One of the most common defenses of late-term abortion is the claim that in some cases, abortion is medically necessary. Lately, Americans have been hearing this claim in defense of a law in New York that allows abortions through all nine months of pregnancy. But that claim is based on faulty assumptions about the options available to women who face life-threatening pregnancy complications. The truth, known to thousands of OB-GYNs worldwide, is that there is no situation in which an abortion is medically necessary.

The false idea that late-term abortion is sometimes necessary for “health” reasons has been knit into American cultural discourse since 1973, when the Supreme Court decision in Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade, introduced a definition of “health” so sweeping that it effectively eliminated all restrictions on abortion. Today, Americans are so used to hearing that abortion must be legal to protect the health of the mother that it may be difficult to fathom that there are truly no medical situations in which abortion, the direct, intentional killing of a preborn baby, is necessary to save a woman’s life.