Social media users shared a range of false claims this week. Here are the facts.
New Tennessee abortion pill law doesn’t ban Plan B
CLAIM: Newly signed legislation in Tennessee “banned Plan B and made it a crime punishable by a $50,000 fine to order it.”
THE FACTS: The law does not ban Plan B or emergency contraceptives used to reduce the risk of pregnancy after sex. It imposes strict penalties for distributing abortion pills — which are different from Plan B — via mail or delivery services and also bars pharmacists from dispensing the drugs. A tweet spreading the erroneous information about the new law spread widely in recent days, gaining tens of thousands of shares and likes before it was deleted. “Tennessee just banned Plan B and made it a crime punishable by a $50,000 fine to order it,” read the tweet from Pam Keith, an attorney and Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in Florida in 2020. But that’s not what the legislation does. Keith did not respond to a request for comment, but suggested in a later tweet that she misunderstood the law.
Posts misattribute CDC quote in Supreme Court draft on abortion
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
CLAIM: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett cited a need for a “domestic supply of infants” in a leaked draft opinion for a decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
THE FACTS: The draft opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito, and the term appears in a footnote quoting a 2008 document about adoption data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Following the leak in early May of Alito’s draft opinion — signaling that the court may be about to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling on abortion — social media users and bloggers seized on its inclusion of the term “domestic supply of infants.”
No ruling yet in Dominion lawsuits against Powell and Giuliani
CLAIM: Election technology firm Dominion Voting Systems lost its lawsuits against attorney Sidney Powell and former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
THE FACTS: Legal records show that Dominion’s defamation lawsuits against Powell and Giuliani are ongoing in May 2022. Still, social media users are reviving a year-old false claim that Dominion Voting Systems lost the lawsuits.
A worker passes a Dominion Voting ballot scanner while setting up a polling location at an elementary school in Gwinnett County, Ga., outside of Atlanta on Jan. 4, 2021.
CLAIM: Immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who come from Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador are “twice as likely” to commit crime than U.S.-born citizens.
THE FACTS: Research shows that immigrants living in the U.S. without legal permission actually commit crimes at lower rates in comparison to citizens born in the country.
