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Tag: Fetus Viability

How Anti-Abortionists Manipulate Uneducated Americans with Pictures of Full-Term Fetuses

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments
preaching anti abortion gospel lexington kentucky (8)

Anti-abortionists are fond of using graphic photos of full-term fetuses to prove that abortion is the killing of a fully developed, viable human being.

Here’s a photo of a fetus at thirty-eight weeks:

thirty-eight weeks

OMG, Demoncrats and liberal Christians want to murder children in the womb, anti-abortion, forced-birth Evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons say. And if that was actually the case, I would agree with them. However, as I shall show in this post, the picture above is representative of only a small percentage of aborted fetuses. Only 1.3 percent (less than 10,000 per year) of abortions take place after twenty-one weeks (before viability). The overwhelming majority of late-term abortions happen due to fetal abnormalities — fetuses which, if left to develop to term, would be born, only to die hours or days later or be consigned to untold suffering, pain, and countless other severe mental and health problems.

Imagine if, instead, Americans were presented with the following photos showing fetal development and the percentage of abortions that take place at that point in development. Do you think the discussion about abortion would change in this country?

human zygote

Human zygote

two weeks

Two weeks

five weeks

Five weeks

eight weeks

Eight weeks. Sixty-five percent of abortions take place by this time in fetal development.

thirteen weeks

Thirteen weeks. Eighty-eight percent of abortions take place by this time in fetal development.

What we see in these photos is potential human life, not personhood. It is important to understand that the modern anti-abortion, forced-birth movement is driven by theology, not science. That’s why all the fetal development photos in the world won’t change their minds about abortion. Anti-abortionists have been convinced by their pastors and priests that the Bible says life begins at conception; that the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg, the fertilized egg is a “person”; that God is “pro-life” (an absurd argument if you actually READ the Bible); that abortion is murder, no different from a man savagely murdering his neighbor. It is for these reasons that it is impossible to have a meaningful discussion with people who are anti-abortion. When a discussion starts with the claim that abortion is murder; that abortion doctors are murderers; that people who help facilitate abortion are murderers; that women who have abortions are murderers, meaningful interaction is impossible.

Note:

I refuse to call anti-abortion, forced-birth zealots “pro-life.” They are anything but. Among anti-abortion Evangelicals, most of them are pro-war, pro-police violence, and promote and support politicians, political parties, and government policies that are anti-human. It has often been said that anti-abortionists only care about “life” in the womb. Once a baby is born, he or she is his or her own, subject to the cruelties of right-wing Republican policies and immoral capitalism; especially if the child is red, yellow, black, or brown, he or she is definitely not precious in God’s sight. (Please see Jesus Loves the Little Children, All the Children of the World.)

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Quote of the Day: The FACTS on the Born-Alive Debate

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments

abortion facts

What statistics are available on cases of failed abortions in which a baby is born alive? How often does this happen?

There is some limited data on babies born alive as the result of an abortion procedure, but it’s unclear what the medical circumstances were in each of these cases. There is more extensive data on when abortions are performed. We’ll go through the available numbers.

First, in terms of a baby’s viability — the ability to survive outside the womb — one 2015 study in the New England Journal of Medicine on preterm births said: “Active [lifesaving] intervention for infants born before 22 weeks of gestation is generally not recommended, whereas the approach for infants born at or after 22 weeks of gestation varies.” The study noted the “extremely difficult” decision on whether to use treatment for infants “born near the limit of viability,” saying that while in some cases treatment is clearly indicated or not, “in many cases, it is unclear whether treatment is in the infant’s best interest.”

The study looked at the cases of 4,987 infants “without congenital anomalies,” or birth defects, born before 27 weeks gestation. It found that 5.1 percent of babies born at 22 weeks gestational age survived and 3.4 percent survived “without severe impairment.” Several weeks further into gestation, at 26 weeks, 81.4 percent of babies survived, 75.6 percent without severe impairment.

Abortions in such later stages of pregnancies (which typically are 38 to 42 weeks full term) could be performed because of congenital anomalies, but that study provides some sense of when a fetus without birth defects could be viable and when decisions on medical interventions could be made.

Late-term abortions are rare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 1.3 percent of abortions in the U.S. were performed after 21 weeks gestational time, according to 2015 data. The CDC’s report showed that 65 percent of abortions that year occurred in the first eight weeks of pregnancy.

Forty-three states have banned “some abortions after a certain point in pregnancy,” according to the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive health issues.

What about abortions that result in a live birth? One CDC report on death certificates for infants for 2003 to 2014, showed “143 deaths involving induced terminations” of pregnancies during that 12-year period, 97 of which “involved a maternal complication or, one or more congenital anomalies.” The data “only include deaths occurring to those infants born alive; fetal deaths (stillbirths) are not included.”

The CDC notes that the 143 number could be an underestimate of induced terminations of pregnancies. In looking at the data, the CDC found some cases where it was unclear whether a pregnancy termination was induced or spontaneous. In such cases, if congenital anomalies and maternal complications also were involved, the CDC assumed those were spontaneous terminations, due to the “strong association between severe congenital anomalies or maternal complications and premature labor and birth.” In other words, the CDC assumed such cases were premature labor as opposed to a decision to induce labor or end the pregnancy.

— The Facts on the Born-Alive Debate, March 4, 2019