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Tag: misinformation
Abortion Pill Rises

As Use Of Abortion Pill Rises, Right-Wing Media Spread Misinformation

Following news that retail pharmacies will be able to distribute prescription medication used for abortions, anti-choice activists are flooding the right-wing media ecosystem with medical misinformation that falsely posits abortion medication as unsafe. This renewed attack on medication abortion is making it more difficult for pregnant people seeking credible information to make their own health care decisions.

Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration announced that retail pharmacies in states where abortion is legal will be able to fulfill prescriptions for mifepristone, one of two medications used for abortions, after they’ve received a government certification. Three of the nation’s largest retail pharmacies — Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid — have already expressed their intent to distribute the medication.

Since Roe v. Wade’s reversal last year, medication abortion has become a particularly important safety net, as 14 states have harshly restricted or outright banned abortion, leading dozens of clinics to stop offering abortion care. Demand for abortion medication has surged in states with restrictions, and most abortions in the U.S. are now performed through medication. On January 25, the maker of mifepristone filed a lawsuit hoping to expand access of the medication to states with abortion bans, arguing that the FDA’s approval of the drug in 2000 makes restricting its distribution illegal.

With Roe’s reversal, the political right has pivoted from fixating on the Supreme Court to seizing on medication abortion, with the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists helping lead the way. AAPLOG is a group of anti-abortion doctors whose mission is to leverage their professional credentials to stigmatize abortion care and scare away pregnant people seeking abortions by spreading medical misinformation. Now, as medication abortion has become a renewed object of conservative attention, right-wing outlets are increasingly turning to AAPLOG’s leaders as expert opinions undermining mifepristone.

Here’s how conservative media are doubling down on their misinformation efforts as the anti-abortion movement moves on past Roe:

  • After the FDA announced that retail pharmacies could dispense mifepristone prescriptions, AAPLOG’s outgoing CEO Dr. Donna Harrison appeared on the conservative TV network Newsmax on two different programs on January 10. On The National Report, Harrison stressed that the FDA’s announcement was “scientifically and medically irresponsible” and overstated the possibility of the rare side effects of taking the medication in an effort to scare patients away. Harrison also fearmongered that the distribution of medication abortion would lead to the “enablement of both abusers and pimps,” even though pregnant people denied an abortion are actually more likely than people who have abortions to be tethered to abusive relationships.
  • In a January 14 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Harrison falsely warned that medication abortion is “never safe” and fearmongered about potential side effects of mifepristone, claiming that the medication could lead to “the kind of bleeding one might see in a major motor vehicle accident.” (Bleeding is a normal side effect of taking abortion medication, but the description Harrison gave is much less common.)
  • On January 5, anti-abortion site Pregnancy Help News quoted a representative from the extremist evangelical group Family Research Council that selling medication abortion “will transform pharmacies from centers of healing into centers of death.” Anti-choice activist Lila Rose likened distributing mifepristone to “dispensing lethal poison alongside antibiotics and allergy medication.” Pregnancy Help News also cited research from the Charlotte Lozier Institute (a branch of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America) and AAPLOG, both organizations known for spreading misinformation on abortion.
  • Pregnancy Help News published a similar piece on January 22 centered around a speech from AAPLOG CEO-elect Dr. Christina Francis at the 2023 National Pro-Life Summit held by Students for Life of America. While peddling misinformation about medication abortion, Francis claimed that “women deserve to have accurate information” and decried what she described as “the abortion industry and unfortunately its allies in the medical profession” in a speech titled “Debunking the Myths of Chemical Abortion.” Francis falsely claimed that medication abortion is more unsafe than surgical abortion and promoted the concept of abortion pill reversal — which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists described as “unproven and unethical” but Pregnancy Help News referred to as a “ray of hope.”
  • An opinion piece featured in Townhall on January 12 attacked CVS and Walgreens as “neighborhood abortion drug dealers” because of the pharmacies’ plans to distribute prescription mifepristone. Even though abortion medication is extremely safe, the piece suggested the hangers used in illegal abortions have been replaced by mifepristone — an extremely fraught comparison used to falsely paint medication abortions as “fundamentally dangerous, physically risky, and even deadly.” Further, the article recommended pregnant people visit the deceptively named “pregnancy help centers,” another name for so-called crisis pregnancy centers that dissuade visitors from receiving abortions under the guise of providing actual support.
  • A January 20 Daily Caller article quoted AAPLOG’s Francis criticizing the embrace of medication abortion post-Roe as proof that “medicine, in general, is moving in a more pro-death direction.” The piece also cited Dr. Ingrid Skop, a representative from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, who similarly fearmongered about standard reproductive health care and stated that “the battle is not over and the battleground has shifted” after Roe, adding that medication abortion is “one of the things we are having to fight.”

In addition to right-wing media undermining mifepristone’s proven safety and efficacy, GOP politicians in Alabama and South Dakota have threatened criminal charges for dispensing or taking abortion medications, and a coalition of anti-abortion activists are suing to overturn the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.

Conservative media’s moral panic against mifepristone isn’t new: Many of the same narratives have been recycled from previous fearmongering when the medication was permanently approved for mail distribution in December 2021 and when Roe was officially overturned in June 2022.

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is medication abortion?

Medication abortion, also known as the abortion pill, is a form of early abortion caused by taking two different medications. It is an option for people who are within 10 weeks pregnant.

What is mifepristone?

Mifepristone is one of two medications used for medication abortions. It blocks the hormone progesterone needed for a pregnancy to continue.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Clinton: Pass Obama’s Job Bill (And Of Course I’ll Pay The ‘Millionaires Tax’)

Nothing excites Republicans more these days than to draw contrasts — and foment dissension — between President Obama and former president Bill Clinton, his most recent Democratic predecessor. Much as the Republican right despised Clinton when he was in the White House, they pretend to yearn for him today.

The political media delight in the same game, which is why so many news outlets seized on Clinton’s remarks in an exclusive interview on Wednesday with the conservative Newsmax website that seemed to put him at odds with Obama’s policies — especially at a moment when the stock market fell steeply again and economic confidence appears to be ebbing.

“I personally don’t believe we ought to be raising taxes or cutting spending until we get this economy off the ground,” Clinton told Newsmax Editor-in-Chief Christopher Ruddy last Wednesday. The resulting headline — “Ex-President Clinton to Newsmax: Raising Taxes Won’t Work” — was accurate when compared with the headlines that swiftly followed in other media, which suggested that Clinton had “rejected” Obama’s proposed tax on millionaires and “undercut” the president. The Republican National Committee distributed the Newsmax interview in a press release, asking “Is Clinton off script or tired of using this White House’s talking points?”

Responding to those jibes on Thursday at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, the former president said, “I don’t disagree with President Obama, and he doesn’t disagree with me, because he isn’t proposing to raise taxes now. But I understand why there was some confusion about what I said, because we’re discussing how to stimulate the economy and how to reduce the deficit at the same time.”

As Clinton explained, he has long supported raising taxes on those who, like him, can well afford to pay more. He noted bluntly that “a lot of the stories I read today said that I disagreed with [Obama], that I wasn’t for [raising taxes] now. He’s not for doing it now. His proposal is for triggering this [tax increase] in 2013 and going forward.”

Over the years since he became a multi-millionaire, Clinton has often urged the restoration of the higher tax levels on the wealthy that he passed during his first year as president (which didn’t seem to hinder the vast growth and investment during his administration). On Thursday, he noted that “those of us in the very highest income groups, the top 1 percent of the American people, got more than 40 percent of the income gains of the past decade. We got a huge chunk of the tax cuts. We did just fine, people in my income group, under the [tax] system that prevailed when I was president. So, in some form or fashion we’re going to have to pay a little more. Not because it’s class warfare, but because we got most of the gains of the last decade, we got the benefit of most of the tax cuts, and we’re in the best position to make this contribution.”

President Obama, said Clinton, “doesn’t propose to raise any taxes until 2013, or to cut any more spending until 2013, because we need to get economic growth going again. I completely agree with that. I’m for a long-term plan to reduce the debt that triggers when we’ve got normal growth, which is now estimated to be some time in 2013. And between now and then we ought to do everything we can to get the economy going again.”

Indeed, Clinton’s approach to both taxes and spending is entirely in keeping not only with Obama’s plan but with the Keynesian approach that Republicans and conservatives dismiss. He believes that the original 2009 stimulus “was good for the country,” but that the continued downturn has proved that it wasn’t sufficient to fill the gap caused by the financial crash.

As for the “millionaire” tax proposed by Obama this week, “I’m fine with that,” he said, “but what we need to do is calibrate it so that both [increased taxes] and spending reductions are taking place in an atmosphere of economic growth — so that private sector growth will more than offset public sector reductions.”

His support for Obama’s jobs bill could not be plainer, as he reiterated on Thursday when he described the plan as “well-conceived” and quoted Republican economists who say that the jobs program will promote higher GDP and “give us between a million and two million more jobs than we would have otherwise.”

But he went still further: “There are other countries… doing things better than we are now, including providing more broad-based economic growth and lower unemployment — and without exception, they have public-private cooperation. They have the government and private sector working together.” What will not work, he said, is the ideological approach of the far right, as represented by the Republicans’ Tea Party wing.

As he bid farewell to dozens of heads of state, corporate leaders and nonprofit entrepreneurs attending his global meeting, Clinton warned: “The vision that the Tea Party’s articulating — of the weakest possible government where there’s no such thing as a good tax or a bad tax cut, no such thing as a good regulation or a bad deregulation, no such thing as a good program or a bad program cut — there’s not a single place on the planet where that [approach] is giving birth to a modern, successful, broad-based economy.”

Gadhafi Sons Fiasco Bad Omen For Libyan Transition

Throughout Sunday and Monday, Libyan rebels reported that, while they were still looking for Gadhafi, they had already captured three of Gadhafi’s sons: Seif al-Islam, Mohammed, and Saadi Gadhafi. In subsequent days, however, the world learned that all of the sons had either escaped from the rebels or never been captured by them in the first place.

On Monday night, Seif al-Islam walked into the Rixos Hotel, a Tripoli hotel where foreign reporters were staying that at the time was under the control of government forces, flashed the “V for victory” sign, and took reporters on a tour of his father’s compound. His appearance confused and embarrassed the rebel leadership.

It was not clear whether Gadhafi’s son, who turned up at the Rixos hotel, where about 30 foreign journalists have been staying under the close watch of regime minders, had escaped from rebel custody or never been captured in the first place. His arrest was announced on Monday by both the rebels and the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court, which has indicted him and his father.

ICC spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said the court never received official confirmation from Libya’s rebel authorities about the arrest.

The rebel leadership — which had said Seif al-Islam was captured without giving details on where he was held — seemed stunned. A rebel spokesman, Sadeq al-Kabir, had no explanation and could only say, “This could be all lies.”

Only hours before, they had made a big show of negotiating with the International Criminal Court in the Hague to hand over Seif so he could face charges of crimes against humanity. Instead, the ICC distanced itself from the rebels and Seif spent the night giving interviews to the foreign press, telling reporters that “we are going to break the backbone of the rebels,” and “the ICC can go to hell.”

He was not the only Gadhafi son who got media coverage. His older brother Mohammed had been placed under house arrest by the rebels on Sunday. At one point, he even called Al-Jazeera and began apologizing to the Libyan people for the excesses of the Gadhafi regime, before suddenly exclaiming, “I’m being attacked right now. This is gunfire inside my house. They’re inside my house,” before abruptly hanging up.

On Monday, though, rebel spokesman al-Kabir told the press that Mohammed had somehow escaped from his house and eluded the rebel soldiers guarding him. Perhaps as a consolation prize, he added that the rebels had successfully captured a third Gadhafi son, Saadi. However, the Libyan ambassador to the United States now says that “the rebels never claimed they had arrested Al-Saadi. We never claimed that he was in our custody.”

All of this backtracking casts severe doubt on the reliability of reports from Libyan rebel fighters and the Transitional National Council headquartered in Benghazi. Some of it can be attributed to the fog of war and the difficulty of communicating news in war-torn Tripoli back to the rebels’ headquarters across the country. Still, the rebels’ tendency to make triumphant statements before they know the actual facts on the ground may not bode well for their future governance.

Social Security And You: More Internet Lies Uncovered

Last week, I resurrected a column from about a year ago that refuted some allegations from a diatribe foolishly called a “Social Security History Lesson” that has been polluting the Internet for years. Even though it’s full of lies that should be apparent to anyone who reads it, it seems to gain legitimacy the more time it spends in cyberspace. Billed as offering some bipartisan insight into Social Security’s past, the silly document rewrites history in a partisan attempt to portray Democrats as the political party out to ruin Social Security.

I covered about half of the attacks last week. This week, more misleading allegations and more hard facts.

Allegation: The Internet document asks, “Which political party started taxing Social Security annuities?” And it answers the question this way: “The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the tie-breaking vote.”

Fact: My conservative friends are going to be shocked to hear this, but I’m afraid it was their hero, President Reagan, who first started taxing Social Security benefits. Yes, the poster boy for the anti-government tea party crowd instituted one of the largest tax increases in the history of this country when he signed the Social Security Reform Act of 1983.

But actually, the guy deserves credit for doing so. At the time, Social Security was in dire straits. There were only enough reserves left in the Social Security trust funds to keep the system running for another five years or so. So he created the National Commission on Social Security Reform and named Alan Greenspan to head the panel. They produced a series of proposals that Reagan signed into law — some of which cut benefits (e.g., dependent benefits to college students were eliminated) and some of which raised revenues (the aforementioned taxation of Social Security benefits). Their actions, and frankly, Reagan’s courage to take on the naysayers and anti-tax zealots of his own Republican Party, are in large part responsible for keeping the Social Security system solvent to this day.

The whackos who put out the “Social Security History Lesson” can at least claim a sliver of truth to their allegation that the Democrats were involved in taxing Social Security. It was the Clinton administration that modified the tax rules in 1993 by raising the portion of benefits subject to taxation for wealthier people from 50 percent to 85 percent. (I have no idea if Al Gore cast the tiebreaking vote, but let’s say he did so that the people who put out this partisan puffery can take credit for getting one thing right!)

By the way, with all the hoopla over the taxation of Social Security benefits, it’s interesting to note that the vast majority of Americans don’t pay any taxes on their benefits. In order to have your benefits taxed, your overall income has to exceed certain thresholds that depend on whether or not you are married and on your tax filing status. And again, most people do not exceed those income limits.

Allegation: The Internet history lesson asks this question: “Which political party decided to start giving Social Security payments to immigrants, including illegals?” And it answers, “That’s right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants and illegal aliens move into this country and at age 65 begin to receive Social Security payments. The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!”

Fact: This is absolute hogwash. But it’s an example of how misinformation spreads in today’s wired world. If you repeat something often enough, no matter how preposterous, people will believe it — especially if they are inclined to believe anti-government propaganda in the first place.

How do I begin to set the facts straight on this one? Let’s start with this basic premise: no one can get Social Security retirement benefits unless he or she has worked and paid enough in Social Security taxes to become insured. And that usually means a minimum of 10 years of work.

Also, from the time the original Social Security Act was passed in 1935, the law has never set a citizenship test for benefit eligibility. As long as you had worked long enough to be insured, you could receive retirement benefits at age 62. And a small fraction of those benefits are paid to immigrants who are living in this country legally . As I’ve pointed out countless times in this column, people living in this country illegally do not collect Social Security benefits.

So how did these guys tie Jimmy Carter into the immigrants-and-Social-Security story? It’s an example of how they can take a tiny kernel of truth and twist it and tweak it until they’ve come up with a whopper of a lie. What did happen while Jimmy Carter was president is that the first international Social Security treaty agreements were signed. Recognizing as early as the 1970s that we really were developing a global economy, Social Security program managers around the world realized they needed to establish agreements among themselves.

Often, citizens of one country were working in another country. Sometimes they worked for a corporation headquartered in their native land. And sometimes they worked for a company in the country in which they were residing. But this led to all kinds of issues with respect to Social Security taxes and eventual Social Security benefits: For example, should you pay Social Security taxes to your native country or to the country in which you are working? Or should you get Social Security benefits from your native country, or from the country where you were working? Those are the kinds of issues these Social Security treaty agreements are designed to deal with. And President Carter signed the first of these treaties in the late 1970s with Italy and Germany.

Today, we have such agreements with about 25 countries around the world.

If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has the answer.

Contact him at thomas.margenau@comcast.net

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