Washington State chapter National Organization for Women Position Paper Late Term Abortions

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Late Term Abortions

Washington State NOW opposes any attempt to restrict late-term abortions. The voters of this state passed Initiative 120 which provided for no restrictions on abortion. Targeting late-term abortions is a vicious and cynical piece of an overriding strategy to criminalize all abortions.

Initiative 120 recognized that the right to privacy extends to the decisions of a woman in consultation with her physician. The attack on late-term abortions is part of a wider strategy; it is the first step in turning back the clock to a time when abortion services were not available.

This obvious attempt to limit a woman's access to legal and sometimes very necessary medical options is being hidden behind sensationalism and distortions.

• *Over 95% of all abortions are performed during the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, while about one-half of 1% of legal abortions are performed during the third trimester.
• *A late term abortion is not a procedure taken lightly. Most involve wanted pregnancies that go tragically wrong when the woman's life or health is endangered or the fetus develops abnormalities incompatible with life.
• *Medical experts state that the safest method of late pregnancy termination for some women is the dilation and extraction (D&X) procedure. The National Abortion Federation estimates that fewer than 600 D&X procedures are performed each year.

Bills that would ban the D&X procedure would place legislators in the unprecedented position of regulating medical decisions and criminalizing abortion for the first time since Roe v. Wade.

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