Indeed, we know very little about women who seek later abortions. Random samples of abortion clients capture few women at gestations past the middle of the second trimester. For this reason, the most commonly cited research on post–first-trimester abortion focuses primarily on women in the early second trimester.
22-
24 The most salient findings are that women seeking second-trimester abortions did not realize they were pregnant until much later than women seeking first-trimester abortions, and that myriad logistical barriers slow down access to abortion once a woman is beyond 13 weeks. Certain physical health conditions, such as obesity
25,
26 and a lack of pregnancy symptoms,
26 increase the risk of late discovery. Research from the United Kingdom has identified uncertainty about what to do if pregnant and changing personal circumstances, such as dissolution of romantic partnerships or job loss, as associated with delay in seeking abortion.
27 Jones and Finer
24 offer some empirical data on later abortion, but because of the constraints of random sampling, they report only on women who have abortions at 16 weeks or later.
Without adequate understanding of who has later abortions and under what circumstances, the effect of legislative bans on procedures at or after 20 weeks cannot be known. This renders the question of who will be affected by these bans of increasing and timely importance. The current study addresses this question by analyzing data on women who sought and received an abortion at or after 20 weeks’ gestation for reasons other than fetal anomaly or life endangerment.