To be clear, you are right that a late term abortion is pretty horrific. They're also -traumatic-. No one is -intentionally- waiting around to get an abortion; there isn't room for political argument here because anyone who finds themselves pregnant at a late stage and doesn't want to be is already in the case of "reasonable exception". A medical complication, a change in financial status to where she can't support it (when before she thought she could), etc.
No one is finding out they're pregnant in the first trimester, and then just can't make up their mind until the third, and we as a society need to set a date she has to make up her mind, or force her to keep it against her will. That's a made up justification, and as we continue to see, the same forces that make that justification don't even stop there.
>But data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1363/4521013
>“[t]here aren’t good data on how often later abortions are for medical reasons.”
>“Based on limited research and discussions with researchers in the field, Dr. Foster believes that abortions for fetal anomaly ‘make up a small minority of later abortion’ and that those for life endangerment are even harder to characterize,” the report stated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/06/tough-qu...
Of course that doesn't invalidate the findings; but it is a a fairly small number of events they're talking about here, that's all.
I think you're misunderstanding how the sentence I quoted relates to the study. The study I linked to actually only studied women who had abortions unrelated to fetal anomalies or life endangerment. So none of the 56% who declined to participate in the study nor any of the 44% who accepted to participate in it had abortions related to fetal anomalies or life endangerment.
The quote I quoted was basically an offhand remark that the paper made to justify its relevance, not backed up by evidence in the paper, but instead backed up by a citation to a different paper that I found hard to understand in a quick skim.
The general way I interpret the meaning of parentheses is that it's a part of the sentence that provides extra information, but the sentence would still be correct if it was removed.
That said, I don't think there will be political agreement because it's not 100% about the rules around abortions anyway. It's a political instrument at this point. Either side is trying to win, not do what's right, and that's how things have gotten so extreme.
That's why there's so much interest in defining limits around abortions. Late term abortions are pretty much described as horrific by the vast majority. There should be room for political agreement here.