“There is no such thing as abortion after viability”
[This article is a transcript of “’There is no such thing as abortion after viability‘” courtesy of volunteer Ben Tomlin. If you’re interested in volunteering to transcribe more of our content, please complete our volunteer survey.]
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This rhetoric of ‘late-term abortions’ is used very commonly by anti-abortion activists. It is not a thing. There’s no such thing as abortion after the age of viability except in cases where the fetus can’t survive anyway because of anomalies or there’s a severe medical emergency where the mother will die and the fetus will die, too, and there’s no way to save it.
Dr. Karen Tang (@karentangmd on TikTok), “Who lost the debate…? We all did.“
The website whonotwhen.com is run by people who strongly support abortion rights. They support abortion rights so strongly that they want to make sure abortion is protected even into the third trimester for any reason. That’s why it’s called “who not when” dot com: they don’t want you to think about when someone’s getting an abortion; they want you to think about who’s getting an abortion. Anyway, on their website, they talk about the fetal diagnosis myth: “A pervasive myth about later abortion is that they are mainly sought in cases of severe fetal impairment or where there is a risk to the pregnant person’s physical health. This is simply not true.”
The website laterabortion.org, also run by people who support abortion at any point in pregnancy, has a list of facilities that provide abortions beyond 24 weeks—so beyond viability—for all indications, not just medical indications. They list places in Colorado, Maryland, Washington, D.C.—clinics that provide abortions after viability for any reason because they have no gestational limits on abortion or they have very lax gestational limits on abortion, and they have people who will advertise on their websites that they will provide abortions even into the third-trimester for any reason, including on healthy fetuses carried by healthy women.
The woman I’m stitching here, who claimed that these only ever happen for these medical emergencies, she’s a gynecologist, and so I just want you to recognize that someone can be a gynecologist and also wrong. Gynecology doesn’t make you omnipotent. It doesn’t make you immune to political bias. It doesn’t make you immune to believing false narratives. I’m not saying she’s a liar. She might totally believe everything that she just said. I don’t know. I can’t read her mind. But what she said was incorrect.
[Read more – “TikTok docs” don’t know what they’re talking about]
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This article was originally published on August 18, 2025 at secularprolife.org.
It’s a soothing premise held by many pro-choice advocates: there are no late term abortions, or so few it’s not a concern. (?) I used to argue with these advocates on my blog, around and around in circles. The gymnastics required, the red herrings produced, were truly amazing. Some would agree that IF that was a human, if it was living, if it was viable, or even if it would develop into viability, it would be very wrong to abort. BUT IT DOESN'T HAPPEN.