Third Trimester Abortion Serious Effects

Both childbirth and abortion radically change a woman’s quality of life. According to Understanding Abortion: From Mixed Feelings to Rational Thought, women who have no moral objection to abortion go through with their procedure to avoid the trauma of bearing and delivering an unwanted child. But a third-trimester abortion is gruesome, and the trauma can last a lifetime. Whether physical or phycological, there are serious consequences to having a late term abortion.  

For some woman, abortion works out for them in the long run, but you cannot deny the fact the possible trauma woman will have to endure. Abortions that are performed after 20 weeks of being in the womb, when not done by induction of labor (which leads to fetal death due to prematurity), are performed by having the woman go through the “Dilation and Evacuation” procedure. The article “The Reality of Late-Term Abortion Procedures” says that this horrid surgical technique includes crushing, removal, and dismantlement of the fetus from a woman’s uterus, weeks before, or after the fetus reaches the developmental age where they could survive without the mother. This procedure can be done whether the fetus has complications or not. In some cases, especially when the fetus is past the stage of being healthy enough to live on its own, late term abortion may involve the lethal injection into the fetus’ heart to ensure that the fetus is alive when it is pulled out or has the ability to survive. That means that without a lethal injection, when the baby is taken out of the woman’s vagina, it has a possibility of surviving. However, according to E. Johnson, that is very rare. This means that when the fetus is extracted, there could be developed parts of the baby that the mother herself could see. This particular procedure is displayed by the story of a woman named Elizabeth, who needed a third trimester abortion by going under the Dilation and Evacuation procedure. 

Elizabeth’s third trimester abortion really paints the picture of how traumatic this type of procedure can be. In Brooklyn, NY, Elizabeth had to go through an abortion at 32 weeks because her baby had complications. One week before the procedure, she found out that the baby boy she was carrying for nine months wouldn’t be able to breathe outside of the womb. In the interview reported by Jezebel, she explained that since the fetus was so developed, the doctors had to inject a lethal injection inside the baby. She flew from Colorado to New York to get this shot and had to come back a second time to finish. Since the baby was almost developed, Elizabeth had to get the baby out by natural delivery. Fully knowing you are giving “birth” when the baby has no life was petrifying for her. Once the abortion-doctor had helped her deliver, she had contractions and had to push what was left of the baby out of her vagina. 

“It was a delivery. I felt every body part coming out. I felt the whole thing.”

She also states in the interview that it was horrific for her to do go under this procedure since she knew she was giving birth to a dead child. She said it was painful not just physically, but mentally. Elizabeth states in the article that she felt emotionally numb for a very long time. Doctors even used different code word names so that they could mask what they were actually looking for inside of Elizabeth’s uterus. Elizabeth states at the end of her interview that having a late term abortion is traumatic and no where near being “easy”.

Elizabeth’s story is just the start of the physical and phycological damage woman forcefully endure going through a third trimester procedure. Even when the fetus has no complications at all, woman still go through physical and emotional stress when having an abortion; complications on the fetus just leaves the woman with more pain. Woman are informed on the matter of physical trauma by having a late-term abortion, but what they don’t tell woman is the serious mental health issues they can contract. A mental health syndrome that woman are left with after having a third trimester abortion is PTSS, also known as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Having the fetus’ body parts ripped out of your uterus according to Elizabeth’s story seemed so real and gruesome that it is so hard not to picture. No woman going into an abortion should think that the process is easy and will be fast.

The effects of an abortion out run the procedure itself. Woman go through phycological shock, stress, anxiety, and depression after having a third trimester abortion. They go through this shock because the mother creates a phycological connection with the baby whether they want to or not. Surprisingly, there is a psychological connection between the mother and the fetus as well. The longer a woman is pregnant, the mother-fetus relationship grows. Like normal relationships, the more you put into the relationship, the more you are likely to grow and become more attached to it. For example, a woman who treats her body well by eating healthy is subconsciously demonstrating care and commitment for the fetus without her ever having the intentions to care and commit for it. Being able to physically feel the fetus move around their stomach creates intimacy between the two.

Doctors ripping something out of a woman that subconsciously had intimacy with obviously will produce phycological suffering. This goes to show us that even if a fetus had complications or not, the pregnant woman would still suffer from a third trimester abortion and still end up with PTSS. PTSS is not conditional when it comes to third trimester abortions because whether pregnant woman realizes it or not, they create a relationship with the baby before it is even born. Based on this information, woman will have no choice but to not think about the consequences and experience of this procedure. Third trimester abortions are not easy, and woman suffer major physical and mental consequences because of it. 

References

Johnson, E. A. (2015, January 20). The Reality of Late-Term Abortion Procedures. Charlotte Lozier Institute. https://lozierinstitute.org/the-reality-of-late-term-abortion-procedures/

Schwarz, Stephen D, Stephen D Schwarz, and Kiki Latimerm. Understanding Abortion: From Mixed Feelings to Rational Thought. Lanham, MD: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2012. Print.

Tolentino, J. (2019, January 22). Interview With a Woman Who Recently Had an Abortion at 32 Weeks. Jezebel. https://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-had-an-abortion-at-1781972395