Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was given a “false” rating by Politifact Monday for her deceptively edited video in a tweet claiming that Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh had called birth control “abortion-inducing drugs.”
The fact-checker pointed out that Harris’s tweet "takes Kavanaugh’s statement out of context.”
“Harris cut an important second out of the clip — the attribution,” they explain. “Kavanaugh said, ‘They said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objecting to.’”
Kavanaugh chooses his words very carefully, and this is a dog whistle for going after birth control. He was nominated for the purpose of taking away a woman’s constitutionally protected right to make her own health care decisions. Make no mistake - this is about punishing women. pic.twitter.com/zkBjXzIvQI
— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) September 7, 2018
Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, explained that Kavanaugh was simply summarizing the position of the religious group, Priests for Life, which held that belief.
"It’s very clear he’s characterizing their position, which was held by all the Catholic organizations within that set of cases," Kupec said. "But even within characterizing their position, if you look at the dissent, it’s still not a blanket description of birth control."
Harris’s office continued to push back Monday, insisting that Kavanaugh should have disagreed with the religious group’s characterization of birth control in his response.
"In his full answer, he uses the term uncritically," Lily Adams, communications director for Harris, claimed to Politifact. "He doesn’t say ‘so-called,’ ‘I don’t agree with it,’ there’s no caveat that he gives that he does not agree with the term."
Sen. Harris has yet to take down the tweet with the deceptively edited video.
Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) office cited the Politifact rating and pointed out that Sen. Harris was not the only one inaccurately accusing Kavanaugh of calling birth control “abortion-inducing drugs.”
While this stunning politifact rebuke about Judge Kavanaugh and contraceptives focuses on the tweets of a single Democratic Senator, several other Senators also spread this blatant misinformation to large audiences who will likely never hear the correctionhttps://t.co/z2HMGzn1Gz pic.twitter.com/pd5rcQo2ZB
— Senator Hatch Office (@senorrinhatch) September 10, 2018