“There are no OB-GYNs out there who are going to perform an abortion on a viable baby.”
[This article is a transcript of “Fact Check with Dr. Annie“ 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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There are no OB-GYNs out there who are going to perform an abortion on a viable baby.
Dr. Annie Frenkel, (@drannieobgyn on TikTok),”Understanding and Supporting Women Through Pregnancy Loss.”
That’s not true. There are OB-GYNs out there who not only do it but have talked about it in press interviews. The Atlantic profiled Dr. Warren Hern, who has (April 2025 update: *had) an abortion clinic in Colorado. Colorado is one of the locations in the United States that has no gestational limits on abortion at all. They say,
Abortions that come after devastating medical diagnosis can be easier for some people to understand, but Hern estimates that at least half and sometimes more of the women who come to the clinic do not have these diagnoses. The reasons don’t really matter to Hern. Hearn believes that the viability of a fetus is determined not by gestational age but by a woman’s willingness to carry it. He applies the same principle to all of his prospective patients. If he thinks it’s safer for them to have an abortion than to carry and deliver the baby, he’ll take the case, usually up till around 32-weeks, with some rare later exceptions.
Elaine Godfrey, “The Abortion Absolutist“
In 2022, NPR profiled an all-trimester abortion clinic opening in Maryland. They advertise that they will do abortions up until 34 weeks—so again, well after viability. They emphasize that while sometimes this could be for someone whose fetus has serious anomalies, it could also be for someone who didn’t discover they were pregnant until after the first-trimester. There is academic research by people who support abortion rights talking about how some people seek abortion even into the third-trimester because they did not realize they were pregnant sooner. Dr. Shelly Sella out of New Mexico, she’s an OBGYN who performs abortions even after viability, the women that she treats fall into two categories: quote, “those who discover fetal abnormalities and those with healthy viable babies,” that’s part of the quote, “whose maternal circumstances mean they could not cope with the baby.”
A doctor may perform an abortion—which is not really an abortion, it’s really just an early delivery—at that age. Abortion in this case is an early delivery and induction. There’s comfort care given.
Dr. Annie Frenkel
This is also not true, or at least it’s not universally true. When performing abortions after viability on children who have no other major medical issues, they do not just do early induction of labor and provide comfort care. They induce fetal demise first, before they induce labor, to make sure that they don’t accidentally have a live birth. In an article she wrote for the Boston Review, abortion provider Christine Henneberg is very explicit about this point. She talks about how there are some occasions where women are seeking abortion even after 24-weeks without major medical reason, and she says “if a woman decides to proceed with an abortion after 24-weeks, she must accept the terms: she will deliver a baby, and the baby will be dead.” Similarly, The New Yorker covered the same all-trimester abortion clinic in Maryland that does abortions up until 34 weeks, and they interviewed the presiding OB-GYN, Diane Horvath. She said, “We induce demise. This idea that people are delivering live fetuses, that does not happen.”
I can speak to this on sort of a personal level because when I was 27-weeks pregnant, I made an appointment for an abortion at a clinic in DC. DC is another location in the United States that has no gestational limits on abortion. They confirmed that my appointment would be at 28-weeks and one day, so I arrived at the clinic, they drew my blood, they gave me an ultrasound, and at no point during the phone call to make the appointment or during the appointment while I was there did anyone ask me anything about the medical condition or the health status of my daughter. At no point did they pretend that this was going to be an early induction of live birth. I was 28-weeks pregnant with a completely healthy child, and they were very explicit that the child would be already passed away before they did the extraction process because they induce demise before they induce delivery.
To be clear, I did not get an abortion, because I was filming undercover. But I have talked to the people working in this clinic, and no, there doesn’t need to be any kind of medical emergency. Yes, they will still perform the abortion, and no, the abortion is not induction of a live birth.
I think we both need to be truthful and honest about how we say things and how we talk about things.
Dr. Annie Frenkel
I agree. I think we should be truthful and honest, and I appreciate that you want to do that, and I don’t think that you were misleading people on purpose, but you did say a bunch of factually untrue things.
Aborting viable, healthy children is legal in multiple places in the country, and it is performed in multiple places in the country, and I think people have a right to know about it.
[Read more – “TikTok docs” don’t know what they’re talking about]
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