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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Health & medicine fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

13,677 published reviews in this topic

PolitiFactHealth & medicine

“Abortion is never medically necessary in the last trimester. Literally never. They just do a C-section.”

Publisher’s rating: False

Related reporting—not the PolitiFact review—addresses the claim’s central assertions. A Virginia-focused article says an abortion amendment would permit regulation in the third trimester but allow exceptions when abortion is considered medically needed to protect the pregnant person’s life or health, or because the fetus is not viable. The article then attributes the statement that abortion is never medically necessary to unnamed “experts,” but the excerpt supplies no names, evidence, or explanation of their reasoning. It therefore documents the dispute, not a medical finding that resolves it. (S4) A separate opinion column makes a narrower argument about craniotomy—described as crushing and dismembering the fetus to save the pregnant patient—and says C-sections are the preferred method. That is the columnist’s assertion; the excerpt does not provide medical evidence or establish that every medically necessary abortion in the last trimester involves that procedure. It cannot substantiate the broader absolute claim or the claim that a C-section is always the alternative. (S5) The excerpts offer no clinical data, expert analysis, or description of how the claim was checked. They support only that the claim is contested and that some related commentary makes a C-section argument; they do not provide enough evidence to determine whether the categorical medical claim is true or false. (S4, S5)