The abortion myths Republicans are recycling to reframe a losing issue

The post-Roe v Wade battle over abortion rights may just torpedo Republicans’ shot at the White House next year, and they know it.

Anti-abortion activists lost every abortion-related voter referendum last year, while ire over the fall of Roe has been credited with boosting Democrats in the 2022 midterms. Now, Republicans in the presidential primary are scrambling to figure out how to talk about and legislate abortion.

But they’re regurgitating some common anti-abortion myths to make their case.

‘Late-term abortions’

At the last Republican debate, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley suggested that the United States should ban “late-term abortions”, as a compromise between people who support abortion rights and those who do not. But while Republicans like to throw around the phrase, it’s not exactly clear what they mean – in medicine, “late-term” refers to pregnancies that last beyond 40 weeks, not abortions that occur later on in pregnancy.

“‘Late-term abortion’ isn’t a thing,” said Katherine Kraschel, an assistant professor of law and health at Northeastern University. “It’s a term created by people who oppose abortion to spread disinformation and shame people who have abortion. It has no basis in medicine or science.”

Moreover, less than 1% of all US abortions are performed at or past 21 weeks of pregnancy, according to Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data. While there isn’t great data on why people seek abortions later on in pregnancy, many of those cases may involve individuals whose pregnancies have been diagnosed with devastating fetal abnormalities – many of which can only be detected past the first trimester.

Women may also get abortions later on in pregnancy because it was too difficult to get one earlier. People who work at abortion funds have told the Guardian that, since Roe fell, they have seen an increase in people getting abortions in their second trimester of pregnancy.

“If the concern is really with abortions that happen later on in pregnancy, then the laws that they’re putting in place to restrict access to abortion are only increasing the likelihood that someone has to access abortion further on in the pregnancy,” Kraschel said.

Abortions ‘up until the day of birth’

In the last presidential debate, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis – who signed a six-week ban into law in his state – and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott said that Democrats and the states that they control would like to permit abortions up until birth.

There are a few states that do not restrict abortion based on the gestational age, such as Oregon, Colorado and Minnesota, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion restrictions. But most Democratic-leaning states do limit how late into pregnancy someone can get an abortion. States such as New York and California, which Republicans frequently single out, ban almost all abortions after fetal viability, which is generally around 24 weeks into pregnancy.

‘Post-birth abortions’

Earlier this summer, DeSantis claimed on CNN that “some liberal states” allow “post-birth abortions”. That statement is categorically wrong. Killing an infant is infanticide, a crime that is already illegal in all 50 states.

This kind of claim, however, has gained some traction within GOP circles; Republicans in Congress have spent years trying to pass legislation that would regulate babies “born alive” after an abortion.

There are situations, however, where an infant is born with medical conditions that mean it will not live long past birth. In these cases, providers and families may choose to give the infant palliative care and let the infant die instead of attempting medical interventions that would not significantly prolong life.

“There’s no such thing as us ending their life at that point. It’s comfort care,” said Dr Josie Urbina, an OB-GYN and assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who handles these kinds of cases. “We give comfort measures to make their breathing more comfortable, so that they don’t have any pain. The very short time of their life – whether it’s minutes, hours – is spent with those who care about them, their families.”

A 15-week abortion ban – and the questionable reasons for it

At the last Republican debate, Scott and former vice-president Mike Pence declared that they would support a 15-week federal ban on abortion (and allow states to restrict the procedure earlier on in pregnancy). Such a law, which is also supported by the powerful anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, would be the first nationwide abortion ban in the history of the United States. Even before the supreme court decided Roe v Wade in 1973, states dictated their own abortion laws.

When he declared his support for a 15-week ban, Pence said that the idea was “supported by 70% of the American people” and suggested that a 15-week ban was reasonable because abortion should be banned after “a baby is capable of feeling pain”. These are both common anti-abortion talking points among Republicans – and they are both misleading, if not totally incorrect.

Abortion is a notoriously complex topic to poll people on. However, the majority of Americans thought that overturning Roe – which blocked states from banning abortion past viability, which is later than 15 weeks – was a “bad thing”, according to Gallup. Support for abortion rights falls when Americans are asked about abortions in the second and third trimester, but a May 2024 Gallup poll found that a record 37% of Americans do think abortion should be legal in the second three months of pregnancy.

A fetus cannot feel pain at 15 weeks of pregnancy. They do not have the capacity to feel pain until about 24 to 25 weeks of pregnancy, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which has put out a statement on the matter titled Facts Are Important.

And while some weeks in pregnancy may signify important developmental milestones, 15 weeks is not one of them, Urbina said.

“I think it’s an arbitrarily chosen week during the pregnancy that, for some reason, Republicans are stuck to,” she said.