“Aborting healthy babies does not happen”
[This article is a transcript of “‘Aborting healthy babies does not happen‘” courtesy of volunteer Ben Tomlin. If you’re interested in volunteering to transcribe more of our content, please complete our volunteer survey.]
(Video also available on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.)
I believe she is defining late term abortion as the killing of healthy third-trimester babies. Aborting an otherwise healthy baby does not happen.
Dr. Vicki Chan (@vickichanmd on TikTok), “Unfortunately, many have been confused and misled with this.”
Hi, Dr. Chan, I’m glad to hear that you are against killing healthy third-trimester babies. I am too. I think almost everybody is. I am frustrated though that you are using your platform and your credentials as a doctor—not an OB-GYN, but still a doctor—to suggest that that is not a reality. It’s legal in multiple places in the United States to kill healthy third-trimester babies, and it is something that people do. Is it common compared to first-trimester abortion? No, it’s not common. It is legal, and it does happen.
How do I know this? Well, I know because abortion providers have talked about it, which I will reference in a second, and I know because I made an appointment for an abortion when I was 28-weeks pregnant at a clinic in Washington DC. Washington DC has no gestational limits on abortion, and at zero points did anybody pretend that I needed to have some kind of medical reason to do that. I was not going to get an abortion. I was filming undercover for work that I’m doing, and I wrote all about it here, it’s in The Washington Times as a piece detailing what exactly happened.
But for the purposes of talking to you now, the central point is that when I called them and I was 27-weeks pregnant and I told them the first day of my last menstrual period and they knew I’d be 28-weeks pregnant in the following week, they had no problem with that. They made the appointment. They told me it would cost $11,400. I went to the clinic in person with cash—$11,400—and they did my ultrasound, they pulled my blood work, we talked about the procedure, and at no point did they pretend (1) that there needed to be any medical reason to do this, or (2) that abortion this late—28-weeks on a healthy baby—would just be induction of live birth.
At an abortion clinic that performs these procedures, nobody is pretending, as moderate pro-choice people like to believe, that this is just early induction of labor because abortion is just termination of a pregnancy. Abortion is termination of a pregnancy with the intent and result of not a live child.
The reality is that when people seek abortions of viable, healthy fetuses, the providers make sure that those fetuses are not born alive because they induce demise first. You don’t have to take my word for it. You can hear it from the providers themselves. This is an article that was published quite recently actually in The New Yorker, talking about a clinic in Maryland that performs abortions up until 34-weeks. They profiled a woman, pseudonym Amanda, that came in to get an abortion at 32-weeks because she didn’t realize she was pregnant until 30-weeks. Zero mentions or hints of any health problems with her 32-week baby. And as if just to address the misconception that moderate pro-choice people have about what this means, they explicitly talk about how they induce demise. The idea that people are delivering live fetuses, that does not happen.
They have the same practice in the UK, although they’re a little bit more blunt about it. This research article came out not long ago talking about feticide before termination of pregnancy, and they explicitly talk about how sometimes even after 22-weeks, people are seeking abortion when there’s no fetal abnormality, so feticide may be essential to prevent a live birth and the potential survival of an extremely premature baby, which would defeat the purpose of the termination, because in real life, the purpose of termination of pregnancy, aka abortion, is not just to end the pregnancy, it’s to end the pregnancy in such a way that the child does not survive.
Here’s an interview out of the Boston Review of another abortion provider, and she is also very blunt about this. She talks about women seeking later abortion—30-weeks, she even mentions 40-weeks—and she talks about how sometimes they’re doing this even for reasons apart from health, and she says, “If a woman decides to proceed with an abortion after twenty-four weeks, she must accept the terms that she will deliver a baby and that baby will be dead.”
[Read more – Abortion isn’t just about ending a pregnancy; it’s about killing a fetus.]
So again, ma’am, I appreciate that you are against the killing of healthy third-trimester babies, and I appreciate that you want people to have an accurate understanding of what’s going on. I also want people to have an accurate understanding of what’s going on, and what’s actually going on is that, though it is rare compared to first-trimester abortion, compared to other circumstances, killing of healthy third-trimester babies in abortion does happen, and it is legal, and if you find that appalling, thank you, me too. Please stop telling people it’s not real. It is.
[Read more – “TikTok docs” don’t know what they’re talking about]
If you appreciate our work and would like to help, one of the most effective ways to do so is to become a monthly donor. You can also give a one time donation here or volunteer with us here.
