ProPublica, an “investigative journalism” outfit based in New York City and prominent abortion industry propagandist, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a largely debunked series claiming that pro-life laws harm women. The Pulitzer Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in journalism, is awarded by Columbia University. Revealingly, ProPublica’s Pulitzer is in the “public service” category. The “public service” in question? Attacking pro-life laws, and pushing abortion activist narratives.
Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, the mainstream press has released a wave of pro-abortion propaganda to drive home the narrative that pro-life laws harm and even kill women—which just happens to be the narrative pushed by abortion activists in state-level referendums across the country. ProPublica has been at the forefront of this fight, publishing a series titled “Life of the Mother” which detailed a series of stories “proving” that pro-life laws had harmed women.
Despite the fact that every single state permits medical interventions to be given to pregnant mothers, ProPublica chose to search for maternal deaths or injuries only in states that protect children in the womb, ignoring factors like medical malpractice (and, notably, ignoring the growing risks of the abortion pill). ProPublica’s series was transparently an exercise in narrative building, and factchecks by pro-life activists and others revealed that, as Live Action noted, the articles were “deceptive, misleading, poorly executed, and clearly biased,” and that ProPublica:
deliberately chose to seek out maternal deaths and injuries only in states with pro-life laws,
intentionally chose not to compare maternal deaths or injuries in states that do not restrict abortion, and
cherry picked and focused on the deaths they felt they could blame on pro-life laws.
In several instances, ProPublica’s claims were simply false, including the case of Amber Thurman of Georgia. Thurman died when the abortion pills, which she took to abort her twins at nine weeks gestation, failed to produce a complete abortion. As a result, she became septic. Sepsis is a risk listed on the abortion pill’s black box warning.
Thurman went to the hospital, but doctors decided not to intervene immediately and remove the infected fetal remains from her body via a dilatation and curettage (D&C) procedure, despite the fact that such a procedure is specifically permitted by state law, because both babies were already dead. ProPublica’s story did not mention that D&Cs are not illegal in Georgia unless used to kill a live child; that sepsis is a known risk of the abortion pill; or that their assignation of blame to Georgia law was pure speculation.
But the tactic worked, and the press corps ran with the narrative. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell falsely claimed that D&C procedures are illegal in Georgia. The Daily Beast made a similar false claim. The narrative pushed by the press was that Thurman died because of laws protecting unborn children. A second, similar case, in which a woman named Candi Miller died after taking abortion pills that she had ordered online, was presented in the same way. Tim Walz ended up referring to the Amber Thurman story during the vice-presidential debate, claiming she’d been killed by pro-life laws, and getting no pushback.
As Live Action noted: “ProPublica was forced to later admit that Thurman’s and Miller’s deaths were not the only two maternal deaths in Georgia; it simply cherry picked these two cases for its agenda and narrative. Maternal mortality occurs in every state, and some of these cases are due to negligence and substandard care.” ProPublica similarly claimed that the deaths of Texas women Josseli Barnica and Nevaeh Crain were due to the state’s “heartbeat law,” despite the evidence indicating that the “standard of evidence-based care” was not followed in either situation.
Journalists were once awarded Pulitzers for their work exposing corrupt industries. Now, ProPublica received a Pulitzer for ignoring the abortion industry’s crimes, and for creating deliberately deceitful narratives to eliminate protections for pre-born children:
ProPublica and other pro-abortion media weaponized the classification of maternal deaths as “preventable” — all for shock value, preying upon the public’s unfamiliarity with maternal mortality reports. As Live Action News reported, “Regardless of the state or its abortion laws, most pregnancy-related deaths are classified as “preventable.” The CDC notes 80% (4 in 5) pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are classified as “preventable”; even in states with permissive abortion laws, most pregnancy-related deaths are listed as “preventable.”
ProPublica and other media chose to ignore these facts, also failing to report that the “leading underlying cause of pregnancy-related death” (23%) is “mental health conditions” including substance abuse. Both New York and California, staunchly pro-abortion states, have seen maternal mortality rates skyrocket in recent years. But this doesn’t fit ProPublica’s agenda, so that information was ignored.
Much of ProPublica’s work was debunked, but in our media environment, narrative is frequently more powerful than truth. It doesn’t matter that Amber Thurman died not from being denied an abortion, but from taking dangerous abortion pills; a Democrat vice-presidential candidate cited Thurman as a victim of pro-life laws on national television as fact without pushback, and the audience largely accepted it. The ProPublica narrative that pro-life laws harm women has been successful in abortion referendums from Michigan to Ohio, and they will continue to push their deceits—and be richly rewarded for it.
