In 20 years living here following US politics and media coverage, there’s been one rule:
The US corporate media (including NPR+PBS, alas) will always frame every political(and even many non-political) issue in the best possible way for the GQP, and the worst possible way for Democrats.
In particular, there’s below-zero scrutiny for whatever foul crap comes out of GQP politician mouths.
Recently it has been brought to my attention that a certain rather stupid, corrupt, mean-spirited, bigoted, and hypocritical Southern GQP Senator, whom the media have elevated for decades as some sort of level-headed national sage, has followed other GQP hacks in zooming in on “15 weeks” as a politically convenient pregnancy cutoff, to enact abortion bans and frame them as some sort of “palatable compromise”. Said scoundrel did not even invent this cutoff, he is merely the one to go national with it - obviously in order to set a national “backstop” and move the Overton Window. Then, as is already happening avant-garde extremist states will ban abortion completely and at some point in the future the entire nation would join them.
Again, trust the corporate media to perform zero scrutiny of this monstrosity cooked up by mostly male political hacks. I’ve tried to search for any article examining the rationale for “15 weeks”, let alone challenging its proponents with context-relevant questions. To date I haven’t found anything. No, the media are once again giving GQP a free pass.
So please allow me to start performing the service — by pointing out that “15 Weeks” is a blatant lie. I’ve started doing so by making comments on every FP/rec diary I see that (inadvertently) repeats the lie that it’s a “15-week” ban. But here’s a more complete set of information. For the tl;dr types among us, the facts missing from all corporate-media “15 Weeks” reports:
- The “weeks” count is a fairly recent convention, and begins from the pregnant person’s last period. Essentially no one is pregnant on “Weeks 1-2”. Pregnancy usually starts early in “Week 3”, or even later.
- Generally speaking, only planned pregnancies are noticed that early. For unplanned, the person would notice them only after missing their period — i.e., Weeks 6-7 or so.
Bottom line:
At “15 weeks” per the weeks count, nearly all fetuses are only 12-13 weeks old, or even less. IOW, after so-called “15 Weeks” less than one-third of a typical full-term pregnancy has passed.
A “15-week” ban gives most people with unplanned pregnancy <9 weeks to decide whether they want to keep or terminate, seek care, consult with professionals, etc., etc.
And this is under normal conditions.
Very young pregnant people, those with irregular cycles, people living through major stress/trauma, and many others, might have even less time than that — or no time at all before this deceptive and totally arbitrary “15 week” point arrives.
For non-tl;dr types, see more below the fold including links to scientific studies and authoritative clinical information.
Disclaimer
To avoid appearance of undue authority, I am not a medical professional. I am, however, a research statistician working in the health field for the past 15 years, and with 2 science degree before stats. With due modesty I’m pretty good at finding, understanding, integrating, evaluating, and communicating scientific information about health.
Personally I am biologically male (never took a chromosome test though), even if not quite one’s stereotypical cishet man. I’ve fathered children with my lifelong cishet female partner; fortunately all our children were born naturally after healthy pregnancies. Albeit, not without some scare and drama, that have been a stark reminder of what an immense personal health sacrifice and risk pregnancy+birth are for the pregnant person.
Bottom line, I write this not as someone claiming to have firsthand experience, but as an ally. Apologies in advance if my writing appears to cross any lines in this respect, and please let me know in the comments and I’ll try to correct.
Those Weeks Counts are always off by 2-3
Coming of age in 1970s-80s Israel, pregnancies were universally described in months. “She’s glowing, she’s in the 6th month”, “Don’t do anything crazy, you’re in 8th month!” were standard conversation lingo everyone used. No one had heard of “Weeks” back then.
Then suddenly around late 80s or so, everyone switched to Weeks, which of course sounds way more scientific, precise, and in the know. I don’t have the history of when the system changed in what geographies; it’s a trivia bit tangential to the diary. The “Weeks” system was evidently introduced by the health system, in order to streamline the tracking and health-management of pregnancies.
Being a health-systems thing, it is based on logistical convenience just as much, and in some ways more, than on accuracy. Whoever started this system, probably worked in a universal-reproductive-rights environment, or was politically oblivious, and paid no thought to how some systematic, intentional inaccuracies might play into the hand of unscrupulous politicians.
Which is what’s happening now. Behind the scenes, everyone knows that the “Weeks” are not really weeks of physical pregnancy. Here, for example, an excerpt from the Victoria (Australia) government’s “Pregnancy - week by week” page.
Week 1
This first week is actually your menstrual period. Because your expected birth date (EDD or EDB) is calculated from the first day of your last period, this week counts as part of your 40-week pregnancy, even though your baby hasn’t been conceived yet.
The guide goes on to claim that ovum fertilization “...will take place near the end of” Week 2, on which I humbly beg to differ. Not by a ton, but arguably the vast majority of fertilizations happen in Week 3 or later, rather than late Week 2.
First, the “late Week 2” claim implicitly assumes that there are sperm already waiting for the ovum. Many pregnancies start by sperm arriving post-ovulation, sometimes several days post. And then, there’s the timing of ovulation itself.
This recent app-based study of 1.5 million pregnant people reports many period-duration statistics. Nearly 10k participants took a hormone test, so their exact ovulation day was deduced. The median ovulation day was Day 15, and a quarter of the 19k reported ovulation on Day 18 or later (Table 3). The overall period-length stats also conform with this pattern of a “right-skewed” — i.e., the proportion reporting longer duration than the “standard” 28 days was much larger than those reported shorter, and the amount by which it was longer tended to be larger as well. Lastly, many participants reported substantial period-duration variations, a point I will revisit in the next section.
To sum it up: adding together actual ovulation day distributions and the fact that fertilization often happens a few days post-ovulation, in at least ¾ of pregnancies start on Week 3 or later of the official count — and Week 4 is not that uncommon, in fact it might be just as common as Week 2.
Bottom line vis-a-vis the “15 Week” ban epidemic:
A “15-Week” ban prohibits abortions at a time point that’s usually only 12-13 weeks into the start of pregnancy — i.e., often still in the first trimester.
TIME OUT: What T* Are We Doing???
Why am I, again, neither a pregnancy-capable person nor a medical professional, splicing and dicing days and weeks of actual vs. counted pregnancy?
Well, this is the game GQP with media’s helping hand, has forced us into. Everyone is supposed to become part of the Pregnancy Police, second-, third- and infinity-guess pregnant people, their physiology and their decisions. While not applying nearly anywhere that level of scrutiny, to the self-appointed Pregnancy Police Chiefs themselves.
We really have no business doing that, unless we are the pregnant person, their consented partner, or their medical provider.
Yet here we are. So as said at the start, I’m pitching into this game as an ally of pregnant people, and particularly those encountering unwanted or unplanned pregnancies, or whose pregnancies have taken a turn for the worse.
On What Week Are Unplanned Pregnancies Discovered?
Back to splicing and dicing. So — as said, Week 1 starts with one’s first day of the menstrual period. In case of a pregnancy, Week 3 is typically when fertilization takes place. But generally, only people planning and looking forward to be pregnant, will get anywhere near a pregnancy test before their next period is due.
Week 5 is when most reproductively-capable people expect their next period. But again, there’s variations with a larger, longer tail of the distribution towards longer periods. And each individual person experiences some variation in their cycle duration. According to same 1.5-million person study, 2-3 day variation is the rule rather the exception, and again there’s a long tail with larger variation.
So — assume you’re a woman or pregnancy-capable person neither wanting nor planning for pregnancy, and you think you’ve taken all the usual precautions. And let’s say a couple of your recent periods were 2-5 days longer than normal. Barring clear physical signals (which are not as common as popular culture lets us think, e.g., my partner had very symptom-free early pregnancies with our first 2 children) — many people in that situation won’t even think of a pregnancy test before Week 6.
Which as the intro said, leaves them barely 9 weeks to think about what to do, navigate the health system, etc. etc.
Lastly
To be fair to the ban proponents (and we really shouldn’t be), the vast majority of abortions take place way before “Week 15”. The CDC reports that in 2019, 79% of abortions took place before “8 Weeks”, and 93% before “13 Weeks”.
By the way, again the pernicious impact of inflating the count by 2 weeks. Quoted verbatim from the CDC report (emphasis mine):
… some areas have reported “probable postfertilization age,” “clinician’s estimate of gestation based on date of conception,” and “probable gestational age” to CDC. To ensure consistency between data reported as postfertilization age and the data collection practices for gestational age recommended by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (14), 2 weeks were added to probable postfertilization age.
So they know they are adding 2 irrelevant weeks — and yet they choose “13 Weeks” as a key reporting milestone, reinforcing the lie that this (after only 10-11 weeks of actual pregnancy) is when Trimester 1 ends.
Anyway, most abortions take place early because pregnant people are probably more practical and decent than the average of us, they have no wish to continue carrying an unwanted pregnancy beyond the absolute minimum required to decide and then to end it.
So the monsters could argue, “What’s big deal? If barely 5% of abortions are after ‘15 Weeks’, then no harm no foul”? But again — we have no business setting up a Pregnancy Police. Those ~5% happen for a reason, excellent reasons which we have no business of knowing or second-guessing. As long as the fetus is not viable, then by a democratic and mutually respectful interpretation of rights and equality it is an extension of the pregnant person’s body.
I’ll end here b/c we still hope to have a rare weekday hike as we celebrate Jewish New Year.