Abortion opponents spread a variety of myths about the procedure to discredit it and demonize those who perform or support it. Abortion is a health service. The sooner it is available, the easier it will be for people to make decisions about their bodies that will affect the rest of their lives. But during election season, we can expect to hear some or all of these fallacies when Republicans who oppose abortion talk about it inaccurately.
Abortion can occur after birth
None is as ridiculous as the myth Donald Trump floated in the June presidential debate, when he said Democrats “will take the life of a child in the eighth month, in the ninth month and even after birth, after birth.”
Of course, there is no such thing as abortion after birth. Killing a fetus that emerges alive is infanticide. Abortion involves ending a pregnancy while the fetus is still in the womb.
In California, abortion is legal up to the point at which the fetus is viable to survive outside the womb — that is, around 24 or 25 weeks — or later if the abortion is necessary to protect the health or life of the pregnant woman. The state is one of 20 where abortion is legal up to the point at which the fetus is viable or a few weeks before. In nine states and the District of Columbia, it is legal for any reason to have an abortion after that period.
“I think it’s extremely rare to have an abortion after 32 weeks, even in states where there are no limits,” says Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco and director of the research program., Driving new standards in reproductive health.
In fact, only about 1% of abortions are performed after 21 weeks of gestation. When they do occur, they are usually done for severe fetal abnormalities or to save the woman's life, health or fertility.
Trump also falsely claimed that a former Democratic governor of Virginia said he was willing to “tear the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill it.” Not true. In fact, he said the opposite. In a 2019 interview, former Gov. Ralph Northam was asked about a Virginia state bill that would remove the requirement that three doctors agree on whether an abortion was medically necessary in the third trimester. Northam, who is a pediatric neurologist, said that should be a decision up to the woman and her own doctor.
She then spoke of a situation in which a doctor induces labor to deliver a fetus with a serious health problem that is not expected to survive. She said, “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen: The baby would be born. It would be kept comfortable. It would be resuscitated if that is what the mother and family want.” Keeping the baby comfortable without using aggressive measures is sometimes referred to as perinatal palliative care.
Abortion is never necessary for emergency medical care.
Yes, it is. If the amniotic sac ruptures prematurely, especially in the second trimester, that can lead to infection, sepsis, a possible hysterectomy, or death. That's why an abortion is often performed. (If the sac ruptures in the third trimester, labor can often be induced at some point.) A pregnant person who develops a condition in which the placenta completely covers the cervix and begins to bleed heavily may also need an abortion.
These kinds of serious complications were at the center of the case the Supreme Court heard this session over whether Idaho’s extreme abortion law prevented pregnant women from receiving required emergency care at U.S. hospitals that receive federal funding. In Idaho, some women with serious pregnancy complications had to be flown to other states to have emergency abortions. The court decided it should not have granted review of the case, but it reinstated a lower court’s order blocking the part of the law that requires women to be close to death before having an emergency abortion.
Medical abortion is dangerous for women
Medication abortion (the most common abortion procedure in the U.S.) is a two-drug regimen that has been prescribed in the United States since 2000. Serious complications occur in less than one-third of 1% of cases. That's safer than taking Tylenol.
The Supreme Court recently dismissed a case brought by a group of doctors and anti-abortion organizations who argued that mifepristone, the first drug in the regimen, had not been sufficiently studied by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, even though the drug has been used safely for two decades. The court said the doctors lacked standing to bring the suit because none of them could identify a case in which a doctor was forced, against his or her conscience, to perform a surgical abortion to treat complications from a medication abortion.
Most Americans support reproductive freedom and have voted to protect access to abortion since the Supreme Court abolished that right in 2022. That hasn’t stopped Republicans from trying to use fear and falsehoods to justify their campaign to further roll back abortion rights across the country. In an election season filled with rhetoric, a woman’s ability to control her own body shouldn’t be obstructed by lies about what that means.
