Terms

The term “abortion” has traditionally meant the intentional or unintentional expulsion of the preborn child from the uterus before he or she has reached the age of viability (defined as the point after which the preborn child can survive outside the womb with or without medical assistance).

In practice, though, abortion in a number of countries (including the United States, Canada, and the People’s Republic of China) is legal until the moment of birth. In fact, some abortion methods such as dilation and extraction (D&X), the “partial birth” abortion, are designed to kill the preborn child when the birth process is almost complete.

At the other end of the spectrum, more and more drugs are being developed whose only purpose is to destroy the life of preborn children after fertilization (the union of the sperm and oocyte) and before implantation of the embryo or zygote in the mother’s uterus.

Definitions

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the United Nations World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and other pro-abortion organizations falsely define pregnancy as beginning at implantation and not at fertilization. In this manner, these groups claim that abortifacient drugs and devices such as the birth control pill and the intrauterine device (IUD) do not cause early abortions because they say that a pregnancy does not exist before actual implantation.

Therefore, the honest, accurate, and complete definition of the general term “abortion” would be “the intentional or unintentional expulsion or extraction of all of the preborn child (complete) or any part (incomplete) of the placenta or membranes at any time after fertilization and before the natural birth process is completed, whether this expulsion or extraction is performed by chemical medication or surgical instrument.”

Categories and Types

An “early abortion” generally refers to an abortion that occurs before the 12th completed week of gestation (first trimester); “late abortion” generally refers to an abortion that occurs after the 20th week of gestation.

A “spontaneous abortion” is the medical term for a miscarriage. This term is very important for pro-life activists to remember because many medical statistical categories and subsequent medical treatments (such as delivery of a child) do not distinguish between intentional and spontaneous abortion.

The current medical literature equates “legal abortion” with “therapeutic abortion.” The definition of the word “therapeutic,” however, means “treatment of disease.” The use of the term “therapeutic” is another pro-abortion attempt to sanitize a repulsive act, and it also implies that pregnancy is a disease—an assertion many pro-abortionists have made directly.

In any case, abortion is a direct attack on a preborn child that kills; it is murder.

More information on abortion below