‘Alternative Facts’ and the Anti-Abortion Movement
In the years since Roe, states have quietly enacted more than 1,100 abortion restrictions – nearly one third of those just since 2010. This proliferation of anti-abortion laws based on lies runs the gamut from the offensive to the intrusive to the absurd.
Some states force doctors to lie to women about a purported link between abortion and breast cancer — an “alternative fact” that has been debunked by the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute.
Other states require doctors to repeat anti-abortion lies about women’s feelings and mental health after abortion, compelling them to give the false information that abortion has negative mental health outcomes – another “alternative fact,” this one refuted by the American Psychological Association.
Over half of the states in this country impose a mandatory delay before a woman who has decided to have an abortion can get the care she needs.
These laws are grounded in “alternative facts” about women’s supposed inability to make thoughtful decisions about their own bodies and lives. And state after state has enacted restriction after restriction that aims to make abortion care too expensive or impossible to provide — all based on “alternative facts” about abortion safety.