the time. The laws for some states do not allow women to get a late term abortion unless the baby affects the life or health of the mother. This basically means that late term abortions can be performed as long as the mother has a reason to do it. Nevertheless, people will find a way around the law with a few different methods. For example, people will use an issue in their lives like a breakup or any other unexpected problem to say that having the baby will harm them mentally. Something like this is technically legal but that is why our laws on this subject could use some review and revision. Doing some research I came across an article written by a woman who has a strong foundation for her argument. Abby Johnson, a former abortion clinic director, talks about her experiences working in this field and describes many of the things she has witnessed while performing late-term abortions. She provides detailed explanations about how it all works and some statistics she has gathered over the years. In her experience she has realized that many of the late term abortions are performed on perfectly normal babies with mothers using ways I previously explained to get around the law. Although this number may sound exaggerated, this is just one source and does not represent all abortion clinics. With all the attention that abortions get today on either side of the argument, I believe there is a problem that needs to be looked at more critically. With people like Abby Johnson writing about her experiences, we can learn and take it as an example when we think about what is really going on behind the scenes of late term abortions. I want to research these problems and analyze what is going on so we can understand more what is really going on.