“Pro-life” Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (pictured above), often claim that women choose to have abortions “until the day of birth” or “up until the second before birth” for no reason, however, The Washington Post reports how that rarely ever happens in reality:
But do some expectant mothers really opt for abortions as late as the day they’re due? Hardly, says Katrina Kimport (medical sociologist and professor at the University of California at San Francisco). Many women who undergo later abortions wanted their pregnancies to continue, she said, “and it’s very upsetting to be mischaracterized in these public settings and maligned.”
Women who seek abortions later in pregnancy generally do so for two reasons, she said. One is new information: They find out something they didn’t know earlier about their own health or the fetus’s, or they don’t realize they are pregnant.
The other main reason some women seek abortions later in pregnancy is that they tried to access it earlier, but faced barriers. Those include having to travel to another state, getting an appointment, raising money for the procedure, and navigating things like two-visit clinic requirements or parental-involvement laws.
A later abortion is a big deal, both medically and financially. The later in pregnancy an abortion is performed, the more complex — and expensive — it becomes. It often takes multiple days, and many women end up going through a full labor and delivery anyway. The procedure can cost as much as $30,000 late in a pregnancy, according to the group Who Not When, which tracks later abortions. That may or may not be covered by health insurance.
For women who have had such procedures, it was “emotionally complicated,” Kimport says. And they don’t appreciate how politicians “insult their decision-making.”
(Source: The Washington Post)