Abortion

Do vaccines make people identify with a gender other than their gender assigned at birth by changing the composition of that person's DNA? No, that's not true: Vaccines do not change a person's DNA -- they provide immunity against diseases, an expert in genetics told Lead Stories. The claim appeared in an Instagram post on November 26, 2022. The post's…

Does a graph show that the COVID-19 vaccine increases stillbirths? No, that is missing context: The graph was published on the U.S. government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) website. As VAERS itself repeatedly explains, its purpose is to collect a wide-open, likely repetitive, messy and incomplete list of anecdotal, amateur, professional and even malicious reports of post-vaccination problems.The graph…

Did Sen. Josh Hawley say the phrase "I will not use your pronoun" while questioning a "liberal general" at a U.S. Senate hearing? No, that's not true: Neither a video published on Facebook under this attention-grabbing headline nor the full recording contained this sentence. Participants in the hearing referred to each other by title or rank combined with their last…

Do Pfizer documents reveal that 90 percent of pregnant women vaccinated against COVID lost their babies, and that COVID vaccination is going to lead to "mass depopulation"? No, that's not true: There's no evidence to support that claim. Extrapolations from a small data subset don't warrant application of non-professional assumptions about effects of vaccines in the absence of data. The…

Does a video posted on Facebook show Sen. John Kennedy releasing classified documents in the Senate or declaring that an interlocutor had "a deal" with President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden? No, that's not true: The video shows Kennedy questioning FBI Director Christopher Wray about a former FBI agent who was involved in investigations into Hunter Biden. Sen. Tom Cotton…

Did 44 percent of pregnant women in Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine trial have miscarriages? No, that's not true: Author/activist Naomi Wolf incorrectly analyzed public information when making the claim that "out of 50 pregnant women, 22 of them lost their babies." Wolf and two publishers have all retracted the claim, which continued to circulate nonetheless. Jeffrey Morris, professor of biostatistics at…

Is Canada killing poor people? No, that's not true: Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) is legal in Canada but "being poor as your only 'condition' would clearly not meet the eligibility criteria for MAID," Canadian law professor Jocelyn Downie told Lead Stories. Applicants must meet all of five criteria. Economic trouble, poverty or any related term is not one of…

Is getting a virus and acquiring natural immunity the "best thing you can do for your body," rather than getting a vaccine? No, that's not true: The only way vaccines get Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval is if they provide protection against illness and death associated with natural infection while presenting a proportionally very low risk of adverse events.…

Is North Carolina House Bill 158 expected to legalize the murder of a pregnant woman if the person who kills the woman is defending the life of the baby? Not really: Although state representatives did propose HB158 -- which would allow a person to defend, using deadly force if necessary, what the bill considers a human life beginning at the…

Did a GOP Texas lawmaker recently introduce a bill to allow the death penalty for women who have abortions? No, that's not true: State Rep. Bryan Slaton did introduce such a bill, but he did so in March 2021, not May 2022. The claim was implied by an Instagram post on May 7, 2022. It includes a news headline that…