Reply #26: I agree with you, and that was a scenario that I should have included...

[NNguyenMD]

The current law in new york by no means is set in stone. And there are obstetricians who are pro-life, but who will refer such cases to OB's who do pregnancy termination, this is even after the 24 week limit, at least where I go to school.

Just from my impression, most abortions done today are early on in the pregnancy. The ones done later on are more rare, and there are usually reasonable circumstances to justify why a termination is desired at that point in time, such as later diagnoses of a genetic or chromosomal disorder incompatible with life, or that would greatly reduce the quality of life.

There are some situations in which if I were an OB physician, that I would feel ethically uncomfortable with performing an abortion, such as in sex determination when the abortion was desired b/c the fetus was not the gender that the parent preferred. Even in that case I would still refer the patient to another OB who I knew performed terminations. So there certainly is quite a bit of grey area to sift through.

As a matter of choice, every woman has a right to chose. To be completely honest I feel that the time limit for viability of the fetus as established in Roe v. Wade should be viewed cosmetically, b/c technology has permitted us to keep fetuses viable outside the womb of the mother well before the 24 week window of time for legal abortions.

I'm not a woman, and I'll never know what goes through the mind of a pregnant woman who has to make a decision on continuing a pregnancy. But just through my experience in interacting with the OB's whom I have met, the decision for most abortions is made early in a pregnancy, a point in time when we have the power to make abortions safe and readily accessible. The way I see it, we would be opening more choices for women by making sex education, morning after pill, and RU-486 more readily availiable and affordable to women. You could sharply reduce the numbers of unwanted pregnancy by a large margin right there. The cost would be closing off an avenue of abortion done at a later period of time and rarely ever taken by women, and when it is done it is usually only done under the most mitigating circumstances, such as in late diagnoses of a genetic disorder incompatible with life, or that would greatly shorten the lifespan and quality of life of a child, circumstances which I think most person could understand if a mother decided to terminate a pregnancy for those reasons.