PolitiFact's Humpty Dumpty act on 'abortion'

It was Lewis Carroll's fictional character Humpty Dumpty who gave us one of the classic quotes regarding word games:

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’ 

Sadly, it's fact checkers who are doing their Humpty Dumptiest to play games with the term 'abortion.' A fact check by "Science Feedback" gave us a definition of abortion a few years ago that encompassed cesarean section, a procedure that regularly results in living babies. A July 10, 2024 fact check from PolitiFact in effect asked Science Feedback to "Hold my beer."

PolitiFact executed a "False" judgment on GOP senatorial candidate Tim Sheehy for saying "Elective abortions up to and including the moment of birth. Healthy, 9-month-year-old baby killed at the moment of birth. That's what Jon Tester and the Democrats have voted for."

Yes, the whole fact check was essentially bunk (we'll explain later), but we were particularly struck by PolitiFact's word game chutzpah in his concluding paragraph (bold emphasis added):

These statements are rooted in Tester’s support for the Women’s Health Protection Act. That bill, however, doesn’t open the door to abortion on demand later in pregnancy. Instead, it allows for the role of medical judgment. In addition, CDC data indicates that late-term pregnancies are rare. Also, the term "elective abortion" is a political rather than medical phrasing.

So far as we can see, PolitiFact fact checker Matt Volz relied entirely on one of his expert interviews for that judgment.

That expert was Katrina Kimport, yet another in a long line of PolitiFact-cited neUTRal experts who give heavily to Democratic Party politicians and causes. PolitiFact readers don't need to know that Kimport gives to the "pro-choice" group EMILY's List ($3,500 since 2020):

Kimport ... also criticized Sheehy’s use of  "elective abortion." In her view, that terminology reflects a political colloquialism that’s come to mean an abortion that is optional. That’s different from the medical definition, she said, in which an elective procedure is one that may be necessary but is not an emergency and can be scheduled for a particular date, such as knee surgery. 

She says it's her view, so PolitiFact just runs with it. PolitiFact didn't just run with it, they twisted it into the term being political and not medical as a matter of fact. That's despite many medical sources (textbooks, professional journals, etc.) using the term. Rather, the evidence suggests that the term has fallen into political disfavor, fostering a movement to stop its use.

Image from ACOG.org

PolitiFact is down with that.

"Elective abortion" means an abortion not done for therapeutic reasons. In the simplest terms, it's an abortion done because the patient doesn't want a baby. Politically, it's advantageous for the pro-choice movement to blur such distinctions.

Of course it's amusing to see fact checkers do their part to empty words of their meaning. The pro-choice movement would have us believe that the choice to have an abortion is automatically therapeutic and that "elective" is a misnomer. Review a few more words from Kimport:

Women have abortions later in pregnancy either because they find out new information or because of economic or political barriers, Kimport said. 

"I have never spoken to somebody whose abortion decision was not informed by deep thought and consideration," she said. 

Kimport's talking point doubtless has its genesis with information parallel to this:

The reasons people need third-trimester abortions are not so different from why people need abortions before the third trimester: 

1. They received new information—including that they were pregnant—that made the pregnancy not (or no longer) one they wanted to continue
2. They tried to obtain an abortion before the third trimester but faced insurmountable barriers (including policy restrictions and stigma) that delayed them into the third trimester.

Did Kimport and PolitiFact forget to tell you that the "new information" included patients learning they were pregnant? Oopsie! We are so sorry (not sorry!)!

At PolitiFact Bias we're not here to tell our readers whether to take a pro-choice or pro-life stance. We're here to show you how PolitiFact stops short of fully checking the facts when the facts don't favor the pro-choice view. And maybe the spin is intentional, which is naughty.

As For The Rest of This Steaming Pile of Fact Check ...

We might quibble with Sheehy's mention of abortion "at" the moment of birth. Other than that, it would seem he's right despite PolitiFact's protestations to the contrary.

Here's the key part of the (most recent version PolitiFact linked) of the bill Sheehy's prospective Democratic opponent signed:

After fetal viability, governments may not restrict providers from performing abortions when necessary to protect a patient's life and health. The same provisions that apply to abortions before viability also apply to necessary abortions after viability. Additionally, states may authorize post-viability abortions in circumstances beyond those that the bill considers necessary.

The federal bill has a somewhat narrower pathway to elective abortion than the Florida bill PolitiFact cited in this piece, but it's there. "After fetal viability" obviously doesn't have anything to do with abortion before viability. It's specifically addressing post-viability abortion.

The opening comes with the "health of the mother" language. When it isn't defined, it can mean nearly anything. And, as we have noted before, the medical profession can claim (Harvard.edu) that every pregnancy carries risk. If every pregnancy carries risk, then an abortion can be "necessary" to avoid that risk for any pregnant patient.

PolitiFact can't figure that out because it's inconvenient for the ideology PolitiFact favors. Plus by sticking with the opinions of liberal experts the inconvenient stuff gets suffocated with a pillow.

And of course there's the last line, explicitly allowing states to go as far as they wish in allowing post-viability abortion.

So, no truth at all to what Sheehy said. Or something.

Fact checkers. 

Meh.

Afterword

Gemini AI to the rescue?

I could not resist a follow up question. 

Find the abortion conversation with Gemini AI here. Gemini's got its own Humpty Dumpty going on.

PolitiFact: How can we rig this abortion fact check to help President Biden? Part II

Lo and behold, PolitiFact made changes to the fact check we critiqued in our previous post.

Recall that we lodged three main criticisms of PolitiFact's "Mostly True" confirmation of President Biden's claim the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision made the United States an outlier among developed nations.

1. PolitiFact cherry-picked its pool of "developed nations."
2. It misidentified "Great Britain" as a member of the G7, enabling it to ignore a Northern Ireland spanner in the works
3. It falsely stated members of the G7, except the United States, "have national laws or court decisions that allow access to abortion, with various restrictions."

PolitiFact partially fixed the second problem.

Fixing the second problem without fixing the third problem magnifies the third problem. And PolitiFact, again, failed to follow its own corrections policy.

Let's start with the "clarification" notice and work from there:

CLARIFICATION, June 27, 2022: This story has been clarified to reflect that the United Kingdom, which contains Northern Ireland, is a G-7 nation. It has also been updated to describe current abortion laws in Northern Ireland.

Note the "clarification" notice announces a clarification and an update.

What does PolitiFact's statement of principles prescribe for clarifications and updates?

Clarification:

Oops! PolitiFact's statement of principles offers no procedure for doing a clarification!

The either means that PolitiFact is following its principles because the principles allow it to do whatever it wants, or else it means that PolitiFact isn't really following a principle.

Update:

Updates – From time to time, we add additional information to stories and fact-checks after they’ve published, not as a correction but as a service to readers. Examples include a response from the speaker we received after publication (that did not change the conclusion of the report), or breaking news after publication that is relevant to the check. Updates can be made parenthetically within the text with a date, or at the end of the report. Updated fact-checks receive a tag of "Corrections and updates."

We think it clear that this policy calls for newly added "update" material within the original text to occur with clear cues to the reader where the material was added ("parenthetically within the text with a date"). Otherwise, the new material occurs at the end of the item after the update notice.

It's easier to find PolitiFact updates done incorrectly than ones done correctly. But this example shows an update done the right way:

 

The method shown communicates clearly to readers how the article changed.

This is infinitely more transparent than PolitiFact's common practice of an update notice at the end saying, in effect "We changed stuff in the story above on this date."

Understood correctly, PolitiFact corrected its story. It fixed its mistake in misleadingly identifying Great Britain as a member of the G7. And the "update" was not new information. It was information PolitiFact should have included originally but mistakenly did not.

The fact check continues to do readers a disservice by failing to inform them that the U.K. in 2019 forced Northern Ireland, via special legislation, to permit abortion. That still-missing fact contradicts PolitiFact's claim that members of the G7 other than the United States"have national laws or court decisions that allow access to abortion, with various restrictions." The legislation forcing Northern Ireland to permit legal abortion was not a national law, nor was it a court decision.

The law is specific to Northern Ireland.

We'll end with an image we created for Twitter. It's an image from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, using its comparison feature. Text highlighted in blue was changed from the original text, and we added red lines under the part of PolitiFact's fact check that remains false.

PolitiFact: How can we rig this abortion fact check to help President Biden?

Day by day, it's amazing to watch the kind of material PolitiFact publishes as supposedly "not biased" fact-checking.

From yesterday, June 24, we have this (red X added):

In what respect was President Biden claiming the United States counts as an outlier among "developed nations"? Here's how PolitiFact presented the president's statement:

"With this decision, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is, how far removed they are from the majority of this country," Biden said a couple hours after the ruling was released on June 24. "They have made the United States an outlier among developed nations in the world."

How far removed is the Supreme Court from the majority in this country? If we start with the amount of legal education, the gulf between does seem obvious. But Biden surely meant the Court's attitude toward abortion, even though the Court was faced with ruling on what U.S. law says about abortion, and not how to transform popular American attitudes into national law.

And how had the Court "made the United States an  outlier among developed nations of the world"? PolitiFact has published items showing it at least understands that abortion law varies widely among comparably developed nations. If it's "Half True" that "'39 out of 42 (countries) in Europe have more restrictive abortion laws' than Mississippi" then how is PolitiFact supposed to pull Biden's fat out of the fire on this one?

PolitiFact called in the Spin Team (our term!) of Madison Czopek and Tom Kertscher. The team developed a PolitiFantastic interpretation of Biden's claim:

While the high court’s decision leaves in place state laws that permit abortion, it removes the national right to an abortion — something that is widely guaranteed by laws or court rulings in other developed nations.

So ... President Biden was just saying that Court made the United States, home of the 10th amendment, an outlier on the basis of  its newfound lack of an explicit or de facto national abortion access law?

But what other developed nations have something like the 10th amendment in their constitutions? If they lack such a thing then isn't this a pointless exercise? The U.S. is an outlier because of the structure of its federalist system, not simply because of the Court.

Damn those torpedoes! PolitiFact's going full speed ahead!

Would you believe ...

... no mention of 'federalism'?

PolitiFact came oh-so-close to unraveling the mystery of the missing federal law setting abortion policy nationally in the United States:

The high court ruled 6-3 to uphold a restrictive Mississippi law and 5-4 to reverse Roe, with the majority opinion saying "the Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion." The decision ended nearly 50 years of federally protected access to abortion and returned power to individual states to set their own laws.

That means access to abortion varies widely in the U.S.

 Correct, PolitiFact. It's almost like the European Union that way.

In the EU, Malta is the only country where abortion is still completely prohibited. But Poland has a near-total ban in place, and many EU states have a range of legal barriers to abortion, such as mandatory counselling, waiting periods between a request and the abortion, third party consent, low upper time limits and limited legal grounds that force many women to travel to other countries, and all the increased restrictions on travel due to Covid-19, especially where access to abortion pills and self-managed abortion have not been made available.

 It's going to be really something when these fact checkers discover the concept of federalism.

... 'developed nations' don't need to be restricted to just the G7?

PolitiFact cleverly removed Malta and Poland from the "developed nations" list by restricting that list to the G7:

Developed nations consisting of the world’s leading economies are sometimes referred to as the G7, or the Group of Seven, which includes the U.S. and six other industrialized nations. Unlike the U.S., those six have national laws or court decisions that allow access to abortion, with various restrictions.

Would you believe PolitiFact has no consistent history of confining "developed nations" to the G7?

... 'Great Britain' as a G7 nation?

Would you believe Great Britain isn't listed as a G7 nation even though PolitiFact includes "Great Britain" on its list?

Would you believe that Great Britain isn't the same thing as the United Kingdom with respect to abortion law?

Great Britain technically refers to the main British island, made up of England, Scotland and Wales. "Great Britain" is sometimes used as a synonym for the United Kingdom, but if PolitiFact meant it that way then it should have pointed out that the U.K. only passed a law later resulting in liberalized abortion law in Northern Ireland in 2019.

"U.K." literally means "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."

So the United Kingdom was the G7 outlier until 2019. The G7 went with no outlier for a couple of years before the SCOTUS struck down the Roe v. Wade precedent.

Why did PolitiFact miss all this stuff?

Probably because PolitiFact is biased. Very probably.

More Deceptive "Principles" from PolitiFact

PolitiFact supposedly has a "burden of proof" that it uses to help judge Political claims. If a politician makes a claim and supporting evidence doesn't turn up, PolitiFact considers the claim false.

PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman expounded on the "burden of proof" principle on May 15, 2019 while addressing a gathering at the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia:

If you say something, if you make a factual claim, online, on television, in the newspaper, you should be able to support it with evidence. And if you cannot or will not support that claim with evidence we say you're guilty.

We'll, we'll rate that claim negatively. Right? Especially if you're a person in power. You make a claim about the economy, or health, or development, you should make the claim with the information in your back pocket and say "Here. Here's why it's true." And if you can't, well, you probably shouldn't be making the claim.

As with its other supposed principles, PolitiFact applies "burden of proof" inconsistently. PolitiFact often telegraphs its inconsistency by publishing a 'Splainer or "In Context" article like this May 24, 2019 item:

PolitiFact refrains from putting Milano's statement on its cheesy "Truth-O-Meter" because PolitiFact could not figure out if her statement was true.

Now doesn't that sound exactly like a potential application of the "burden of proof" criterion Sharockman discussed?

Why isn't Milano "guilty"?

In this case PolitiFact found evidence Milano was wrong about what the bill said. But the objective and neutral fact-checkers still could not bring themselves to rate Milano's claim negatively.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

Our conclusion

Milano and others are claiming that a new abortion law in Georgia states that women will be subject to prosecution. It actually doesn’t say that, but that doesn’t mean the opposite — that women can’t be prosecuted for an abortion — is true, either. We’ll have to wait and see how prosecutors and courts interpret the laws before we know which claim is accurate. 

What's so hard about applying principles consistently? If somebody says the bill states something and "It actually doesn't say that" then the claim is false. Right? It's not even a burden of proof issue.

And if somebody says the bill will not allow women to be prosecuted, and PolitiFact wants to use its "burden of proof" criterion to fallaciously reach the conclusion that the statement was false, then go right ahead.

Spare us the lilly-livered inconsistency.