All abortions no matter when they occur are very sad affairs. It is really sad when circumstances have come together such that a life must be ended or stopped from coming to fruition. Abortions are very emotionally trying to mothers and their families. That said, abortions are completely and absolutely necessary even late term abortions. I am going to argue this from a few angles.

If a woman wants to terminate her pregnancy bad enough, she will do so regardless of whether she has to go to a clinic or get one from an unlicensed back alley "doctor" or perform one herself. Before Roe v. Wade thousands of women died every year from complications from these abortions. By allowing abortions and late-term abortions to be legal, we allow women to go through safe and regulated channels to do something they are going to do anyway to be frank.

There are many circumstances in which late-term abortions are quite necessary, but I'll just name a few common situations. Often when young girls are raped, they will not tell anyone because they are afraid or a multitude of other reasons. Sometimes no one knows these girls are pregnant until they start getting big in their third trimester. These girls never got a chance to abort the rape-child in the "proper" time window because they are too afraid or immature to tell anyone or they don't even understand what pregnancy or sex is. Is it really fair to force an 11 year old girl to give birth to the child of her rapist because she didn't want to tell anyone she was raped?

Another situation is sometimes mothers are diagnosed with cancer late in their pregnancies beyond the date of normal abortions. These women often need chemotherapy or radiation therapy. This is an excerpt from the abstract of a paper by the Department of Radiology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine

"Malignant disease requiring radiation therapy during pregnancy presents an enormous challenge for the clinician. The optimal radiotherapeutic management of the patient and the optimal management of the pregnancy involve directly opposing demands. Ionizing radiation should be avoided during pregnancy whenever possible. Doses in excess of 0.1 Gy (10 rad) delivered during gestation have been associated with various detrimental effects, and therapeutic abortion has been recommended."

Often the cancer is so fast spreading that to wait the duration of the pregnancy to administer treatment that will most likely kill or maim the fetus is very dangerous and possibly fatal for the mother. In these situations the most humane thing to do is to terminate the pregnancy and treat the mother.

My last hypothetical is that sometimes it is not apparent until late in the pregnancy that the baby has life-threatening deformities that threaten the mother as well. Is it really fair to tell a mother she must risk her life to give birth to baby that will or likely will die?

As you can see there are multitude of possible situations in which a late-term abortion is the best option. There are such diverse situations that can occur and they are so sensitive and dependent on context, that this is not an issue that is done proper service by a blanket rule by politicians. These decisions are best left up to doctors and their patients. Women who want late-term abortions should ask their doctors and if their doctors agree that a late-term abortion is the best medical option, they should seek the approval of other doctors. Furthermore all of these decisions should be overseen by a governing board of doctors.

Late-term abortions are not used because mothers changed their mind or procrastinated and this is not the intended use. Like I said the decision should be up to the discretion of doctors to determine the necessity of the procedure.

Late-term abortion is something that should be avoided at all costs, and I've been hearing a lot about it lately, mainly from people who were told that they should have one by doctors because their children may have down's syndrome (everyone that was told this didn't have further testing done because of the risk of killing the child (50% chance), and all were born and found to be healthy).

It's something that should be taken care of before the child develops, but if it comes down to deciding later, it should still be up to the parents who created the child... It's sad, yes, but it's not our responsibility to decide who has to have children and who doesn't. Not everyone is happily married and ready, mentally, physically, or finically, to have children when they become pregnant, and we don't have the resources and in most respects, the right, to decide for people.

I believe that this is the true conservative stance on this issue. Limited government, more freedom and leave the moral decision to be made by the moral beings who are responsible for the child, not the government.