some again are distorting facts.
https://vtdigger.org/2019/02/15/verm...-moment-birth/
However, in 2016, the latest year for which abortion data is available, “91.7 percent of all Vermont abortions happened within the first trimester (12 weeks or less) and only 1.3 percent of Vermont abortions occurred in 2016 after 21 weeks.”
Data from the Centers for Disease Control on abortions nationwide in 2015 shows that seven abortions were conducted in Vermont after 21 weeks -- 0.7 percent of all abortions in the state -- but doesn’t give a more specific breakdown for when those procedures were performed.
The medical society added that women do not elect to terminate pregnancies in the final few months, as opponents of H.57, like Coyne, suggest.
“‘Late term’ abortion is a social construct introduced to create an image of an elective abortion that happens closer to 8-9 months, which does not happen and is not a term that is used medically,” the society says.
And even if a woman wanted to abort a pregnancy that late, there are no providers who would do it in Vermont, according to the medical society.
“No abortion providers in Vermont perform elective abortions in the third trimester,” it says.
Lucy Leriche, the vice president of public policy at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, said the only time when a woman might get an abortion that late in their pregnancy would be “under really severe circumstances for health of mother or because the viability of pregnancy is at risk.”
Doctors who do carry out elective procedures that late in pregnancy, she added, would face dire professional consequences for violating their licensure and committing medical malpractice.
So abortions in the third trimester are exceedingly rare, and don’t occur as elective procedures, but are they legal, as Coyne says?
The law currently before Vermont lawmakers would not legalize such procedures. Hare writes: “In the event that a provider in Vermont knowingly performed a ‘partial-birth abortion’ as it is defined by the Act in violation of that federal statute, the provider could be prosecuted as provided for in the Act, and regardless of the provisions in H.57.”
But as Coyne has pointed out, “partial-birth abortion” does not describe all late-term abortions, and no one disputes that abortions for medical emergencies are legal throughout the pregnancy.