It’s been a week, and the fact checker has not addressed the glaring logical inconsistency in the column.
A week ago, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler published a faulty fact-check on late-term abortion.
In the course of the article, Kessler quoted a spokeswoman from the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights who observed that European countries with gestational limits on abortion have “very broad exceptions to these limits — such as socioeconomic concerns, or to preserve the person’s mental health.” That’s true of some but not all European abortion laws.
Kessler himself correctly observed that, “on paper,” Germany has a twelve-week limit on abortion, but “in reality” Germany “permits abortions as late as 22 weeks after conception” because the law contains a mental-health exception.
Yet Kessler did not apply this same logic to the American abortion legislation he was analyzing.
The central claim Kessler was checking was Florida GOP senator Marco Rubio’s statement that his Democratic opponent Val Demings voted for a bill that requires states to allow legal abortion “until the moment of birth.” Demings claims the bill she voted for allows limits on abortion beyond viability, when a baby can likely survive outside the womb in the view of the attending “health-care provider” (a term not limited to doctors). But as I reported last week:
The Women’s Health Protection Act — the bill backed by almost all congressional Democrats including Val Demings, the challenger for Rubio’s Senate seat — has a mental-health exception from viability until birth:
[The WHPA] mandates legal abortion after viability until birth whenever a lone health-care provider — a term not limited to doctors — determines that the continuation of the pregnancy “would pose a risk” to the patient’s life or “health.” The WHPA’s chief sponsor in the Senate has acknowledged the legislation “doesn’t distinguish” between physical and mental health, and the text of the bill instructs the courts to “liberally construe” the provisions of the act. Courts would therefore look to the definition of “health” found in Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton: “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age. . . . All these factors may relate to health.
There really can be no doubt that courts would interpret the definition of health in the WHPA to include mental health. According to the Guttmacher Institute, under Roe and Doe:
- even after fetal viability, states may not prohibit abortions “necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother”;
- “health” in this context includes both physical and mental health.
If Kessler applies the same logic to the Democrats’ abortion bill as he does to abortion law in Germany, how can he avoid concluding that “in reality” Democrats would permit abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy?
Kessler, to his credit, at least acknowledged Rubio’s argument that the mental-health exception in the bill is a loophole that swallows the rule — something Politifact failed to do when it analyzed the same claim. While Politifact wrongly concluded that Rubio’s statement is “mostly false,” Kessler didn’t render a firm judgment (choosing instead to debunk an argument Rubio did not make about the percentage or frequency of late-term abortions). Still, it’s been a week, and the Washington Post’s fact checker has not addressed the glaring logical inconsistency in the column.