“How many third trimester abortions happened in the last decade, and where?”
During this month’s presidential debate, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris had the following exchange:
Trump: Will she allow abortion in the 8th month, 9th month, 7th month?
September 10, 2024 ABC News Debate (video here)
Harris: *eyeroll* c’mon
Trump: Under Roe v Wade you could do abortions in the 7th month, the 8th month, the 9th month.
Harris: That’s not true.
I’ve talked to many pro-choice people who incorrectly believe Roe v. Wade restricted abortion after viability. Perhaps Kamala Harris is one of them.
In reality, Roe allowed states to restrict post-viability abortion, but did not require them to. Here is (was) the Supreme Court’s trimester framework in Roe (emphasis added):
(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.
Roe v. Wade
(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.
Even before Dobbs overturned Roe, there were multiple states (and Washington D.C.) that had no gestational limits on abortion and had clinics which perform abortions after viability (approximately 24 weeks) and even into the third trimester (approximately 27 weeks).
[Read more – 5 reasons later abortion is worth talking about]
I posted this minor fact check the day after the debate, and a Facebook commenter asked:
Can you tell us how many abortions are carried out in the 7th, 8th and 9th months in the last decade? And where?
Fair questions.
The short answer: There have been maybe about 9,000 third trimester abortions from 2014-2023 in the US, or roughly 2-3 per day. The clinics that perform them are mostly located in Maryland, Washington D.C., and Colorado.
Here’s the longer answer.
There aren’t very good numbers on this, but we can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Guttmacher long estimated 1.3% of abortions were after 21 weeks, although their more recent estimate is 0.9% happen after 21 weeks. So there will be even fewer abortions happening in the third trimester. I don’t know of any specific estimates on only the third trimester, so to be conservative I’m using 0.1%.
Guttmacher estimated annual abortion numbers for past years as follows:
- 2011 – 1.1M (source)
- 2014 – 926k (source)
- 2017 – 862k (source)
- 2020 – 930k (source)
- 2023 – 1M (source)
To my knowledge Guttmacher doesn’t have specific numbers for the years in between. But if we take the averages (e.g. an average of 2011 and 2014 used for both 2012 and 2013), we end up with roughly like 9.2M abortions from 2014-2023. If only 0.1% are in the third trimester, that’s 9,200 third trimester abortions in the last decade, or 2-3 per day.
As far as where, there are multiple states that have no gestational limits on abortion and multiple clinics that advertise as “all trimester” clinics.
Park Med NYC proudly offers “laborless D&E” into the third trimester. Diane Horvath’s clinic (Partners in Abortion Care) in Maryland goes up to 34 weeks. CARE (Clinics for Abortion and Reproductive Excellence) in Maryland goes up to 35 weeks. Washington-Surgi Clinic in DC advertises up to 27 weeks, although DC has no gestational limits on abortion, and they did not hesitate to book an appointment for me when I went undercover at 28 weeks pregnant. DuPont clinic (also DC) advertises up to 31 weeks and 6 days. Women’s Choice Health clinic in Colorado says the same while Boulder Abortion Clinic says they go up to 32 weeks “with some rare later exceptions.”
Moderate pro-choice people will often reassure themselves with the idea that abortions of viable babies only happen if there is a fatal fetal anomaly or the mother’s life is in danger. Unfortunately, there’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest this is just a comforting fiction.
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