The Washington Post fact-checker gave Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., “four Pinocchios” for how she described Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s comments about birth control during his confirmation hearing.
Harris, along with other Democrats, has warned that Kavanaugh could undermine women’s access to birth control, accusing him of referring to the contraception as “abortion-inducing drugs.”
Kavanaugh used the term when discussing a lawsuit brought by an anti-abortion religious group challenging Obamacare rules on providing coverage for contraception.
“That was a group that was being forced to provide a certain kind of health coverage over their religious objection to their employees, and under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the question was first, was this a substantial burden on the religious exercise? And it seemed to me quite clearly it was,” Kavanaugh replied. “It was a technical matter of filling out a form, in that case with — that — they said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were — as a religious matter, objected to.”
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Harris argued, “There’s no question that he uncritically used the term ‘abortion-inducing drugs,’ which is a dog whistle term used by extreme anti-choice groups to describe birth control.”
The Washington Post fact-checker said Kavanaugh referring to “they said,” demonstrates “he is merely reflecting the plaintiffs’ argument.”
The newspaper also cited Kavanaugh’s dissent in the case, in which he wrote, “They complain that submitting the required form contravenes their religious beliefs because doing so, in their view, makes them complicit in providing coverage for contraceptives, including some that they believe operate as abortifacients.”
“She earns four Pinocchios — and her fellow Democrats should drop this talking point,” the fact-checker said.
