A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
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Posts falsely claim abortion is never medically necessary
CLAIM: Abortion is never medically necessary to protect the health of the mother.
THE FACTS: Doctors say there are multiple situations in which abortion is medically necessary to save the life of the pregnant mother. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month to end constitutional protections for abortion has reinvigorated misinformation about what constitutes an abortion and whether the procedure can be medically necessary. “Abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of the mother,” read a widely shared Facebook post from an anti-abortion nonprofit. “There are maternal health emergencies that require the mother and child to be separated through natural delivery, c-section, or the removal of a child in an ectopic pregnancy situation,” another widely shared post read. “And sometimes the child is sadly too young to survive. But this is not an abortion because every effort is made by doctors to preserve the lives of BOTH patients – mother & child.” But doctors told the AP that there are many circumstances in which abortion — meaning the termination of a pregnancy — can be medically necessary. “Without question, abortion can be medically necessary,” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a 2019 statement after similar claims spread online. “There are situations where pregnancy termination in the form of an abortion is the only medical intervention that can preserve a patient’s health or save their life.” Those situations include a pregnant woman’s water breaking before 20 weeks of pregnancy, according to Dr. Kristyn Brandi, a practicing OB-GYN and abortion provider and the board chair for the advocacy organization Physicians for Reproductive Health. When a woman’s water breaks far too early, it makes it unlikely a fetus’ lungs will be able to develop enough to survive. It also presents a very high risk of infection and septic shock in the pregnant mother, Brandi said. In such an instance, a doctor’s recommendation to protect the mother’s life would often be to end the pregnancy through an abortion. Other times, if a woman has a heart condition, Brandi said, the increased blood production during a pregnancy may jeopardize her heart’s ability to support her or the fetus. Other examples of complications that could necessitate abortion to save the mother’s life include kidney or liver failure, said Dr. Cindy Duke, an OB-GYN and virologist who is also the founder and medical and laboratory director of the Nevada Fertility Institute. Doctors say it’s misleading to claim that the solution to a life-threatening complication in a pregnancy is delivery rather than abortion. That’s because in medical literature, “abortion” refers to the termination of a pregnancy for any reason, according to Dr. Louise P. King, an OB-GYN and the director of reproductive bioethics at Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics. If a fetus can’t survive outside the womb, ending that pregnancy is considered an abortion. In addition, any delivery before 20 weeks of pregnancy is medically defined as an abortion, according to Brandi. The term “preterm delivery” isn’t typically used until after 20 weeks or even later, at 23 or 24 weeks, when the fetus has a chance of surviving outside the womb, she said. Brandi said some of the laws being enacted to limit abortion access are not written by medical professionals and aren’t clear about when abortions are allowed to protect the health of the mother.
— Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in Seattle contributed this report with additional reporting from Josh Kelety in Phoenix.
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U.S. fuel prices are not among the lowest in the world
CLAIM: U.S. gasoline prices are among the lowest in the world.
THE FACTS: While the U.S. is not one of the nations with the highest fuel prices in the world in 2022, it is also not among those with the lowest prices. Dozens of countries report lower fuel prices than the U.S. For months, social media users across the U.S. have bemoaned high fuel prices, blaming President Joe Biden for the hike even as drivers in other countries also have shelled out more money to fill their tanks. This week, one widely shared post misled social media users in the other direction, falsely claiming that the U.S. was among the countries with the lowest fuel prices in the world, and that Biden should be credited with that. The post featured a partial world map highlighting fuel prices in selected parts of the world, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil and several parts of Europe. The listed cost of fuel in the U.S., $4.79, was lower than any other price listed on the map. The image attributed the data to figures that appeared in Kiplinger, a business publication, in early June. “I would like to thank Biden for keeping Gas in this country one of the LOWEST in the world,” read a caption. But the U.S. has nowhere near the lowest gasoline prices in the world, according to databases that track that information. More than 60 countries report lower gas prices than those in the U.S., according to the website GlobalPetrolPrices.com, which Kiplinger cited in its report. Notably, the U.S. doesn’t fall at the highest end of the gas price spectrum, either. While U.S. gas prices hovered around $4.67 per gallon on Monday, according to AAA data, gasoline in some countries such as Iceland and Hong Kong cost double that or more on the same day, according to GlobalPetrolPrices.com. Presidents often face criticism when gas prices climb, but the reality is they don’t have much control over fuel costs rising or falling, according to Carey King, a research scientist at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas. Beyond releasing oil from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which Biden did, there’s “not much” the president can do to reduce gas prices, King said.