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Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz
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President Biden's Abortion Talking Point
A key issue in the 2024 elections will be abortion rights, and President Joe Biden has been talking a lot about it lately on the campaign trail.
But when delivering one of his talking points -- about former President Donald Trump's interview with Time magazine -- Biden twists Trump's words.
As Deputy Managing Editor Rob Farley writes, Trump was asked, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, if states should monitor women’s pregnancies and/or prosecute women who get an abortion in violation of state law.
Here is an excerpt from that exchange:
Time: Do you think states should monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion after the ban?
Trump: I think they might do that. Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states.
But in several recent campaign speeches, Biden has claimed that Trump said “states should monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans.” (Emphasis is ours.)
For example, Biden said this in Seattle on May 12: "Trump did a long interview in Time Magazine. You ought to read it. He said, quote, ‘states should monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate the bans.’ Monitor women’s pregnancies? What have we become here?"
But Trump never said that’s what he thinks states should do.
Read the full story, "Biden Twists Trump’s Comments on Tracking Pregnancies and Punishing Women Who Get Abortions."
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We recently got a question from a reader about who is ahead in the presidential election polls, President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump. There are two good sources in particular that we use for polling: Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight. They don't conduct polls, but they aggregate state and national polls from numerous other sources. The national polling average on both sites shows Trump up by 1 point over Biden.
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The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 in many cases prevents people from suing vaccine makers for alleged vaccine harms. Instead, people must seek help from a government program. However, if a compensation claim is rejected or it takes too long to get a response, people can still sue, and vaccine makers can still be held liable in certain situations, such as where negligence, fraud or manufacturing flaws led to vaccine injuries. Read more.
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Inside Higher Ed published a story earlier this month on how U.S. universities should handle misinformation about events on their campuses -- an issue that was highlighted during the recent pro-Palestinian protests.
In an interview, Yotam Ophir, director of the Media Effects, Misinformation, and Extremism Lab at the University of Buffalo, told the website that school officials might want to think twice before responding to false claims about their universities.
“The problem with universities trying to fact check and correct misinformation is many people might not see them as objective or impartial,” Ophir said. “In my view, it’s always best to leave fact checking to professionals, to websites like FactCheck.org, that have the resources and capacity to identify and correct misinformation in ways that are nonpartisan.”
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Reader: Has breast cancer gone up due to covid vaccines?
FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: We did an article last year on the rising number of breast cancer cases in recent decades. But that long-term trend has nothing to do with COVID-19 vaccines.
Our article -- "TikTok Video Mangles American Cancer Society Breast Cancer Estimates" -- was about a viral video that misrepresented breast cancer case number projections for 2022 and 2023 to falsely claim they show a dramatic rise in early-onset breast cancer. The video then baselessly blamed this supposed rise in 2022 and 2023 cases on COVID-19 vaccines.
It's true that breast cancer in younger women has been increasing. We wrote:
Breast cancer in American women under 50 increased gradually from the mid-1990s through 2019, with a somewhat steeper rise starting in 2016. The rate of female breast cancer also rose slowly in older women from the mid-2000s through 2019.
Researchers say these changes were likely at least partly due to changes in when people begin having children and, for older women, increasing body weight. Being overweight after menopause or having children later in life increases the risk of breast cancer.
Breast cancer incidence fell for all women and women under 50 in 2020, likely because disruptions to health care appointments during the pandemic led to missed diagnoses.
At the time we published our story, 2020 was the latest year for which official federal statistics on cancer incidence were available. The 2021 incidence rates are now available, and the upward trend has resumed.
As we explained in our article, the American Cancer Society provided estimates of annual new cancer cases through 2023, but these projections are based on models using data from 2019 and earlier. The TikTok post misrepresented the cancer society's projections, using them to give the false appearance of a large spike in breast cancer cases in women younger than 45 in 2022 and 2023.
The TikTok video also implied that COVID-19 vaccines led to increased breast cancer risk in 2022 and 2023, but there is no evidence of an increased risk of cancer following vaccination.
For that story, Dr. Ilana Richman, a general internist and health services researcher at Yale School of Medicine who studies cancer screening, told us that “there is no mechanistic reason why covid vaccines would cause cancer."
Despite this lack of evidence, social media posts continue to make the false claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer. For more about this, see the article we posted earlier this month, "Still No Evidence COVID-19 Vaccination Increases Cancer Risk, Despite Posts."
In that story, we wrote:
Both the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society have stated there’s no information that suggests COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer, make it more aggressive or lead to recurrence of cancer.
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Wrapping Up
Here's what else we've got for you this week:
- "Unsupported Claim About Biden Paying Rent for ‘Illegal Immigrants’": Michigan officials have said that only people who the federal government has determined are in the U.S. legally are eligible for a state program that temporarily pays rent for refugees and other qualifying immigrants. But a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump claims that President Joe Biden “is paying rent for illegals.”
- "‘Who Is Bobby Kennedy?’ Video Promotes Debunked Anti-Vaccine Narratives": A recent video promoting independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promises to “start with some irrefutable facts.” The over 30-minute video, narrated by actor Woody Harrelson, begins with some biographical truths about the candidate, but veers into promoting various debunked or unsupported narratives about vaccines.
- "FactChecking Biden on Inflation, Other Claims": When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the U.S. annual rate of inflation was 1.4% — far from the 9% inflation Biden falsely said in a May 8 interview that he inherited. Inflation rose quickly in Biden’s first year, but it didn’t hit 9% until 17 months into his presidency.
- "Biden Mangles Statistic About Hispanic Students": According to the Department of Education, about 28% of U.S. students are Hispanic. According to Census Bureau data, about 15% of U.S. students speak Spanish at home. And about 21% of students come from homes where at least one person speaks Spanish. President Joe Biden routinely conflates these statistics.
- "Posts Misrepresent Unfreezing of $16 Billion in Iranian Funds": A recent deal involving a prisoner swap and the extension of a Trump-era waiver have freed $16 billion in previously frozen Iranian funds. Social media posts distort the sources of the money to falsely claim “Joe Biden gave 16 billion to Iran.” The Iranian money has been unfrozen with restrictions that it be used for humanitarian purposes.
Y lo que publicamos en español (English versions are accessible in each story):
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