Debunking Media Myths
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You can trust the media... right?
Leave this page briefly, drop an abortion topic into your favorite search engine, and search for News. What you're probably looking at are pages and pages of links to mainstream media articles that display a clear bias in favor of abortion. Now, we can argue all day about how we arrived at this point in our nation (where ideology is king - even in journalism), but the bottom line is that America's most influential news outlets are either on the abortion industry's payroll, or else totally content to do their bidding free of charge. Turns out... the result is the same.
Below, find our list of the media's favorite abortion myths plus our team's fact-based rebuttals. It's time to pull back the curtain, familiarize yourself with the pro-abortion fibs of media monoliths, and confidently refuse them in conversation and online.
Media Myth #1: Women Die without Abortion
A primary tool of abortion-peddling entities is fear-mongering. Thus, the idea that 'women will die without widespread, legal, elective abortion' appears everywhere. Check out this piece from SFLA explaining why they're off-base:
FACT CHECK: The Commonwealth Fund Maternal Mortality Study Puts the ‘Bunk’ in Debunking
Further Reading:
Media Myth #2: Women Can't Receive Miscarriage Treatment if Abortion isn't Legal
In a particularly sick tactic, pro-abortion media have concertedly worked to co-opt parents of natural loss (which is a TON of people - 1 in 4 pregnancies end in natural miscarriage/stillbirth) to the abortion side by fear-mongering about miscarriage care. Countless ads and articles propose that pro-life laws make miscarriage care illegal, which - you guessed it - is patently false.
Their defense of this assertion is that the procedures involved in miscarriage and abortion have crossover. A D&C can be used to empty the uterus and prevent infection after a natural loss... or to intentionally kill a living baby. The drugs Mifepristone and Misoprostol (or their counterparts under different labels) can be used to stimulate the uterus into expelling a naturally lost baby and placenta... or to starve, kill, and flush a living baby. Certain medical procedures involving pregnancy can be thought of as tools, and it matters how they are used.
There is NO pro-life law in existence that prevents the care of mothers who have naturally lost a baby, at any stage. Pro-life laws exist to stop the intentional, deliberate killing of living babies. Doctors who claim to not be able to figure out the difference between those two scenarios may need to go back to med school.
FACT CHECK: Will Restricting the Abortion Pill Impact Treatment for Miscarriage or Cushing Syndrome?
Further Reading:
Media Myth #3: Abortion is Safer Than Childbirth
There is only one study, the Raymond and Grimes Study (RG Study), that "supports" the claim that abortion is safer than childbirth. The study uses insufficient data and poor reasoning, and the research does not support the conclusion its authors attempt to draw.
The main problem with this study is that it compares “apples to oranges” by using two different data scopes to compare maternal deaths to abortion-related deaths.
- Skewed abortion-related death numbers: In the US, Maryland, California, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., and New York City do not have to report ANY abortion numbers to the CDC - including harm to women. These areas are major abortion hotspots, and the absence of data from these areas is a massive research hole.
- Inflated maternal death rate: The study uses inflated maternal death rates that, according to its own source, the CDC, are inflated: “Maternal mortality is determined by dividing maternal deaths by live births, not by pregnancies…This will necessarily tend to inflate the mortality rate, as many pregnancies end in miscarriage or stillbirth.” (Gonzalez vs. Planned Parenthood 2004, pg. 4).
In other countries, like Finland and Denmark, where abortion death rates and maternal death rates are held to the standard of reporting, studies show that the abortion death rate is higher. This peer review study clearly explains that the RG Study is insupportable. In addition, here is an Ethiopian study that debunks the maternal mortality myth.
Read more on the "abortion is safer than childbirth" myth.
Media Myth #4: Infant Mortality is Higher in Pro-Life States
First after Texas effectively prohibited abortion in their state pre-Roe's reversal, then again after Roe's reversal, mainstream media have grasped at a strange claim: that reducing abortion increases infant mortality.
What they mean is that more babies are born, which invariably means that more babies also die after birth (SIDS, illnesses, accidents, etc). The argument is that we should kill far more of them before birth. Yes, it's as desperate and insane as it sounds.
Media Myth #5: Any Claim at All Involving Abortion Data
The two monster abortion cases of America's Supreme Court history, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, were handed down in 1973. Throughout that ENTIRE time period, there has never existed a national abortion reporting law. Translation? Any abortion data we happen to have is piece-mealed from states or voluntarily offered from abortion vendors, who are in no way supervised or incentivized to do so.
Thus, any claim made by the media that relies on solid abortion data can be met with skepticism and a very common-sense challenge: "And where exactly do your numbers come from, given the lack of a national abortion reporting law?"
FACT CHECK: SFLA Is Right; Pew Research Admits We Don’t Know How Many Abortions There Are Each Year
Media Myth #6: Sexual Assault Necessitates Legal Abortion
The bottom line is that this line of attack from pro-abortion media is another cruel twist that seeks to co-opt anyone who's ever been sexually victimized, anyone who knows a victim, and any compassionate person at large to get on board with abortion in cases of rape. In other words, to get on board with solving one act of inexcusable violence with another AND to accept legal, elective abortion for everyone, for any reason, for the sake of the minute percentage of rape survivors who seek (or are forced by their abusers to seek) abortion.
In January 2024, NPR helped peddle an insane letter whereby abortionists claimed that 65,000 babies were conceived in rape in only 14 pro-life states in the short period of time following the end of Roe v. Wade. Worth noting also is that the lead mathematical speculator for the “research letter” was Dr. Samuel Dickman, whom NPR reports “is also the medical director of Planned Parenthood Montana and a plaintiff in several lawsuits challenging abortion restrictions in Montana.”
This is the kind of flimsy nonsense the pro-abortion media loves to jump on, despite the ease of refuting it.
Media Myth #7: Late-Term Abortions Don't Happen
We hear it from pro-abortion political candidates all the time, and it's echoed by media outlets constantly: late-term abortions don't happen. It's possibly the most easily refuted lie on this entire list, as:
- Late-term abortions appear in state-level and CDC reporting;
- In states where late-term abortion is legal, abortion vendors advertise late-term abortion "services;"
- We've called late-term abortion facilities and confirm that not only do they commit late-term abortions, but they do them 'all the time.'
The media loosely defines "late-term abortion" as an abortion committed around 21-22 weeks (5+ months into pregnancy), after a baby has a beating heart, can feel pain, and may even be able to survive if born prematurely.
The New “Gotcha” Question: What is the Definition of Late or Later-Term Abortion?
FACT CHECK: Abortion Does Occur in the Second & Third Trimester
Yes, Jen Psaki & Abortion Lobby: Abortions Up to Birth Do Happen & You Support Them
Media Myth #8: Pro-Life Laws/Culture Have a Negative Influence on Medicine
There's a mainstream myth that doctors who reject abortion violence and treat all humans as patients are somehow less qualified to offer expertise - or even be doctors at all. Consider that the media have accused pro-life laws of causing an OBGYN shortage (with the premise that people don't want to become OB's if they can't kill babies), and outlets typically don't allow published medical opinions that don't squarely align with pro-abortion talking points.
In reality, it's abortion culture that results in lazy medicine, as it says "let's just kill one of the patients instead of treating whatever condition is causing an issue." A medical culture that views death as a treatment option results in no progress with treating pregnancy-related complications, pushing the age of viability earlier thanks to medical advancement, and more.
SFLA’s Gavin Oxley Pens Fox News Op-Ed Debunking Myth That Pro-Life Laws Caused OB-GYN Shortage
FACT CHECK: Pro-Life Doctors Respond to Big Abortion Disinformation
Media Myth #9: Chemical Abortion Pills are Quick, Easy, and Safe
Later-term surgical abortion is even less popular with Americans than its earlier counterparts, so the media thinks it's getting ahead of the game by hero-worshipping Chemical Abortion Pills as the next big thing in killing children. What they leave out of their glowing assessments of the drugs are the serious health risks, corruption of the industry, and mass poisoning of our common water supply.
Media Myth #10: Birth Control Has Nothing to do with Abortion
Because of the widespread claim that ALL types of birth control solely act as true contraceptives (that is, only function to prevent conception), many women don't even know that the most common methods of birth control are functionally capable of ending newly-conceived life. Thus, it's not possible to totally separate birth control from the abortion conversation. Not that the media always wants to, as they also enjoy pointing fingers at pro-lifers for wanting to 'make abortion AND birth control illegal so everyone's forced to have tons of babies.'
READ MORE: Contraception
READ MORE: Facts About Plan B
Additionally, it cannot be ignored that roughly half of abortion clients report using some type of birth control at the time of their pregnancy/abortion. Birth control has been responsible, at least in part, for the widespread increase of sexually risky behavior - which leads to an increase in abortions. Any type of birth control is not the silver bullet for reducing abortion that the media paints it as.
READ MORE: The Myth of Safe Sex
Snopes Says What We’ve Been Saying All Along: Contraception is a Con