{"id":196228,"date":"2019-02-11T13:24:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T19:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=196228"},"modified":"2019-02-11T13:24:25","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T19:24:25","slug":"rhetorical-shell-games-late-term-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/rhetorical-shell-games-late-term-abortion\/","title":{"rendered":"Why abortion supporters play rhetorical shell games with ‘late-term abortion\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(National Review<\/a>)\u00a0Abortion-rights supporters and their media allies have dedicated much of the last week and a half to careful parsing of the phrase \u201clate-term abortion.\u201d Their intent focus on word choice says a lot about the strength of their arguments.<\/p>\n

First with New York\u2019s legalization of abortion up until birth, then with the proposed abortion expansion in Virginia, and finally with Virginia governor Ralph Northam\u2019s comments in defense of infanticide, factions within the Democratic party have put their abortion extremism on full display.<\/p>\n

Their national party leaders have done little to push back. Democratic politicians in the House and Senate are currently obstructing a bill, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, that doesn\u2019t restrict abortion rights but would extend legal protection to infants born alive after attempted abortion procedures. Not a single Democratic leader has offered comment on what Northam said last week.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0There\u2019s no way to make late-term abortion seem better, media. Just stop.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And all of this news was met with little more than a yawn from mainstream reporters and commentators. Northam\u2019s appalling comments were either ignored or dismissed<\/a> as having been selectively edited, and the New York Times<\/a> <\/em>and Washington Post<\/a><\/em>, among others, covered Northam and the New York and Virginia bills as an example of \u201cRepublicans seizing\u201d on liberal positions to craft a political win.<\/p>\n

But when President Trump mentioned the Democrats\u2019 abortion extremism in his State of the Union address, media outlets leapt to attention. The Times<\/a><\/em>, CNN<\/a>, and ABC News<\/a> all published articles attempting to debunk Trump\u2019s comments, dedicated almost entirely to misrepresenting the substance of the legislation in question and deconstructing the president\u2019s use of the phrase \u201clate-term abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The subtitle of the Times <\/em>piece, for example, is \u201cTrump used scary imagery that scientists say is incorrect.\u201d The author promises to explain \u201cthe terms and the science\u201d of the issue, and asks \u201cWhat is late-term abortion?\u201d but her answer leaves much to be desired:<\/p>\n

Late-term abortion is a phrase used by abortion opponents to refer to abortions performed after about 21 weeks of pregnancy. It is not the same as the medical definition obstetricians use for \u201clate-term,\u201d which refers to pregnancies that extend past a woman\u2019s due date, meaning about 41 or 42 weeks. Contrary to Mr. Trump\u2019s claim, late-term abortions do not allow \u201ca baby to be ripped from the mother\u2019s womb moments before birth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The other two articles are similarly unhelpful. ABC News medical correspondent Jen Ashton offers this: \u201cAs a board-certified Ob-Gyn, I wish people understood that the term \u2018late-term abortion\u2019 is not remotely a medical term. In fact, even Ob-Gyns don\u2019t know what people are referring to when we hear this term.\u201d<\/p>\n

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CNN, meanwhile, quotes two doctors, one of whom notes that \u201cthe phrase \u2018late-term abortion\u2019 is medically inaccurate and has no clinical meaning. In science and medicine, it\u2019s essential to use language precisely.\u201d The other observes the following (contradicting Roe v. Wade <\/em>in the process): \u201cIn obstetrics, we don\u2019t divide pregnancies into terms. \u2018Late term\u2019 is an invention of anti-abortion extremists to confuse, mislead and increase stigma. The appropriate language is \u2018abortions later in pregnancy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n

But despite having \u201cscientists\u201d on hand to explain the medically accurate details of abortion after viability, not one of these pieces offers even a single sentence describing what \u201cabortions later in pregnancy\u201d actually do. Instead, they quibble over terminology.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Why does the Times <\/em>answer the question \u201cWhat is late-term abortion?\u201d with a digression on word choice? Why does the author insist that babies aren\u2019t \u201cripped from the mother\u2019s womb moments before birth,\u201d as Trump said, without offering a contrary explanation of what post-viability abortions look like? Why do several doctors promise that they have the expertise to debunk pro-life arguments but withhold the clinical, medical details of what happens when a doctor aborts a viable fetus?<\/p>\n

The reason should be obvious. They don\u2019t want to talk about it. They obscure abortion with euphemism, as the Democratic party has always done, because it is easier to hide behind nitpicking discussions of whether \u201clate-term abortion\u201d is a precise medical term than it is to admit to what happens in an abortion after 24 weeks and continue to defend it.<\/p>\n