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WASHINGTON, D.C., January 3, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While abortion advocates have long maintained that late-term abortions are almost always procured by devastated mothers whose babies have received fatal diagnoses and aren’t expected to survive long after birth, an analysis by a network of crisis pregnancy centers of a recent study paints a different picture.

When researchers with CareNet dug into the data of the recent Turnaway Study (see previous coverage here and here), which was conducted by pro-choice advocates, they found that most women in the study who sought late-term abortions were between the ages of 20 and 24 and were in unstable relationships and had financial problems. 

These women typically discovered they were pregnant later (12 weeks on average, compared to 5 weeks for those who sought earlier abortions), and were more likely to fight with the father over whether to have the abortion at all.  It also took them longer to come up with the money for an abortion.

The CareNet team quoted one woman interviewed by the Turnaway Study’s authors who waited until 21 weeks to seek an abortion because, “I couldn’t afford it.”

“They told me it was going to be $650, [but] by the time I was able to raise the $650, they had to do a different procedure, and so the price went up,” the woman said. “The price jumped to $1,850 … and they don’t take insurance.”

The Turnaway Study tracked around 200 women who were refused abortions. Many of them sought late-term abortions, which was the reason they were turned away.

Chris Slattery, National Director of the EMC FrontLine Pregnancy centers, told LifeSiteNews the study “conforms to our experience” with women facing crisis pregnancies.

“Rarely do we find true medical emergencies amongst those considering abortion in late term pregnancies,” Slattery told LSN.  “We often find emotional coercion by family and close friends, abandonment by the father, and financial stress is what most often drives expectant mothers to abort late in pregnancy.”

About 15,000 late-term abortions are performed every year in the U.S. – about 1.5% of the total number. 

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“Women who consider late-term abortion often do so from a place of desperation, and, perhaps, fear,” said CareNet CEO Roland Warren. “Yet, abortion only complicates the difficulties in her situation — and late-term abortion involves not only real suffering for the fetus but also serious risks to maternal health.” 

Abortion after 20 weeks’ gestation been the subject of considerable controversy over the past year, as mounting scientific evidence that babies begin to feel pain at that stage of development has prompted state and federal legislators to introduce ‘pain-capable unborn child protection’ laws banning the procedure after 20 weeks. 

Additionally, the shocking case of Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist convicted of murder for severing the spines of babies born alive after botched procedures at his filthy West Philadelphia clinic, highlighted the irony of laws that say it’s perfectly legal to decapitate fully-grown infants inside the womb, but move the exact same baby just a few inches and seconds, and it becomes a capital offense.

Around the same time Gosnell was convicted, Live Action released a series of undercover videos exposing late-term abortionists as equally willing to murder babies born alive after abortion.  And the high profile death of a kindergarten teacher in Maryland after her botched late-term abortion raised public awareness even further, leading many to question why a woman would want to undergo such a risky procedure at all.