Contributor: ATTWN Staff
In efforts to persuade those who are pro-choice but have a problem with abortion past viability (usually around 21-22 weeks), an abortion doctor. Dr. Sherry Sella, who worked for Dr. George Tiller, has released a book about her experience with late-term abortions and why everyone should be talking about them.
Why is she dedicating so much time and effort to trying to convince pro-choicers to talk about the intentional killing of a nearly full-term baby? Because most Americans are really uncomfortable with this, and she thinks it should be totally normal.
According to a Marist/Knights of Columbus poll in January 2025, 60% of Americans want restrictions on abortion after the second trimester or should only be allowed to save the life of mother or in case of rape or incest.
“Most of those who have worked in the abortion industry have perfected silencing their consciences. Even the slightest prick of evil is squashed and reasoned away,” said Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who worked at Planned Parenthood for eight years and now runs And Then There Were None. “It’s a common theme amongst those of us who have escaped the abortion industry – the sweeping away of any semblance that abortion is not okay. It often takes something extremely tragic to open our eyes. I hope Dr. Sella can eventually see that what she is doing is hurting women and ending the lives of innocent humans.”
Dr. Sella, in an interview with Mother Jones, she was asked what the most important message is to get across to readers and, among other answers, she said, “I want readers to understand that gestational limits don’t reflect the reality of people’s lives—that these circumstances are not tied to a clock or to a calendar.”
Viability
The Nation also mentioned Dr. Sella in a recent story on late-term abortion and highlighted one particular quote that plays into this anti-science view of a developing baby. Dr. Sella says in her book that “Whether a pregnancy is viable—as defined by the mother—is the issue for every abortion.”
The author of that story was nine weeks pregnant when she wrote the piece and thoughtfully considered Sella’s viability considerations:
“Thanks to Sella’s framework, I felt better equipped to embrace this contrast. I had become pregnant on purpose at the right time for my family; my pregnancy was viable.”
Science doesn’t agree. According to reports from What to Expect, The Bump, and Stanford, fetal viability is typically around 24 weeks of gestation, meaning that if the baby were delivered at that point, it would have a significantly good chance of survival. And with modern technology, babies born even earlier are surviving at higher rates.
So, viability is scientific and not relativistic like Dr. Sella would like her readers to believe.
Back to late term abortion: Americans have good reason to be wary of such abortions. Often, a lethal injection is shot into the fetus’ heart, stopping it (or not sometimes). Then labor is induced and the mother delivers her dead (or sometimes living) baby. The process often takes a few days and is very costly and can be dangerous and while stats are limited on babies that are born alive after failed abortions, there is an entire ministry, led by abortion survivor Melissa Ohden, devoted to those people who were born alive and survived. Others aren’t so lucky.
Adrienne Moton used to work for the infamous Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who sits in prison for the murder of babies and one mom. Adrienne also went to prison for her involvement in Gosnell’s crimes and testified that many babies were born alive and subsequently killed by Gosnell. These were babies in the second and third trimesters who were aborted for any and all reasons. Americans are rightly uncomfortable with late-term abortions.
Fetal Anomalies Aren’t the Majority of Late Term Abortions
While the media loves to focus on tragic stories of fetal anomalies as the reason most women will choose to abort their babies so late in pregnancy, these reasons do not make up the majority of decisions for abortions past the point of viability. Data shows that around 80 percent of abortions after 21 weeks are not done for reasons of fetal anomalies or life of the mother.1
About 1% of abortions occur 21 weeks or later, which equals nearly 10,000 a year in the United States. This is a conservative estimate since the exact number of abortions is not easy to obtain.
In interviews, Dr. Warren Hern, an abortion doctor who practiced in Boulder, Colorado for 50 years and has since recently retired, has estimated that at least half, if not more, of the women who came to him to abort their babies in the second and third trimester were not doing so because their baby had a fetal anomaly or their own life was at risk. Hern has stated he has done sex-selective abortions and has no problems performing abortions late in pregnancy for any reason.
When asked once if he would do an abortion for a woman with no health issues at 30 weeks pregnant, he answered: “Every pregnancy is a health issue! There’s a certifiable risk of death from being pregnant, period.”
“It doesn’t matter the reasons for having a late-term abortion – or any abortion. The end result is always wrong: it is a grave matter to end the life of an innocent human being,” said Johnson. “We need to work to create a culture of life, one that is supportive of both mom and baby, but also one that values self-sacrifice for the good of another. The abortion industry has made its fortune on telling women that abortion is their best option and that it is the right decision for their own lives, dreams, and goals. That’s the opposite of love and empowerment.”