Republicans and many independents do not believe in the term "independent fact-checkers" when it comes to federal elections. Fact-checkers predictably defend Democrats from GOP "misinformation" in election season. Democrat extremism on abortion is one topic where the fact-checkers" are the fact-manglers.
Take Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy in Montana. On July 10, PolitiFact broke out the "False" flag for something Sheehy said in a June 8 debate: "Elective abortions up to and including the moment of birth. Healthy, 9-month-old baby killed at the moment of birth. That's what Jon Tester and the Democrats have voted for."
You can tell PolitiFact is politically motivated for Democrats in the tone of their headline: "GOP's Tim Sheehy revives discredited abortion claims in pivotal Senate race." Discredited?
Donald Trump was slammed in his last debate for saying what he often says -- the Democrats favor abortion up until birth. The first proof of that is plain language in the 2020 Democratic party platform, which explicitly stated: "Democrats oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to reproductive health and rights. We will repeal the Hyde Amendment and protect and codify the right to reproductive freedom."
Fact: They are unequivocally opposed to any "barriers to reproductive health and rights" and will "codify the right to reproductive freedom." Nothing in that language expresses any time limit on an abortion. The "right to choose" is absolute. That includes -- if you repeal the Hyde Amendment -- the "right" to force anti-abortion taxpayers to pay for abortions.
PolitiFact tried to "correct" Sheehy by turning to the Democrats passing the Women's Health Protection Act, which was presented by liberal journalists as "codifying Roe v. Wade" and that ruling's apparent discouragement of abortions late in pregnancy. In reality, this act imposed no real barriers to killing a baby. It simply made it a matter of a supportive doctor's judgment that the baby endangered the woman's life or health. Pro-life leaders see that as a broad exception, as no real barrier at all.
Here's how PolitiFact rationalized its "False" tag: "That bill, however, doesn't open the door to abortion on demand later in pregnancy. Instead, it allows for the role of medical judgment."
Naturally, they added the notion that late-term abortions are "rare" as if that somehow makes the pro-life argument "false." Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, whose arguments are included (and dismissed) in the PolitiFact article, estimates that if 1% of abortions are late in pregnancy, that's still about 10,000 deaths a year. They also underlined that very few late-term abortions are for birth defects or health concerns for the mother.
They put out a tweet thread taking PolitiFact on a whole series of fact points, including when babies feel pain and how Sen. Jon Tester voted twice against protecting babies who were failed abortions, who were born alive. That leaves the prospect of abortion after birth.
In the end, Sheehy's campaign responded with a question for Tester, the same kind of question Dana Bash put to President Joe Biden: "At what week does he think it's inappropriate for medical providers to perform an abortion?" They don't want to answer that question. They don't want anyone to ask that question.
This is not about facts at all. It's about maintaining the fiction that the Democrats don't favor the most permissive, baby-killing extreme, the exact opposite of people who want to ban killing unborn babies. They would prefer the public be swindled into believing the myth that Republicans are extremists on abortion while the Democrats are somehow sensible centrists.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.