美国国家公共电台 NPR Abortion In The Third Trimester: A Rare Decision Often Made In Tragic Circumstances（在线收听）

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

States across the country, including Ohio, Georgia and Mississippi, have recently pushed for bans on early abortions. It's part of an effort to challenge Roe v. Wade and to build support before the 2020 elections. But there's also a debate on the other end of the spectrum over very late abortions. Third-trimester abortions are rare and controversial. Women who seek them often are facing a devastating diagnosis or a personal crisis. But the issue has been coming up in state legislatures in Congress and in the presidential campaign. Here's NPR's Sarah McCammon.

SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: These days, Dana Weinstein is the mother of three active children, a boy and two girls, who shower her with love as they burst through the door after school.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: Mommy, I missed you.

DANA WEINSTEIN: Hi, baby. Come on. Hi, baby.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: Mommy.

MCCAMMON: But Weinstein's path to this happy, healthy family has been difficult. Almost a decade ago, she and her husband found out they were expecting their second child, news that filled her with so much joy she documented her pregnancy in a journal written to her future baby.

WEINSTEIN: You moved. It's the first time I felt you move, and it was during a service Mommy was at that played music. I think you have a thing for live music. It was so great to feel you kick and move around.

MCCAMMON: Weinstein is now 48, living in the Washington, D.C., suburbs and working for a nonprofit. She still tears up when she talks about the diagnosis she received about 31 weeks into that pregnancy - that a critical piece of the brain had not developed properly. The prognosis was heartbreaking.

WEINSTEIN: That our baby would have seizures 70 percent of the time - that was a best-case scenario - that when we delivered her, that we would need to have a resuscitation order in place because she would most likely seize to death.

MCCAMMON: Fearing a short and painful life for her baby, Weinstein and her husband chose to travel to Colorado to end the pregnancy at one of the few clinics in the country that offers third-trimester abortions. She's been speaking publicly about her experience for years. But recently, decisions like hers have become the focus of national debate.

(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight.

MCCAMMON: Earlier this year, during the State of the Union address, President Trump weighed in on the issue of later abortion, condemning a law passed in New York that removed some restrictions.

(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)

TRUMP: These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and their dreams with the world.

MCCAMMON: With two of Trump's nominees now on the U.S. Supreme Court, anti-abortion rights activists are hoping the court will roll back or overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. In several states, they've pushed through legislation banning the procedure as early as six weeks, hoping one of those bills will find its way to the Supreme Court.

In more liberal states - among them, Vermont, Massachusetts and Illinois - lawmakers have tried to push in the other direction, working to enshrine abortion rights in state law. A failed proposal in Virginia to remove some restrictions on later abortion sparked heated rhetoric earlier this year, including claims that supporters were condoning infanticide. Mallory Quigley is with the anti-abortion group the Susan B. Anthony List.

MALLORY QUIGLEY: What we're seeing in some states is a complete overreach on the part of the abortion lobby.

MCCAMMON: Abortion rights opponents are also promoting legislation at the federal level to restrict abortion later in pregnancy. They point to polling that suggests that while a majority of Americans support access to the procedure earlier, most oppose it by the third trimester. Quigley says she believes it's a winning political issue for Republicans who oppose abortion rights.

QUIGLEY: I think that the increased clarity that these types of debates are providing are going to help President Trump and pro-life senators, representatives, people on the ballot in 2020.

MCCAMMON: The issue already is popping up in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke was asked for his views on third-trimester abortions during a campaign stop in Ohio in March. And here's Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders responding to a question during a recent Fox News town hall.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARTHA MACCALLUM: With regard to abortion, do you believe that a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy up until the moment of birth?

BERNIE SANDERS: Look, I think that that happens very, very rarely. And I think this is being made into a political issue.

MCCAMMON: Both Sanders and O'Rourke ultimately said they believe such decisions should be made by women and their doctors. However polarizing third-trimester abortions may be politically, as a medical procedure, they're very rare. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, a little over 1 percent occur sometime after 21 weeks, which is still well within the second trimester. Jen Villavicencio is an OB-GYN and fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She says a woman seeking an abortion in her final trimester has very few options.

JEN VILLAVICENCIO: She can't just show up at any clinic and decide to get an abortion. She's moving through tons and tons of barriers and hoops to be able to do this.

MCCAMMON: That was true for Beth Vial, a college student from Portland, Ore., who didn't learn she was pregnant until she was about 26 weeks along in the summer of 2017. Vial has some health issues that can make it hard to conceive and make a pregnancy harder to diagnose.

BETH VIAL: I just burst out crying. I didn't believe them because I was told that that wasn't a possibility for me.

MCCAMMON: Vial was just 22. She'd recently ended her relationship and says she knew she didn't want to be pregnant. Vial couldn't find a doctor who'd perform her abortion at that stage in Portland. But she was referred to a clinic in New Mexico that would do the procedure up until 28 weeks at a cost of more than $10,000. So Vial scrambled with the help of family and friends and a nonprofit group to get the money together.

VIAL: There was a lot of emotions I - because there's a lot of people telling me how they felt about my situation without me asking. I mean, you tell someone that you're seven months pregnant and having an abortion, they've got some things to say. People I thought were my friends made it clear to me that they disapproved. And that - I - that's fine. It wasn't changing my mind.

MCCAMMON: For Dana Weinstein, who ended her pregnancy in the third trimester because of a severe fetal diagnosis, the emotional public debate around the issue is sometimes difficult to hear.

WEINSTEIN: I would have given anything to have been able to help our baby live if she could have lived, but she was going to be incapable of that. I just don't understand why and how this is so front and center in the national debate.

MCCAMMON: It's a debate that's likely to continue in the coming months in the midst of new battles over who should be allowed to have an abortion and when. Sarah McCammon, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF DYLAN AYCOCK'S "RED OAK BLACK")