Cross-posted from Hot Flash Report.
Fewer than 2200/year or 0.2% of the 1.3 million abortions performed yearly are past 24 weeks. But, the anti-abortion propagandists have successfully maligned procedures at this stage of pregnancy by calling them "Partial Birth Abortions" (not a medical term, but a political one). Even pro-choice Democrats don't understand the reality of late abortion.
I call abortions past 24 weeks Mercy Abortions...and I'll tell you why.
For 14 years, I worked at Midtown Hospital in Atlanta, a woman's hospital specializing in late abortion. The hospital opened in 1977 because at that time, Georgia law mandated that an abortion past 12 weeks had to be performed in a hospital. Abortion had just been made legal in 1973 and it became the first procedure to be widely performed on an outpatient basis.
More below the fold.