I am strongly pro-choice. But I cannot help but feel that laws restricting abortions after 24 weeks are not unreasonable.
I know quite a few women who've given birth to preemies, including some micro-preemies. And at 25 weeks, a preemie has a 55% chance of survival. At 26 weeks, it goes up to 75%-85% survival. At this point, it is not a cluster of cells. By 29 weeks, there is more than 90% survival rate. It is a baby.
http://preemiehelp.com/about-preemies/preemie-facts-a-figures/preemie-outcomesObviously, these preemies who survive owe their lives to the wonders of modern medicine. They live the first few months of their lives attached to machines. Although some have permanent or ongoing health problems, a huge percentage of them grow up to be perfectly normal, healthy human beings, completely indistinguishable from people who spent a few more months in their mothers wombs.
At 39 weeks? There is no doubt that this is a baby. And as jynnan tonnix pointed out, she went through a full labor to abort, just as if she had given birth. And it would have been safer. If she did not want to parent, at that point, she should have considered adoption.
I don't mean to be judgmental about the choices that women make, and I certainly don't like laws legislating women's bodies, but this woman did not abort a fetus. She killed a baby.