Setting the record straight on eight reproductive health-related areas that are rife with disinformation, from ‘partial-birth abortion’ to ‘heartbeat’ bills. Getty Images
Reproductive rights has taken center stage in the first post-Roe presidential election that presently features a longtime advocate for reproductive rights in possible Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, opposite former Republican President Donald Trump, whose three appointed U.S. Supreme Court justices helped overturn federal abortion rights. Although Trump’s former health staffers have co-authored the Heritage Foundation’s conservative anti-abortion policy blueprint for a future Republican administration, called Project 2025, Trump, his outspoken anti-abortion running mate Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, and many GOP candidates have attempted to soften their abortion stances while also adopting the longtime movement narrative that abortion is dangerous to women and equivalent to infanticide.
As the first presidential election season since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision heats up, here are the facts behind the most commonly touted myths about abortion.
1. Abortion is safe.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) concluded in a comprehensive review of the safety and quality of abortion care in the U.S. in 2018 that complications from abortion are rare, especially when compared to the complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The anti-abortion movement falsely claims abortions are more dangerous than childbirth, and tried unsuccessfully to legally force the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of the abortion medication mifepristone. Meanwhile, a new Louisiana law will, starting this fall, classify mifepristone as “dangerous,” despite opposition from state doctors.
Medication abortion has been the most common way to terminate a pregnancy since 2020, when pills accounted for 53% of all pregnancy terminations, according to the Guttmacher Institute. When administered at 9 weeks gestation or less, the FDA-approved regimen has a more than 99% completion rate, a 0.4% risk of major complications, and a reported 32 associated deaths over 22 years. Common symptoms include heavy bleeding and cramping, diarrhea, and nausea.
2. Abortion can reduce health risks and infertility and save lives.
There are many conditions that can develop during pregnancy — such as ectopic and molar pregnancies, severe preeclampsia, and preterm premature rupture of membranes — that can put the pregnant person at risk of death, serious health complications, and future infertility, as well as make it unlikely the fetus would survive even if the pregnancy continued. Though anti-abortion activists do recognize this reality, they use the political term “separation of a mother and her unborn child” to obfuscate that abortion is sometimes necessary. And even in emergency cases, they advocate for riskier procedures like C-sections to avoid performing less invasive abortion procedures. Meanwhile, the future legality of emergency abortions in states like Idaho remains uncertain.
3. Abortion is not infanticide.
Candidates have been campaigning on rhetoric that abortion is infanticide and happens “post birth,” “up until the moment of birth,” or “after birth,” as Trump alleged in the June debate with President Joe Biden. However, abortion does not happen “after birth.” That would be categorized as murder, as it was in the case of former Philadelphia abortion doctor and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell.
4. “Late-term” and “partial-birth” abortions are political terms not grounded in science.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 93% of abortions occur within the first trimester, and less than 1% after 21 weeks’ gestation. Still, anti-abortion groups and candidates emphasize the idea of “late-term” abortions, which is not a medical term. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which helps elect anti-abortion candidates, has begun calling the vice president an “abortion czar,” with president Marjorie Dannenfelser claiming Harris wants to “impose on all 50 states all-trimester abortion without any limits, even painful late-term abortions in the 7th, 8th, and 9th month of pregnancy.” Though abortions do occur later in pregnancy, they are rare and typically involve nuanced and heartbreaking circumstances. The GOP’s national platform opposes “late term abortion.”
Sometimes anti-abortion activists also refer to “partial-birth” abortions, a non-medical term for a procedure known as dilation and extraction (D&X), which is already banned under federal law.
5. Abortion exceptions for rape, incest, fetal anomalies, and health risks do not exist in most states where abortion is totally banned.
Despite Republicans’ oft-touted support for rape and incest exceptions in abortion bans, many currently on the books don’t include them. Of the 14 states with near-total abortion bans, only Idaho, Indiana, and North Dakota’s maintain some exceptions for survivors of rape and incest. Indiana also allows for abortion if there is a fatal fetal anomaly. Reproductive health experts say abortion exceptions are rarely granted even when they exist.
6. The terms “heartbeat bill” and “six-week abortion bans” are misleading.
Currently Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and soon Iowa will ban abortion at the moment embryonic cardiac activity can be detected on an ultrasound, which typically occurs around six weeks’ gestation. This type of law is often referred to as a “heartbeat bill,” but reproductive health experts say the term is misleading because the heart is not fully developed at that stage. These laws are also referred to as six-week bans, which is also misleading, given how gestational age is calculated: by counting from the first day of one’s last menstrual cycle. This is an approximate estimate and varies depending on when conception officially occurs. For many, a six-week ban is closer to four weeks or less of pregnancy, before many people realize they’re pregnant.
7. The GOP platform contradicts promises to leave abortion to the states and to protect IVF.
The Republican Party’s recently unveiled “Make America Great Again!” policy platform does not explicitly call for a federal ban on abortion and expresses support for birth control and in vitro fertilization. But it simultaneously supports states establishing “fetal personhood” under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which legal experts warn could lead to the criminalization of pregnancy and implicate abortion, contraception, and IVF.
A nationwide concern about Americans’ access to IVF kicked off this winter after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are “children,” leading IVF clinics in Alabama to shutter temporarily. In the aftermath, some states, including Alabama, have taken steps to ensure access to the fertility treatment, but future access remains largely uncertain, especially as congressional bills to protect IVF nationally have failed to advance.
8. Emergency contraceptives are not abortifacients but could be impacted by personhood laws.
Emergency contraceptives like Plan B and ella are designed to be taken shortly after sex, to delay or prevent ovulation. They are not abortifacients, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and they don’t work on someone who is already pregnant. Anti-abortion activists largely oppose emergency birth control (and many other contraceptives), based on outdated drug labeling that Plan B might work by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg, which many in the movement say should be treated in law as a person. The FDA revised the label in December 2022, following additional scientific evidence concluding Plan B works before fertilization.
Research on ella also indicates it likely does not prevent implantation, but Project 2025 includes a proposal to exclude ella from contraceptives currently covered under the Affordable Care Act, referring to it as “a potential abortifacient.”
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