Media Cry When Late-Term Abortion Is Paused

Despite their propensity for supporting ballot measures and bills that would codify killing babies until birth, abortion activists have long insisted that there is no such thing as late-term abortion. That propaganda went out the window this week, however, when the New York Times published a story mourning that the “Manhattan Planned Parenthood Will Stop Offering Abortions After 20 Weeks.”

New York allows abortion through all nine months of gestation as long as a medical provider decides the baby is “not viable” or deems a woman’s “life, physical health, or mental health” at risk. Planned Parenthood’s Manhattan facility, however, will pause ending the lives of unborn children well into and beyond the second trimester of pregnancy because the abortion giant’s cost cuts and closures across the Empire State mean it can “no longer afford the ‘deep sedation’ required” to execute late-term abortions.

The NYT, which likely recognizes how unpopular butchering babies beyond 15 weeks is among Americans, tried to reassure readers that abortions beyond the halfway mark of pregnancy are rare, making up “less than 2 percent” of the New York Planned Parenthood’s facilities. The author also claimed that “abortions after that point are usually performed because the fetus has a fatal condition that could not be detected sooner or because the mother’s life is in danger.”

Yet, the article is clearly designed to gin up sympathy and an extra $13 million in taxpayer funding for New York Planned Parenthoods and the “30,000 abortion visits” those facilities complete annually. Buried deep in the story is also the admission that the Manhattan facility was doing everything it could including looking into in-house deep sedation as to “offer abortions after 20 weeks” again in the future.

The NYT willingness to admit that late-term abortions actually do occur strongly contrasts the corporate media’s track on record on second and third-trimester abortions.

For years, abortion activists and their allies in the press have claimed that “There’s no such thing as a ‘late-term abortion.’”

“It’s actually a completely made-up phrase that has no basis in medicine. It’s pure anti-abortion propaganda, intended to confuse people about when abortion happens,” the abortion giant and its activist arm insist.

Corporate media, which are all too willing to advance Democrats’ abortion extremism, issue fake fact checks asserting late-term abortion “doesn’t exist” and is not a “real thing.” They also dogged former President Donald Trump for daring to disclose the truth that Democrats want to “take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month and even after birth” during presidential debates.

The NYT specifically has several articles in its archives asserting the term “late-term abortion” is merely “a phrase used by abortion opponents to refer to abortions performed after about 21 weeks of pregnancy,” and not an accurate medical definition.

This talking point, which comes straight from Planned Parenthood’s website and social media accounts, is a lie.

Not only do medical publications agree that abortions beyond a certain point in pregnancy — usually 20 weeks — can be accurately classified as “late-term,” but abortion facilities all across the U.S. also advertise dismemberment beyond the halfway mark in pregnancy as such.

When media including the NYT finally admit that abortions far along in pregnancy do occur, they couch their concessions by claiming that killing babies in the second and third trimesters is rare.

While it’s true that current records show less than 1 percent of abortions are executed after 21 weeks gestation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest abortion findings do not include reporting from all 50 states. In fact, four abortion-friendly states, California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, refused to hand over their abortion numbers, rates, and ratios to the CDC for compilation.

The latest national late-term abortion data the CDC published is from 2021, which means it also doesn’t account for the wave of radical ballot measures in dozens of states hoping to constitutionally enshrine carve-outs for women to obtain elective abortions through birth as long as a doctor claims their physical, mental, financial, or emotional situation puts their health at risk.

Late-term abortions are not only not rare, but they are often not “medically necessary” as the press routinely claim. One 2013 study concluded that “data suggests that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” Another 2019 study agreed that “most late-term abortions are elective, done on healthy women with healthy fetuses, and for the same reasons given by women experiencing first trimester abortions.”

A majority of Americans believe ending life in the womb in and beyond the second trimester as the Manhattan Planned Parenthood and so many other abortion facilities have been doing for years should be “generally illegal,” which is likely why the abortion advocates running the country and the media repeatedly insist that late-term abortion doesn’t exist.

This lie is easily refuted not only by data showing tens of thousands of babies lose their lives to late-term abortion each and every year, but also by corporate media’s favorable reporting on abortion facilities that execute babies up until birth.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.