Phelim McAleer: Setting the record straight on the sensitive subject of abortion in America

This narrative, amplified by a sympathetic media and very well funded advocacy groups, paints a dire picture. But when you dig into the stories and the facts, the reality is very different.

First, abortion is not banned in the US. The "Dobbs decision" shifted the battleground to the states. The court simply stated that the DC federal government did not have the power to impose abortion on the nation and states now had the right to pass their own laws.

And they have. Some states, like Texas, Alabama and Florida have enacted near-total bans, but abortion access has expanded in many of America’s most populous states.

At the moment nine states – Alaska, California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont – plus the District of Columbia, have no gestational limits on abortion.

This means you can legally kill a baby in the womb for any reason throughout all nine months of pregnancy in states where over 69 million Americans, or more than 20% of the US population, live.

No European country has such permissive abortion laws. In reality, in terms of abortion, these US states resemble China and North Korea more than Sweden or Spain.

And the claim that women are dying due to abortion bans is simply not true. High-profile cases often cited as proof – such as women dying after being "denied treatment” - turn out to be not true when the stories are put under independent scrutiny.

Existing laws in even the most restrictive states typically allow exceptions for life-threatening conditions, despite claims to the contrary by activists and doctors.

Abortion campaigners like to push such fake stories but are rather less fond of talking about late term abortions. They do so because they know many people have deep misgivings about killing babies over 20 weeks that would be viable outside the womb and look like, and basically are, small humans.

Abortion advocates like to claim that late term abortions make up "just one per cent” of all abortions in the US and therefore are rare. But the reality is that this figure means that there are still between 8,000–12,000 abortions every year at or after 21 weeks. That's 20-30 a day.

It is also often said that late abortions are mostly carried out because of fatal fetal anomalies in the babies. However researchers from the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute found they were carried out for the same reasons as earlier abortions - mostly because women did not want to be mothers.

And the 8,000–12,000 figure is also woefully misleading. Many states including California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New Hampshire collect no data on late abortions. These are states with very large populations and very permissive abortion laws. Even in states where reporting is required, compliance is spotty and often there is no penalty for failing to file the data.

I know this only too well. I made a movie, wrote a book and produced a true crime podcast about Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist convicted in 2013 for murdering multiple babies and killing patients in his clinic.

Gosnell performed thousands of abortions over 40 years - but never once reported his statistics to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. His squalid and filthy clinic was never inspected as a Republican pro-abortion governor, keen to get elected in a Democrat leaning state, ordered health inspectors to ignore the law.

The lack of transparency is probably not accidental. Americans are deeply divided about abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. However they tell pollsters they don't support the later procedures.

Late term abortion involves the dismemberment of tiny humans. There is no way to pretend a six-month fetus is less than fully human. Americans spend millions ensuring babies born at six, seven and eight months survive in the premature baby units of our top hospitals. Abortion advocates don't want the public to think about the fact that, because the mother didn't want them, they are often killing such babies in a different wing of the same hospital.

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l Phelim McAleer is a journalist/producer based in Los Angeles. He produced the movie Gosnell, The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer and co-wrote the New York Times best-selling book Gosnell, The Untold Story of America’s Biggest Serial Killer. He produced the true crime podcast Serial Killer - A True Crime podcast based on the Gosnell story.