A new attack on Mike Pence, Indiana Governor and Republican running mate to Donald Trump, is circulating around the Internet, but has been exposed as fraudulent by the fact-checking website Snopes.
Since Trump announced his selection of Pence to be his vice president if he wins the November election, abortion advocates have bitterly attacked him as an anti-abortion extremist. Pence holds a 100% pro-life voting record and recently signed a law that bans abortions for genetic abnormalities, race, or sex; requires ultrasounds before abortions and admitting privileges for abortionists; and mandates that aborted babies be either buried or cremated.
The latest attack accuses Pence of arguing against rape exceptions on abortion on the grounds that women could “go out and get raped on purpose just so they could get off work,” because “when you get an abortion, you get several days off of work and whatnot to recover.”
However, Kim LaCapria of Snopes determined that the quote was phony. She identified the source of the quote as Newslo, a website notorious for outlandish false stories about politics.
“The item used a fact-based introduction to lead into counterfactual information. Pence did sign anti-abortion legislation in May 2016,” she writes, but “the remainder of the piece was embellished or entirely fabricated. Pence never said that women would attempt to get raped in order to have an abortion, to obtain days off work or for other reasons.”
