Did Nancy Pelosi Say It Was Ok to Abort a Full Term Baby?

(Charles Dharapak/AP)

"They are saying that there's no abortion, and they want to make information technology a federal constabulary that at that place be no ballgame in our country."

— Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), June xiii, 2013

The Fact Checker always ventures into questions about abortion rhetoric with trepidation. Given the intensity of emotions, well-nigh no one is ever happy with our rulings, no matter how much nosotros endeavor to just stick with the facts. So we try to stick with statements that announced pretty clear cut.

A reader, for instance, drew our attention to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi'due south comment at a news briefing as something that appeared to exist clearly in mistake. From the context of the remarks, Pelosi appeared to be referring to a GOP-crafted bill on ballgame.

The beak in question, HR 1797, would prohibit "the abortion from being performed if the probable post-fertilization age of the unborn child is 20 weeks or greater," which is similar to saying after the 22nd calendar week of pregnancy. (In that location originally was an exception but to salve the life of a mother, simply GOP leaders belatedly final week quietly added exceptions for rape and incest.)

The beak was canonical Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee on a 20 to 12 vote. The Supreme Court has gear up a threshold of 24 weeks for legal abortions, but advocates claim that fetuses tin can brainstorm to feel pain earlier than that. That assertion is disputed, but in whatsoever example the beak would not result in a sweeping ban on all abortions. (Update: Readers have pointed out the Supreme Court exam is not the number of weeks but "viability" of the fetus.)

Indeed, the National Journal also spotted Pelosi'southward false claim, initially reporting that "Pelosi then wrongly or mistakenly characterized the Republican bill as one that would ban abortion completely, which information technology does non."  Just when we checked with Drew Hammill, her spokesman, he said that her comment was being misinterpreted.

 Hammill said that Pelosi was referring not to the bill, but to what she believes is the ultimate goal of Republicans — to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion. He noted that Pelosi, at the start of the news briefing, correctly described the bill. (She was reading from a prepared statement.)

"The leader is well aware of the details of the legislation," Hammill said.

Pelosi'southward comment came when she was in the midst of a tense dorsum-and-along with John McCormack, a reporter from the conservative Weekly Standard. McCormack's questions were respectful, yet tough, asking whether in that location was a "moral difference" betwixt ballgame clinics that let late-term abortions and the case of convicted abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. Pelosi bristled and answered quite sharply, and two had a heated word.

Y'all can sentinel the substitution here:

 Pelosi fabricated her disputed comment right after McCormack said "this is the issue they are talking well-nigh," referring specifically to the bill in question.

Pelosi was clearly irritated at a reporter who she said "obviously [had] an agenda." All the same, we're not quite certain how Pelosi leapt from a discussion of the bill to an overall assertion about GOP political goals. But we volition accept Hammill's caption, given that Pelosi had correctly described the bill earlier in the news conference.  We don't like to play gotcha hither at The Fact Checker, merely want to focus on the facts.

As information technology happens, last week we also had checked a statement made by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), the bill's chief sponsor, during the committee debate on the measure. "The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low," he asserted.

Equally stated, that comment appeared as wrong as Pelosi's statement initially appeared. We sought an explanation from Franks's spokesman, Ben Carnes, but did not go a response. We awarded Franks Four Pinocchios in a column that appeared Thursday morning time.

Some readers, including McCormack, accused united states of america — and much of the rest of the media — of misinterpreting Franks'due south comments by assuming he was using "incidence" to mean "rate of occurrence," as opposed to "occurrence." So nosotros sought out Carnes once again.

On Fri, he explained that Franks misspoke and intended to refer to the number of abortions due to rape. (The Guttmacher Constitute says that one percent of women who have abortions say they are victims of rape and less than a half percent say they became pregnant because of incest.)  That's an entirely dissimilar thing, and we are not sure we would accept written a cavalcade with that explanation in mitt. Thus we have removed the Pinocchio rating from the column on Franks'south statement.

Some readers believed nosotros had erred in this matter.

"The bottom line of this particular controversy is that we on the right knew exactly what the congressman meant, even without a spokesman around to clarify things," 1 reader wrote The Fact Checker. "We were armed with nothing more than than good ears, a dictionary, common sense—and a willingness to extend to i of our own the do good of the doubt. Why shouldn't nosotros await the aforementioned from non-partisan fact-checkers?"

This is a valid question, and we hold we were too quick to follow the media narrative in this case. The Fact Checker tries to focus on topics and statements in the news, but that's no excuse.

Nosotros are e'er open to learning new facts and data that may change Pinocchio ratings. Nosotros thank the readers who pushed u.s. to reconsider the meaning of Franks'due south statement.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/interpreting-remarks-on-abortion/2013/06/15/d7d9f52e-d525-11e2-8cbe-1bcbee06f8f8_blog.html

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