The claims Hillary Clinton and the Left have made and continue to make about late-term abortion are demonstrably false.
In the third and final presidential debate earlier this month, Hillary played the part of sympathetic abortion defender, troubled over the decision some have to make out of supposed medical necessity to end a pregnancy in the late stages. During the debate, she claimed Donald Trump used “scare rhetoric” by equating late-term abortions to ripping “the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby”. Chilling language? Yes. But Trump was not incorrect.
Data reported by the Guttmacher Institute shows that in 2011, there were 1.06 million abortions in the United States. 21% of all pregnancies that didn’t end in miscarriage ended in abortion. That is a sad and staggering statistic. Of the abortions performed, 1.3% of them occurred after 20 weeks. What looks like a sliver when compared to the whole is often forgotten or relegated to medical necessity.
Discussion of abortion in the late stages is focused on more often because a sense of disgust increases due to the unborn child’s development. Though I am truly appalled that abortion happens at any stage, it is especially horrific that a child who may well survive outside of the womb is cut down because of “choice”.
Hillary Clinton would have you believe that late-term abortions are not just sometimes necessary, but often necessary for the life of the mother. She is not a medical professional and neither am I, so I’ll let them explain the fallacy of her claims in The National Right to Life Committee’s fact sheet on the “life of the mother” argument, which is an eye-opening defense of unborn life:
“Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my 36 years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother’s life. . . . If, toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother’s health, he will take the child by inducing labor or performing a Caesarean section. His intention is still to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby will be premature and perhaps immature depending on the length of gestation. Because it has suddenly been taken out of the protective womb, it may encounter threats to its survival. The baby is never willfully destroyed because the mother’s life is in danger.”
C. Everett Koop, M.D., as told to Dick Bohrer, in Moody Monthly, May, 1980.
“In conclusion, although serious threats to health can occur, there is always a life-affirming way to care for mother and baby, no matter how bleak the prognosis.”
Mary L. Davenport, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., “Is Late-Term Abortion Ever Necessary?” (2009)
“We affirm that there are no medical circumstances justifying direct abortion, that is, no circumstances in which the life of a mother may only be saved by directly terminating the life of her unborn child.”
John Bonner, Eamon O’Dwyer, David Jenkins, Kieran O’Driscoll, Julia Vaughan, “Statement by Obstetricians,” The Irish Times, 1 April 1992.
“With diseases like lupus, multiple sclerosis, even breast cancer, the chance that pregnancy will make the disease worse is no greater than the chance that the disease will either stay the same or improve. And medical technology has advanced to a point where even women with diabetes and kidney disease can be seen through a pregnancy safely by a doctor who knows what he or she is doing. We’ve come a long way since my mother’s time… The idea of abortion to save the mother’s life is something that people cling to because it sounds noble and pure — but medically speaking, it probably doesn’t exist. It’s a real stretch of our thinking.”Don Sloan, M.D. and Paula Hartz, Choice: A Doctor’s Experience with the Abortion Dilemma(New York: International Publishers, 2nd ed, 2002), p. 46
That some of the examples mentioned above and in the NRLC link itself are decades old speaks to the weakness of Hillary Clinton’s claims.
Medical professionals have known for a while that ending a life which may well be viable is opposite of what needs to occur and should occur. Delivering the mother from complications and the baby from legal homicide through birth – natural or C-section – is both medically and morally right.
Another important point is that late-term abortions are largely chosen for the same reasons abortions are chosen in the earlier stages, as the Washington Examiner reported:
Greene and Kimport, whose study was published in the Guttmacher Institute’s journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, asked 272 women to explain why they got a late-term abortion based on eight reasons, including financial difficulties, lack of knowledge of where to get the procedure and disagreements with a partner.”
…women in our study who obtained first-trimester abortions and women who obtained abortions at or after 20 weeks’ gestation were remarkably similar.”
According to the study, women seeking later abortions were raising children alone, were depressed or using banned substances, were experiencing domestic violence or other conflict, were young, or had trouble deciding what to do.
Hillary’s go-to tactic is lying, whether it’s about emails, decisions while in office, or in discussion of late-term abortion in the United States. Her lies are accepted as truth by the general public, especially those who have already chosen her. Her faux sentimentality when discussing abortion only covers the truth.
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