Full Term Abortion:

Full Term Abortions are more commonly referred to as late-term abortions. Full term abortions are abortions that are performed during a later stage of pregnancy. Full term abortion is more controversial than abortion in general because the fetus is more developed and may even be viable (able to survive independent of its mother).

A full term abortion often refers to an induced abortion procedure that occurs after the 20th week of gestation, but the exact point when a pregnancy becomes late-term for consideration of abortion at "full-term" has never been clearly defined. Some sources define an abortion after 12 completed weeks of gestation as "late". Others define an abortion after 16 weeks as "late". In 1998, there were three articles, all published in the same issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, which could not agree on the definition. Two of the articles chose the 20th week of gestation to be the point where an abortion procedure would be considered full or late-term. The third article chose the third trimester, or 27th week of gestation.

The point at which an abortion becomes full-term is often related to the "viability" (ability to survive outside the uterus) of the fetus. Sometimes, full-term abortions are referred to as post-viability abortions. However, as expressed earlier, viability varies greatly between pregnancies. However, it should also be noted that, nearly all pregnancies are viable after the 27th week, but no pregnancies are viable before the 21st week. It is in this range that abortions are often considered to be "full term abortions."

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