Babies are born prematurely at 35 weeks and earlier. My mother survived being born at 33 weeks. There is no doubt we're talking about a human individual at this point.
I sincerely hope that American abortion activists and supporters will reconsider the ethics of late-term abortion. It's barbaric. I think most people just haven't done the research / internalized the cruelty.
'Serious' is a subjective qualifier that is doing a lot of work in your comment. But yes, I have met quite a few people who believe abortion should be flat legal, no qualifications or conditions. A lot of rhetoric about fetuses being parasites. From a few I've even heard "In my religion, it's not a person until it breaths."
"In 2015, almost two thirds (65.4%) of abortions were performed at ≤8 weeks’ gestation, and nearly all (91.1%) were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation. Few abortions were performed between 14 and 20 weeks’ gestation (7.6%) or at ≥21 weeks’ gestation (1.3%). During 2006–2015 the percentage of all abortions performed at >13 weeks’ gestation remained consistently low (≤9.0%). Among abortions performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation, a shift occurred toward earlier gestational ages, with the percentage performed at ≤6 weeks’ gestation increasing 11%."
That's ~91% of abortions at less than/equal to 13 weeks.
What's more:
"[T]he abortion rate for 2015 was 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 188 abortions per 1,000 live births."
There were 638,169 total abortions, with only 9% (~57,500) occurring after 13 weeks.
Consider that this includes fetuses with deadly/debilitating defects (including, but not limited to, Down's Syndrome, cystic fibrosis and spina bifida) as well as other issues that threaten the life of the mother, doom the fetus to a painful death after birth and/or condemn such a child to a lifetime of misery.
Many/most of those cannot be determined without an amniocentesis[1], which isn't performed until 14-20 weeks.
It's not clear how many >13 week abortions are performed in those cases, but it's likely that a significant portion are fetuses that will likely die before/soon after birth, have debilitating defects and/or threaten the life of the mother.
As such, the truth is that the vast majority of abortions are performed long before a fetus is much more than the length of your middle finger.
So no. "Late-term" abortions are extremely rare, with only ~1.3% (~9,000 out of ~4.6 million pregnancies) performed after 21 weeks. And likely many (most?) are fetuses that have been found to have serious defects/abnormalities and/or a full term pregnancy threatens the life/health of the mother.
I'm not sure what you think "abortion activists" are advocating.
I'd say they're advocating giving women the opportunity to save their own lives and/or prevent enormous suffering among babies with debilitating/life-threatening conditions.
> I'd say they're advocating giving women the opportunity to save their own lives and/or prevent enormous suffering among babies with debilitating/life-threatening conditions.
Overturning Roe v Wade doesn't change anything related to these types of abortions. It only allows states to make up their own laws. Most of which won't change from what it is now and most of which only ban elective abortion.
I sincerely hope that American abortion activists and supporters will reconsider the ethics of late-term abortion. It's barbaric. I think most people just haven't done the research / internalized the cruelty.