Is Politifact’s ‘fact check’ of Live Action posts on abortion pill deaths biased?

A Politifact “fact check” is claiming that two Live Action Instagram posts allegedly “mischaracterized” the deaths of 28 women linked to the abortion pill mifepristone by — in Politifact’s words — “omit[ting] the context,” despite the FDA’s own statement on its website, which reads (emphasis added): “As of June 30, 2022, there were 28 reports of deaths in patients associated with mifepristone since the product was approved in September 2000.”

The fact check, “PolitiFact | An anti-abortion group claimed 28 deaths were linked to mifepristone. Here’s why that’s flawed,” was authored by Politifact staff writer Samantha Putterman, who claimed that the statement, “The abortion pill has been linked to the deaths of at least 28 women in the U.S. alone” was “mostly false” — while at the same time also claiming the Live Action posts had “an element of truth.”

Politifact, which partners with Meta, also claimed Live Action’s “posts — which were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed — mischaracterize the fatality data on medication abortion, which include cases of homicide and drug overdoses.”

But do they? Live Action News analyzed the claim below.

POLITIFACT STATEMENT: “In a April 12 Instagram post that showed a picture of a woman lying on a blood-spattered bathroom floor, the group wrote that medication abortion ‘has been linked to the deaths of at least 28 women in the U.S. alone.’ In another Instagram post April 20 that showed a coat hanger, the group wrote that ‘mifepristone has caused thousands of women to be hospitalized, others to experience hemorrhaging, severe infections, AND 28 cases of maternal death,'” Politifact wrote.

“Even if we include all 28 deaths, these posts omit the context that these events occurred among more than 5.6 million women over a 22-year timespan,” Politifact added, saying that Live Action’s posts “mischaracterize the fatality data on medication abortion, which include cases of homicide and drug overdoses.”

Politifact later concluded that “The statement contains an element of truth — 28 deaths are listed in the [FDA] report — but it omits critical facts about the nature of the deaths and number of patients involved that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.”

RESPONSE: Live Action did, in fact, include context regarding numbers of abortions, as can be seen in the screenshot of the posts above. One post stated the “5.6 million” number, and the other states that “nearly 6 million” human beings have been killed by the abortion pill — specifying that the drug has been used millions of times.

“The abortion pill has killed 5.6 million babies & has been linked to the deaths of at least 28 women in the U.S. alone. (Very limited reporting requirements) Ban this deadly drug now,” Live Action wrote. “Mifepristone has caused thousands of women to be hospitalized, others to experience hemorrhaging, severe infections, AND 28 cases of maternal death. A fact the abortion industry tries to hide,” Live Action also wrote, adding that out of over 60 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, “nearly 6 million” were “from the abortion pill.”

Live Action’s posts do not claim that all 28 deaths were directly caused by the abortion pill — instead, the group uses terms like “linked” and “maternal death.” A Live Action News review of the FDA website reveals that the FDA itself has acknowledged these deaths are (in the FDA’s own words) “associated with mifepristone” (emphasis added; see the screenshot of the FDA website below).

The government agency writes, “As of June 30, 2022, there were 28 reports of deaths in patients associated with mifepristone since the product was approved in September 2000, including two cases of ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy located outside the womb, such as in the fallopian tubes) resulting in death; and several fatal cases of severe systemic infection (also called sepsis).”

“The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, co-existing medical conditions, and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient,” the FDA added.

This information also does not appear to dispute Live Action’s claim that mifepristone was “linked to the deaths of at least 28 women” or “28 cases of maternal death,” nor do the posts appear to be a mischaracterization on the part of Live Action.

Politifact also suggested that Live Action’s posts “omit[ted] the context that these events occurred among more than 5.6 million women over a 22-year timespan.” Yet, one of Live Action’s posts mentioned the drug had “killed 5.6 million babies” while the second post stated that the number of children murdered by the abortion pill had totaled “nearly 6 million.”

“For decades, abortion advocates used the lie of thousands of women dying of ‘coat hanger’ abortions to promote the legalized murder of preborn children. Since then, over 60 million children have been murdered by abortion and nearly 6 million from the abortion pill. It’s time to outlaw Mifepristone and every drug that kills children,” Live Action’s second post read.

Clearly this would imply that the 28 reported deaths are among 5.6 million (nearly 6 million) abortions.

As for failing to mention that these deaths would span the period of 22 years, this seems petty, given that Politifact claimed to be reviewing Live Action’s statement that “mifepristone has caused 28 cases of maternal death,” not the timespan during which those associated deaths occurred. Politifact’s final ruling sentences even reiterated the focus was that “Live Action claimed that mifepristone has caused 28 cases of maternal death….”

POLITIFACT STATEMENT: Politifact asserts that the FDA’s report “does not attribute these fatalities to the drug.”

“Our search for sources on the 28 deaths figure led us to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s latest report on adverse events associated with mifepristone from September 2000 through June 30, 2022. That report showed that out of 5.6 million women who took the drug in that period, 28 later died. But the report does not attribute these fatalities to the drug,” claimed Politifact (emphasis added).

RESPONSE: As Live Action News will detail, pro-abortion research group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) — one of Politifact’s own sourced organizations — has claimed that “medication abortion complications as published by the FDA” resulted in “13 cases” which ANSIRH claimed were “probably or possibly related to the abortion.” (emphases added)

The Politifact fact check cited the Washington Post, the New York Times, ANSIRH, Politifact’s previous fact check, and two doctors. In addition, Politifact claimed it conducted an “Email interview, U.S. Food and Drug Administration office of media affairs, April 24, 2023,” but did not specifically quote or refer to any FDA media contacts in the report.

Politifact cited a 2015 study from ANSIRH, yet itself left out important context by failing to mention ANSIRH’s pro-abortion advocacy. The group was founded by abortionist Felicia H. Stewart and is funded by the Packard Foundation, which provided early financial assistance to the abortion pill’s US manufacturer, Danco. Politifact also brushed past the fact that the study’s authors — which included Daniel Grossman, Tracey Weitz, Ushma Upadhyay among others — are also tied to pro-abortion groups.

Additional research published by ANSIRH suggested that nearly half of the FDA’s reported mifepristone deaths can be attributed to “the drug [mifeprostone]” and to “abortion.” In fact, ANSIRH’s November 2022 analysis of mifepristone-related adverse events through June of 2021 stated (emphasis added):

As of June 2021, the FDA reports that 26 women, out of approximately 4.9 million, have died after taking mifepristone for medication abortion. However, as the FDA notes, “The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of information gaps about patient health status, clinical management of the patient, concurrent drug use, and other medical or surgical treatments and conditions.”

ANSIRH went further, writing:

Among these 26 deaths:
▪ 13 cases are probably or possibly related to the abortion, including:
▪ 8 cases of Clostridium-related sepsis
▪ 1 case of delayed onset toxic shock-like syndrome
▪ 1 case of hemorrhage
▪ 2 cases of ruptured ectopic pregnancy
▪ 1 case where the cause of death was unclear

ANSIRH had also listed this claim in an April 2019 analysis of the FDA’s 2018 adverse events report for mifepristone, which read (emphasis added), “As of December 2018, the FDA reports that 24 women, out of approximately 3.7 million, have died after taking mifepristone for medication abortion.” ANSIRH went on to to claim that “13 cases are probably or possibly related to the abortion” and that “11 cases appear to be unrelated to the abortion” (meaning 11 of the 24 total reported at that time).

In addition to ANSIRH, claims published in an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) amicus brief in the case of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (joined by the American Medical Association, Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and nine other medical organizations), also cited the same 13 abortion pill deaths statistic, sourcing it from ANSIRH’s April 2019 analysis.

POLITIFACT STATEMENT: “Some of the deaths, such as ones caused by sepsis and ectopic rupture, could be plausibly related to mifepristone, experts said. But the cases listed also included patients who died by homicide, suicide and various drug overdoses,” Politifact wrote. “Nine cases associated with sepsis were among the 28 reported deaths, the report said. Other cases included incidents of homicide, suspected homicide, suicide, drug intoxication, drug overdoses and a natural death.”

“The remaining deaths detailed in the FDA report included single cases of delayed-onset toxic shocklike syndrome, bilateral pulmonary thromboemboli (typically associated with blood clotting issues), hemorrhage, probable anaphylactic medication reaction and two cases of ruptured ectopic pregnancy. A cause of death could not be established in one case,” Politifact claimed.

RESPONSE: A deeper dive into the FDA archives reveals that it may have been a deviation from approved FDA abortion pill protocols that led to women dying from sepsis (possibly caused by C. sordellii) after the pill was initially approved in 2000.

Although sepsis from C. sordellii is rare, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states online that “Women are at highest risk of infection from C. sordellii following the end of pregnancy, whether that pregnancy ended in a live birth, induced abortion (medical or surgical), or spontaneous abortion (miscarriage). Fatal infections with C. sordellii and C. perfringens have occurred after medical abortion.” (emphasis added)

While Politifact acknowledged that “Some of the deaths, such as ones caused by sepsis and ectopic rupture, could be plausibly related to mifepristone, experts said,” the fact checking group left out important “context” here. For example, the FDA’s document states that “Eight of the nine fatal sepsis cases reported vaginal misoprostol use; one case reported buccal misoprostol use.”

Misoprostol is the second pill in the abortion pill regimen approved by the FDA for buccal — not vaginal — use. Despite this, just after the FDA approved the abortion pill regimen, abortion industry prescribers deviated from this approved FDA protocol, and some women died.

In 2005, abortionist Philip Darney, the Founding Director of the University of California’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health (which trains abortionists), wrote an opinion piece in the pro-abortion journal Contraception. In it, he implied that using misoprostol vaginally may have led to these deadly infections. He warned that the death rate from the abortion pill among Planned Parenthood patients had reached “1.5 per 100,000 compared to a U.S. rate of .5 for early surgical abortion.”

It remains unclear whether those deaths are directly tied to the mifepristone/misoprostol abortion pill regimen’s safety — but what appears to be true is that deviating from approved FDA safety regulations (such as gestational limits and other safety protocols) could potentially put women in harm’s way. Yet, the mainstream abortion industry is now pivoting to promoting an unapproved one-drug regimen of misoprostol only.

The FDA’s document specified that there were “two cases of homicide, two cases of combined drug intoxication/overdose, two cases of ruptured ectopic pregnancy” among the FDA’s reported mifepristone-associated deaths. Live Action News previously documented that the abortion pill regimen is not a treatment for an ectopic pregnancy, and that a rupture of an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy might occur when the abortion provider fails to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy (the FDA’s REMS safety protocols require prescribers to have the ability to diagnose ectopic pregnancies).

In 2020, when the abortion industry implemented the so-called “no-test” protocol, it did so despite openly admitting that no-test “criteria are not going to rule out every ectopic pregnancy.” Emergency department doctors recently presented the case of a woman who took the abortion pill and was later treated in the ER for an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy.

One virtual abortion pill dispensary warns women, “If you have a medication abortion without having an ultrasound first, there is a small chance that you could have an undetected ectopic pregnancy,” adding, “Your risk for an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy outside the uterus) may be increased. Ectopic pregnancies are very rare.”

Other media outlets used similar terminology

Live Action’s claim was not written in a bubble; even well-known media outlets like Newsweek and CBS News have used similar terminology:

• On April 24, 2023, Newsweek author Robyn White wrote, “Some 5.6 million women in the U.S. have taken mifepristone, as of June 2022, and there were 28 reports of deaths among women who took the drug between September 2000, when it was approved, and the end of June 2022, according to the FDA.” [emphasis added]
• CBS News wrote on April 10, 2023, “Medication abortions accounted for more than half of all abortions in the U.S. in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Biden administration told the 5th Circuit that serious adverse events are rare when mifepristone is used as directed by the FDA. More than 5 million women have taken mifepristone since 2000, and only 28 deaths were reported through June 2022, though some were associated were ‘obvious alternative causes’ unrelated to use of the abortion pill, according to the FDA.” [emphasis added]

Live Action News has not come across any fact checks by Politifact calling out these media outlets, perhaps because some added the caveat that some of the deaths may have been due to other causes.

The New York Times (NYT) article, which Politifact listed as a “source” for the fact check against Live Action, also stated verbiage very similar to Live Action (emphasis added): “The F.D.A. reported that during the period since it approved the regimen in 2000 through June last year, approximately 5.6 million women in the United States took the pills and 28 have died, or 0.0005 percent. The agency reported that some of those deaths may have been because of other causes.”

Complication reporting

Politifact left out important context regarding reports of complications. While the FDA requires abortion pill manufacturer Danco to report all known abortion pill-related deaths, the FDA removed the requirement to report all adverse events in 2016; now only deaths must be reported.

In addition, when an abortion pill client does not return to the prescriber, it is possible that their adverse event or death may go unreported.

A recent study of abortion pill adverse events found that abortion pill complications are underreported, and abortion pill clients experiencing complications are more likely to receive care from an emergency center than the abortion facility. This may be why some have suggested that emergency staff should cover up abortion pill complications by not reporting them.

In addition, abortion industry power players are encouraging women to lie and tell ER doctors they are naturally miscarrying when they are actually experiencing abortion pill complications. In one example, a video published by Vice News shows New Mexico abortionist Franz Theard advising an abortion pill client to lie if she has a complication. “If you have to go to the hospital for any reason, you don’t have to admit that you had the abortion pill; you can say ‘I’m having a miscarriage,’” Theard can be heard stating.

Conclusion

Politifact has claimed that Live Action mischaracterized the FDA’s adverse events reports on deaths from mifepristone by leaving out “context” that 28 deaths were associated with 5.6 million women. Yet, Live Action did include these relevant numbers in their Instagram posts, referring to “5.6 million babies” and the total abortion deaths at “nearly 6 million.”

Politifact admitted that Live Action’s posts had “an element of truth,” acknowledging that “28 deaths are listed in the [FDA] report” but penalized the pro-life organization for failing to mention that the 28 deaths spanned 22 years.

And despite the FDA’s website clearly stating in part that, “As of June 30, 2022, there were 28 reports of deaths in patients associated with mifepristone,” Politifact ruled Live Action’s posts — which claimed, “The abortion pill has killed 5.6 million babies & has been linked to the deaths of at least 28 women in the U.S. alone” and “Mifepristone has caused… 28 cases of maternal death” — as “mostly false.”

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