Debbie:
Whales and indeed, all ocean going mammals experience extreme difficulties, when they're out of the water, due to their own weight and gravity!
Whales for example,experience extreme difficulty in breathing.
Also their skin needs to remain wet to prevent cracking, that would then allow some, lethal for them pathogens,unimpeded entry.
I can think of no Doctor, that would assist any late term abortion of a viable baby, unless there was an urgent medical reason!
Like tissue rejection that could kill both the infant and the mother! Apart from that, and on abortion in general, which I disagree with on ethical grounds and the availability of various contraception choices, the real choice?
Women who have been violated, the subject of rape or incest, or underage or forced marriage, ought to have an option to access legal abortion.
Particularly, where going full term, would permanently ruin their future prospects.
In the third world many woman die in childbirth, mainly because their pelvis is too small, and where a Cesarean is just not an available choice, nor indeed, the drugs that stop internal hemorrhaging!
Worse is the gang rape of prepubescent girls, which leaves them alive, but with their little wombs so damaged, as to prevent them ever being able to conceive as adults!
This tells me Debbie, that we must inculcate choice as an inviolable right!
If only to stop very ignorant people, or just your usual rabid control freak, from focusing on the wrong things, for all the wrong reasons!
Rhrosty.

Well said Rhosty.
As a midwife for many years, I never saw any late term abortions, although I have heard some do happen for medical reasons.
The main ones I know of were when a life-threatening condition, or severe abnormality/illness occurred in either the mother or the baby.

Sometimes, some mothers refuse scans until later in their pregnancies, only to find the baby has some awful abnormality that will cause it to die soon after birth.
Parents often can't bear to carry that baby until term, and it is not up to people like this author to judge them.

The rare termination of pregnancies of about 20 weeks onwards are born 'normally' by induction, and not 'torn apart' as some over-emotional right-to-lifers would have you believe.

I hope they never have to suffer the torment of deciding whether to carry a severely disabled baby to term, or end the pregnancy early. Or deciding whether to take a punt on death for mum, or risk going on with the pregnancy to term. Some pregnant women with severe mental health illnesses have to end pregnancies to save their lives.

No one else has the right to decide these things except for the parents and their doctor.
It is no one else's business, and it is safe and legal.
Choice is something Australian women will always have regarding abortion.

Come on, Suse, never heard of late term abortions for reasons other than medical ones ;never heard of/seen a last minute knitting needle job?

No I haven't Is Mise, have you?
One thing is for sure, I know this subject pretty well.

Women these days don't need to resort to knitting needles thank goodness.
If abortion was ever made illegal or unavailable though, no doubt it would happen again.
Far better to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place...

Far better to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place..
Suseonline,
YES !
Prevention is better than cure. The trouble is cure has a deeper money trough & it is more attractive for the snouts.
The Public Service is like that.

@rhrosty and suseonline... I don't understand the denial of late term abortions for other than medical reasons. Are you suggesting that the abortion providers are providing false information or that the government department is misreporting the data... And has been for many years? What possible purpose would there be for that?

Late term abortions for psychosocial reasons have been consistently at least 50% or higher than abortions for congenital abnormality for a decade. These abortions are not for medical reasons of the unborn child or the mother. Abortions for those reasons would be recorded separately.

I never understand the hostility toward people simply presenting the facts, fully substantiated. I know they are difficult to hear, but surely that in itself is meaningful. Look at the numbers. Between 3 and 4 late term abortions for psychosocial reasons every week of the year in Victoria alone.