Stamp: Late Term Abortion

I'm against non-emergency late-term abortions. What?! you might cry out, But =8manderz8, you're one of them crazy kill-the-babies people!" Well, confused internet person, allow me to explain.

The abortion debate is not black and white. I understand that there are those sides of the debate ('pro-life, even when raped!' or 'pro-choice, up until birth!'), but I think most people tend to dwell inside those shades of grey ('pro-life, except when raped!' or 'pro-choice, up until the third trimester!').

I'm inside those shades of grey on the pro-choice side of things. I definitely believe that a person ought to have the right to choose whether or not they continue a pregnancy, although I personally feel that it should only go to a certain point. (Shit storm in 3...2...)

With the care of a neo-natal ICU, a healthy fetus can survive outside of the womb at 28 weeks (the third trimester typically starts at week 29, and pregnancies are around 40 weeks long). This is well past the halfway-mark. I know situations vary from person to person, and it sounds awfully terrible for me to say it, but if you wanted to have an abortion but put it off as long as you did, then to put it bluntly -- that's just too bad.

It's certainly not about 'punishing' people, let me make that clear. If someone has a big project due by X time, and they put off finishing it until well after X, the teacher giving them a bad mark is not 'punishment,' but rather it's a response to their lack of action. If the student has a valid reason though, maybe because of a life-threatening situation, I can see the teacher giving them another chance. So, too, with me being against late-term abortion. You had six and a half months to make your decision, and you decided to not go ahead with it. Unless there's a life-threatening situation, it just seems wrong to terminate if the fetus can survive independently outside of the womb. That's the abortion/adoption switch line that I have in my mind.

What do you guys think?

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I want to add a few more things here.

I just remembered that there was a case recently that is described in this journal, where a mother who self-aborted her fetus within a week of its due date was jailed for eight years.

I still believe that it is morally wrong to terminate a pregnancy past the point where the fetus could survive without assistance from its mother. I support bodily autonomy, and I also hold the belief that once a fetus is capable of survival outside the womb -- yes, even with the aid of medical technology -- then it is a person. So, if at the point at which the fetus is able to live without its mother, it can be called a person, then that means it has its own rights to bodily autonomy and, thus, should not have its life terminated.

Those are just my thoughts on it, you're free to disagree if you like, because I understand that there are different opinions out there on where and when a fetus is recognized as a person.

At 26 weeks, the mortality rate of a prematurely born fetus is 24.4%.