Abortion is an emotionally-charged issue that involves gender, religion, civil liberties, morality and a person’s freedom to make their own health decisions without interference from the state. So it’s important that when people make up their minds about this complex topic, they do so with the appropriate facts.

In his 2019 State of the Union address, Trump made a slew of gruesome, untrue statements about “late-term abortion.” For starters, these abortions only occur in extremely rare circumstances in which the life of the mother is in serious danger and/or the fetus is seriously malformed or cannot survive outside the womb.

Gynecologist Dr. Jennifer Gunter says these abortions never occur because the mother decided to terminate her pregnancy on a whim. They are all serious, life-or-death procedures that are medically indicated.

“This does not mean that ladies who just forgot their eight-week abortion who are now struggling to fit into their pants can get their better-late-than-never abortion,” she wrote in reference to New York’s new law that allows — in rare circumstances — abortions after 24 weeks. “It means doctors can do the right thing medically if the situation arises.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2015 (the most recent year for which data was available), 638,169 legal abortions were reported, 91% were performed at or before 13 weeks of pregnancy, 7.6% were performed between 14 and 20 weeks, and just 1.3% were performed at 21 weeks or later. Abortions after 24 weeks comprise less than 1% of all abortions.

New York’s Reproductive Health Act, signed into law earlier this year, allows abortions if “the patient is within twenty-four weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an absence of fetal viability, or the abortion is necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.”

Read the full article about late-term abortion myths by Tod Perry at GOOD Magazine.