Photo: Lennart Nilsson’s 1965 cover photo for LIFE magazine: “Living 18-week-old fetus shown inside its amniotic sac.” It was the best-selling issue of all time.

By TATIANA PROPHET

“Gestational Age Bans: Harmful at Any Stage of Pregnancy” is the title of a 2020 article by Megan K. Donovan of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the publishing arm of Planned Parenthood.

“Gestational age bans have long been a favored tactic of antiabortion activists and politicians as they seek to undermine and ultimately overturn the constitutional right to abortion,” she wrote. “In the past, such efforts were usually cloaked in supposed justifications that obscured the end goal. For example, bans on abortion at or around 22 weeks after the last menstrual period (LMP) have been propped up with unscientific claims about that stage of pregnancy, such as that a fetus can feel pain or that ending the pregnancy will result in mental health complications.”