"20-Week Bans Are Devastating for Women Like Me"

Everything you need to know about 20-week abortion bans—and the women they target
—By Molly Redden

A top priority for the new Republican Congress is passing a new law banning abortions after a fetus is 20 weeks old. But on Wednesday, GOP women concerned about the party's image managed to delay the vote. The bill, however, is by no means dead. Here's everything you need to know about the women in the GOP's crosshairs.

Women who obtain abortions 20 weeks after conception fall into a few broad categories. But researchers have a hard time determining which category accounts for the largest share of these abortions. "Our surveys just don't capture those women very well," says Rachel Jones, a senior researcher with the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion-rights think tank. This is partly because later abortions are very rare: In 2011, the most recent year for which there is sound data, only about 13,000 women terminated their pregnancies after 20 weeks, out of a total of about 1.06 million abortions.

Those categories include poor women who didn't have the money for an earlier abortion, women who underwent a traumatic life event—such as divorce, abuse, or the death of their partner—or women who didn't realize they were pregnant. Teenagers, who may not have regular periods or recognize the signs of pregnancy, and women who are overweight both tend to take longer to realize they are pregnant. Other women terminate their pregnancies due to fatal fetal anomalies. Often, those conditions aren't recognizable until the fetus is at least 18 to 20 weeks old. "Say it's a serious heart defect," says Daniel Grossman, a member of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. "There isn't a blood test for that. The fetus needs to be a certain size before you can see that. And then it may take a while for a woman to make up her mind about what to do."

Anti-abortion-rights groups claims that they want to ban abortion at 20 weeks because, they argue, that's the point at which fetuses experience pain. But the scientific consensus roundly rejects this idea. A review of more than 2,000 studies published in medical journals that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no evidence that fetuses at 20 weeks experience pain. (You can read more about why the GOP chooses to draw the battle line at 20 weeks here.)

Mother Jones asked a half-dozen women who terminated their pregnancies after 20 weeks to discuss their experiences. Here are some of their stories: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/20-week-abortion-bans-explained