Late-Term Laws (PA Revised)

Ever since abortion was legalized in 1973 during the Roe vs. Wade case, millions of abortions have been performed each day. 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 abortion laws are a problem and I want to examine the different arguments around them.

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. These laws basically say that late term abortions can be performed as long as the mother has a reason to do it. In most states a doctor or even two doctors need to give approval. 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 Abby Johnson. Abby Johnson is a former abortion clinic director and talks about her experiences working in this field. She describes many of the things she has witnessed while performing late-term abortions and talks briefly about some statistics she has gathered while working in the field. For example, she has realized that many of the late term abortions performed at her clinic, almost fifty percent, are performed on perfectly normal babies with mothers using ways I previously explained to get around the law. While this may be true, this is just one source and does not represent all abortion clinics around the United States. Nevertheless, the way the laws are being avoided is a problem and needs to be analyzed to fully know what is going on.

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 the different opinions to really understand what is going on. Without laws that actually do their jobs, there is no point in having them in the first place.