Ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats have considered abortion a winning issue and have been eager to talk about it. Emphasizing reproductive rights helped the party achieve victories in the 2022 midterm elections and has generated enthusiasm for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
But some abortions Democrats would rather not discuss: those that occur in the final months of pregnancy. Democrats tend to brush off questions about whether these abortions should be restricted, either by denying that their policies would allow abortions late in pregnancy or by pointing out that these abortions are rare, implying that they are therefore not worth our moral concern.
In the recent vice-presidential debate, Tim Walz sidestepped a question about a relatively permissive abortion bill he signed into law in Minnesota. And in the presidential debate before that, when Donald Trump pointed out that Roe had allowed for abortions in the seventh, eighth, and ninth months of a pregnancy, Kamala Harris plainly said, “That’s not true.”
It’s true that third-trimester abortions are rare. But they do happen. Representatives from the CDC, the pro-abortion-rights Guttmacher Institute, and the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute told me that national data simply aren’t available. But Colorado, which is home to clinics that perform third-trimester abortions, recorded 137 third-trimester abortions in 2023. That’s only one state—eight other states, plus Washington, D.C., have no restrictions on third-trimester abortions. Just a few minutes from my office building in D.C., a clinic offers abortions up to nearly 32 weeks. In nearby Bethesda, Maryland, a clinic performs abortions up to 35 weeks’ gestation.
Those who support such expansive abortion laws tend to argue that third-trimester abortions are the result of a devastating medical diagnosis. In many cases that’s true, but it is not always the situation. The D.C. clinic I mentioned above confirmed by phone that it performs abortions for any reason. Data on the reasons women have later abortions are also scarce. But when The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey interviewed a doctor who specializes in late abortions, he estimated that about half of his patients have healthy pregnancies. Of course, some of his patients are in serious distress for other reasons; some are victims of sexual assault, or are teenagers who didn’t realize they were pregnant. This leads to another logical flaw in how the pro-abortion-rights crowd tends to frame its argument.
The group complains that people are overly focused on exceedingly rare third-term abortions. But abortions after a pregnancy from rape or incest are also comparatively rare, and abortion-rights supporters still push opponents of abortion to take these rare scenarios into account. Discussions about third-trimester abortions should therefore be fair game as well.
Downplaying third-trimester abortions isn’t necessary for Democrats to protect reproductive rights, and could well alienate the plurality of voters best described as abortion moderates. The grim reality of later abortion is simply too much for most Americans to countenance—and reasonable policy makers should listen to them.
Most Americans believe that third-trimester abortions should be restricted. If Democrats want a platform that truly reflects majority opinion, they should address the question of what to do about later abortions, and adopt a position that protects abortions in the first trimester while limiting second- and third-trimester abortions to pregnancies with fetal abnormalities or maternal health crises.
Democrats keep dancing around the fact that, under Roe, states were not required to restrict later abortions. Under Dobbs, which superseded Roe, they still aren’t; they can choose to ban the procedure or allow the abortions without limits. Of course, the fall of Roe means that more states are banning abortion altogether.
But the fact remains that Americans are broadly uncomfortable with third-trimester abortions. A 2023 Gallup poll found that although more than two-thirds of Americans believe abortion should be legal in the first trimester, just 22 percent think it should be legal in the third. And a 2021 Associated Press poll found that just 8 percent of respondents believe that third-trimester abortions should be legal in all cases.
When Democrats hammer home just how rare later abortions are, they’re making an important point: More than 90 percent of American abortions take place in the first trimester. A reasonable platform would adopt the Western European standard, in which abortion is legal for any reason in the first trimester, but later procedures are restricted except in cases of devastating maternal or fetal medical diagnoses. Preserving women’s right to choose does not require Democrats to adopt an extreme position that allows for abortion at any stage of pregnancy, no questions asked.
