Liberal “fact-checkers” are at it again. This time, Glenn Kessler, chief “fact-checker” at The Washington Post, has slapped the factual label on a story about an alleged 10-year-old rape victim seeking an abortion that she was originally denied – even though no one, including the other “fact-checkers” at Snopes, can verify the account.
As noted at Twitchy.com on Sunday, Kessler issued his ruling because President Joe Biden shared the unprovable story on Saturday, and having the blessing of a notorious liar like Biden was good enough to judge it authentic.
As Kessler noted, “This is a very difficult story to check. [Dr. Caitlyn] Bernard is on the record, but obtaining documents or other confirmation is all but impossible without details that would identify the locality where the rape occurred.”
“With news reports around the globe and now a presidential imprimatur, however, the story has acquired the status of a ‘fact’ no matter its provenance. If a rapist is ever charged, the fact finally would have more solid grounding.”
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So in other words we can’t prove it happened but it happened nonetheless because Biden said so and the national media trumpeted it. Or something.
The problem for Kessler and other advocates of abortion is that PJ Media columnist Megan Fox destroyed this particular narrative last week.
The gist of the story is that a 10-year-old Ohio girl was raped and sought an abortion in Ohio. She was denied and subsequently traveled to Indiana for services.
Fox on July 5 brought the receipts in expressing doubt about believing the story.
As she noted in a lengthy Twitter thread, while the Ohio media seemed oblivious of the story of the rape of a 10-year-old, the Indianapolis Star story did send the tale viral – yet without mention of a police investigation into the rape of a child.
In addition to not identifying her hometown, the story included an unnamed doctor who specializes in child abuse in Ohio, and who reached out for help to Dr. Bernard, an abortion doctor in Indianapolis – who also did not apparently report the crime to authorities.
Fox also noted the suspicious timing of the tale, as it happened right after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, Fox reported that Bernard was all over local and national media, such as PBS and Politico, in June warning about the dire consequences of women being forced to carry pregnancies against their will, if Roe collapsed.
She also pointed out that Bernard, the only named source in the story, “is an abortionist and has been in the NYT [New York Times] participating in an anti-Trump hit piece and is clearly an activist. She has a stake in preserving abortion, it literally pays her bills.”
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Fox also noted that there is no way to challenge Bernard’s claim. “She has doctor patient confidentiality. No one can FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] her. The media won’t ask any questions and even if they did she wouldn’t answer. There is no proof that this 10-year-old even exists and yet the media ran with it full tilt.”
By the way, Fox wrote, Bernard “got a call from another doctor asking for help for a horribly abused child and her first instinct was to call the media. That should make you all stop and think for a minute. What’s really going on here?”
Against that backdrop, and despite its lack of details, the story was immediately picked up by the liberal media and used as a cudgel against Republicans who seek to tighten abortion restrictions, such as Govs. Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Tate Reeves of Mississippi.
In a follow-up piece on Saturday, Fox actually praised Kessler for his fact-check because he largely regurgitated her earlier tweet-storm.
“But then,” Fox added, “Kessler had to go and ruin a perfectly good fact-check that made Democrats look stupid. Instead of determining that this story lacks credibility, Kessler actually concluded that it’s fact-based because of how many times it has been repeated, including by Joe Biden.”
“Anything is true if it is repeated enough by important newspapers and politicians who think you will buy this. Unverifiable made-up political baloney gets the ‘status of a fact’ based on how good the left is at spreading it.”
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