Colorado GOP Senate candidate Joe O’Dea is unusual for a Republican: He supports a right to abortion, but, unlike the two sitting GOP senators who take that stance, O’Dea supports restrictions on abortion after 20 weeks (that’s five months) of pregnancy with limited exceptions.
During an interview with Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd on Sunday, O’Dea reiterated his support for a five-month legal limit on abortion, and Todd replied: “The only time you really see [late-term abortion] is when it’s a medical emergency.” But that’s not true. The authors of a 2013 study on late abortions reported that “data suggest that most” abortions performed between weeks 20 and 28 of pregnancy are not performed for “reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” (“Little is known about the relatively few abortions occurring in the third trimester,” the same authors reported.)
As Ramesh Ponnuru noted, that 2013 study “cited another paper, based on 2008 data, that found that fetal abnormality was present in 0.6 percent of abortions in its sample after the 20th week (although it speculates there could be an undercount). And a 2022 study went into some of the reasons unrelated to health that late-term abortions were sought (e.g., because the mother did not know she was pregnant or lacked the money for an abortion until the third trimester).”