When I talk with people about abortion it is usually on a college campus at a free speech table that asks the broad question “Should abortion remain legal?” At my most recent visit to campus, I wanted to try something new. I asked people their thoughts specifically about the availability of third-trimester abortion.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

I asked this question for two reasons. First, abortion-choice political candidates have completely abandoned the “mushy middle” pro-choice view to become abortion extremists. They want states to pass laws as New York did in 2019 to legalize abortion throughout all pregnancy until birth, for any reason. For the majority of Americans, this means that they don’t have representatives running for office that share their views on abortion. According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 53% of U.S. adults believe abortion should be legal “only under certain circumstances.” I wanted to ask people who are in the middle on this issue how they felt about the direction politicians are taking things and if that affected the way they voted. After all, that same Gallup poll showed a record high of 29% of Americans will only consider like-minded candidates on abortion.

Second, I wanted to engage with students about a significant incongruence our team has witnessed in thousands of past conversations. One of the most common pro-choice arguments is that abortion should be the woman’s legal choice because she is the only one who should have a say over what happens to her body. At the same time, most of the people we talk with who bring up this line of thinking also tell us that they think there should be restrictions put on abortion like gestational limits or circumstances like rape or if the mother’s life or health is at risk. Here is the problem: if it is true that abortion is justified because of a woman’s right to her own bodily autonomy then that must be true throughout all of the pregnancy regardless of her reasons for exercising that bodily autonomy.

You cannot make that argument for abortion during the first 8 weeks of pregnancy, but not at 24 weeks of pregnancy because later abortions give you ethical qualms. Either you must consistently apply that thinking to all of pregnancy, or use a different argument altogether to justify early abortion. You can read our full article, Bodily Rights Arguments Necessitate Extremism, for more on this point.