Thanks for the alert. I signed the petition. It's all such a damn shame.

Kent, I'm going to open myself to who knows what here. I haven't yet commented on Lina's very well presented post because I'm truly conflicted. Yes, I am in complete agreement with late term abortion to save the life of the mother. However, there's something about this that comes at my heart and mind in such a way, that I'm not done reconciling it. Any insight you offer will be greatly appreciated. xox

Robin, I have made a note to work out a post on the topic. You're right the matter is complicated, but I think it's quite important so I guess that means I should write down why. Thanks for the suggestion. I hope I can come up with something that will be helpful to you—I'll let you know when I've made my attempt.

Thanks for the re-post Kent. I look forward to seeing what you have to say in your longer post to answer Robin's question. This is important to dig into. The anti-abortion movement has made "late-term abortion" a buzzword and vilified Dr. Tiller and Dr. Carhart in particular because they were and are willing to do late abortions (the phrase "late-term" doesn't make sense and shouldn't be used). This does get to the heart of what women's fundamental role in society is going to be.

The fact is, late abortions are quite rare. But the option must be there... and I hope you'll read some of the heart-wrenching personal stories that came out after Dr. Tiller was murdered about the circumstances in which women find themselves in need of abortion after 24 weeks, many involving women who really wanted to be pregnant, but could not - and should not - bring themselves to bear a fetus missing portions of its brain doomed to die soon after birth, for instance (see: http://www.ourbodiesourblog.org/blog/2009/06/writings-about-george-tiller-and-where-we-go-from-here).

Another crying indictment of the status quo here is the fact that many women are looking for abortions later in their pregnancy because abortion is not accessible early on! They don't have the $400 in cash (or insurance, either!), they can't get to a clinic (90% of all counties in the US don't have abortion clinics), or they are teenagers coping on their own, denying the reality of their unwanted pregnancy until they can't ignore it any more!

But as I've said, this cuts to the heart of the question: aren't women's lives more important that their ability to bear children? Are we vessels for reproduction or are we human individuals with our own dreams, hopes, plans, and lives... sometimes very complicated lives?

Your article is chicken little politics. If you use such a horrible broad stroke to paint all people who oppose late term abortion, you are part of the problem. Although “fetal viability” is not a legal term, that doesn’t render it moot. The vast majority of Americans believe that a fetus that could survive outside the mother should not be aborted.

If you continue to refute the facts about who is getting late term abortions and more importantly “WHY” they are getting them, you being willfully blind to the truth.

Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion.

Also, your desire to minimize how many women get them to “only 1 %” is another gross misrepresentation of the facts. There were 1.2 million abortions last year, and “only 1%” were late term, then TWELVE THOUSAND late term abortions happened. That is more casualties than occurred to our military for the last 8 in BOTH Iraq and Afghanistan. And that’s only last year.

In 1987, the Alan Guttmacher Institute (a Pro-abortion lobbying group) collected questionnaires from 1,900 women in the United States who came to clinics to have abortions. Of the 1,900 questioned, 420 had been pregnant for 16 or more weeks. These 420 women were asked to choose among a list of reasons they had not obtained the abortions earlier in their pregnancies. The results were as follows:

71% Woman didn't recognize she was pregnant or misjudged gestation
48% Woman found it hard to make arrangements for abortion
33% Woman was afraid to tell her partner or parents
24% Woman took time to decide to have an abortion
8% Woman waited for her relationship to change
8% Someone pressured woman not to have abortion
6% Something changed after woman became pregnant
6% Woman didn't know timing is important
5% Woman didn't know she could get an abortion
2% A fetal problem was diagnosed late in pregnancy
11% Other

Women who have never married obtain two-thirds of all abortions. Each year, about two percent of women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion. To even imply that convenience is not the primary motivation is beyond comprehension. Health is rarely, (virtually immeasurable), the reason.

You had better rethink your failed argument. Late term abortions are solely for the convenience of the mother and the viability of the fetus is a non factor. There is NO moral high ground to support your argument. None. If we can’t see the horror of this, we are morally bankrupt as a nation.

Radical reform and enforcement of late term abortion laws is vitally necessary. Period.

Hi Philos. Your statistics do not sway me, nor should they sway anyone who cares about the humanity of women. Abortion is a procedure whereby an individual woman decides what happens to her body. It is about the woman; not the fetus, which is defined by its subordinate status to the woman. Fetuses are not babies, so abortions are not murder, not tragic, and cannot in any way be equated with the deaths of real human beings. Even after "viability" the fetus is still a fetus, and exists within, is biologically integrated into and dependent upon the woman's body. It is still the woman's body that we are talking about. Once born, breathing on its own, and biologically separated from the woman can we talk about a baby as a socially distinct being.

One note about the term "convenience." Are women's lives so insignificant to you that whether we are to risk our lives and health to become mothers against our will is termed a question of "convenience?" Are we not human beings?

Finally, I will highlight one story that was related by a doctor at the speak-out for Dr. Tiller in New York after he was murdered. This doctor had a pregnant woman patient who had developed a life-threatening condition and needed a late abortion immediately. The NY doctor called Dr. Tiller as the only one she could think of who could do the procedure and explained the situation. "Get her on a plane and send her to Wichita!" was Tiller's response. After discussing the situation in detail, though, it became clear that the woman would not survive long enough to make the trip. As the NY doctor had never done a late abortion before, Dr. Tiller walked her through the steps over the phone, and she was able to save her patient by performing this emergency abortion. This is just one of thousands of the stories about the women who were touched by Dr. Tiller's lifetime of work. With him gone, and with only a few other doctors left who even know how to perform these procedures, women are going to die.

For what it's worth, the statistics don't sway me either because civil liberties are never about how many people are affected. They are about what is just or not just. But this is a complex matter and I don't intend to argue it in detail here in these comments, so I'm not going to seriously try. This post was offered as a referral to another post, not as an attempt to have the full debate. I've declined to remove your post, Philos, though I was tempted. I would have removed it not because I agree or disagree but because I don't want to have that debate in this venue. Yet by not replying, I risk the mistaken impression that I am without answer. With somewhat mixed feelings, I have allowed your remarks to stand because I wasn't up to having someone challenge that I was suppressing them for the wrong reason. I see that Lina has been drawn to respond, and I guess that restores balance, though I would invite her as well to just hold back for now and let's carry this on either at her thread which I'm pointing through to or at mine that will follow another time in response to Robin's inquiry.