Meredith Isaksen's Late-Term Abortion

Meredith Isaksen published “Late-Term Abortion Was the Right Choice for Me” in the New York Times the day after Donald Trump commented on late-term abortion in the third presidential debate. Her first person narrative gave readers a detailed account, effectively arguing the necessity for late-term abortions. The whole piece was centered around the idea that “our government has absolutely no place in the anguish which accompanies a late-term abortion, except to ensure that women and their families have the right to make their choice safely and privately” (8).

In “Late-term abortion was the right choice for me,” Meredith Isaksen told the story of her personal tragedy, and why it was the right decision for herself, her family, and her unborn son to have a late-term abortion. 21 weeks into her pregnancy, she was told that her son’s heart had stopped developing at 5 weeks, and that he would be unlikely to live for very long after birth. After more tests confirming the baby’s condition, Isaksen and her

Throughout the piece, Isaksen weaved rhetorical devices in. She used enumeratio to describe the process she went through to confirm her baby’s condition: “after the poking and prodding, after the meetings with pediatric cardiologists, cardiothoracic surgeons and geneticists…” (2). If Isaksen were to leave this part of her narration out the reader could easily have thought that she took the doctor’s word from the moment he said it and immediately decided to abort her baby. But she didn’t; she went beyond that, which helps make the idea that she desperately wanted the pregnancy more believable. In paragraph three, Isaksen used anaphora to drive home the point that her decision to abort her baby was driven by compassion for her other son, her husband, and the little one inside of her with only half a