In Reply: According to Dr Hodgson, our article
was 1 of the 2 articles on late-term abortion that was "fraught with scientific
inaccuracies, inflammatory language, and a misuse of vague terms." However,
because Hodgson fails to specify which terms were vague and where she found
scientific lapses or inflammatory language, it is difficult to address her
criticism directly.
In our report the other authors and I were careful to define the terms
used, including induced abortion, early second-trimester abortion, late second-trimester
abortion, late-term or third-trimester abortion, weeks of gestation, viability,
menstrual extraction, D&E, and, perhaps most significantly, intact D&X.
I agree with Hodgson that the term "partial-birth abortion" fails to specify
the timing of or procedure used to induce abortion. We noted that "clarification
of medical procedures is important because some of the procedures used to
induce abortion prior to viability are identical or similar to post-viability
procedures." For this reason we adopted the definition of D&X used by
ACOG.