How cable news poisons the conversation about abortion

Media Matters’ abortion rights and reproductive health team monitored evening cable news programs for 12 months and found that Fox News was responsible for 54 percent of all abortion related coverage, more than MSNBC (29 percent of all segments) and CNN (17 percent of all segments) combined. And of those segments on Fox, 77 percent included misinformation and outright falsehoods about four common abortion-related topics: the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), abortion funding rules, Planned Parenthood’s essential services, and “extreme” abortion procedures.

The bottom line: Fox News isn’t just dominating the conversation about abortion; it’s also filling an information void left by CNN and MSNBC with misinformation and stigma. Other networks need to stop treating abortion as a political football and present frank, fair, and factual conversations about this necessary form of health care.