ProPublica (Lean Left bias) recently published two articles tying the deaths of two women in Georgia to an abortion-restricting state law, which passed in 2019 and went into effect in 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson. But not everyone agreed with ProPublica’s framing, and some accused the outlet of media bias and misinformation.

The investigations were hailed by pro-choice advocates as proof that abortion bans create ambiguous healthcare situations that result in lost lives. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has championed this perspective on the campaign trail — she brought the family of Amber Thurman, one of the two women, to speak at a campaign event.

Live Action News (Lean Right bias), on the other hand, came out with a pair of fact check articles claiming ProPublica misled its readers on the nature of Georgia’s abortion law and the danger of serious side effects from the abortion pill mifepristone.

RELATED: What 'Abortion' means to Liberals & Conservatives

Are the ProPublica investigations well substantiated? Did Live Action effectively refute them? How did both outlets show media bias?

Amber Thurman and Candi Miller

ProPublica’s investigations found that both Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller took the abortion pill mifepristone and developed sepsis after their bodies did not expel part of the fetal tissue, which ProPublica called a “rare complication” from the pill. A “routine” procedure known as a dilation and curettage (D&C) would have saved both women’s lives, but Georgia had recently had performing it a “felony, with few exceptions,” ProPublica reported.

If a D&C removes fetal tissue that is already dead, it does not cause the death of an unborn child and is therefore legal in Georgia — but ProPublica made the case that unclear language in the law may have been part of the reason neither woman underwent the procedure.

Thurman checked into a hospital which ProPublica said was “well-equipped” to give her the appropriate medical care. ProPublica reported her dire condition was quickly apparent to doctors, but she did not undergo a D&C until 20 hours later, at which point it was too late to prevent her death. Doctors “discussed the procedure at least twice” before performing it, but ProPublica couldn’t determine an exact reason for the delay. ProPublica deemed her death “abortion-related.”

Miller, on the other hand, did not seek hospital care, which her family said was “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions,” seemingly referring to the law which had recently gone into effect. An autopsy found she had taken “extremely high doses” of fentanyl and two pharmaceutical drugs, which ProPublica said more likely caused her death than the sepsis induced by the abortion pill.

ProPublica obtained facts related to Thurman’s and Miller’s cases from the proceedings of a state committee tasked with examining maternal mortality in Georgia. Thurman’s case was supplemented with commentary from “medical experts,” which included some members of the committee, to provide context around why the new law may have caused the delay in her care.

According to the experts, vague language in the abortion-banning law means doctors may hesitate to perform certain procedures because their judgment “could be called into question under the threat of prison time” for causing the death of an unborn child.

The 2022 law allows abortions if they are “necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” But the experts said doctors may still hesitate to perform life-saving interventions for fear a jury might interpret them as not medically “necessary.” Some reported to ProPublica that they had witnessed “colleagues disregard the standard of care when their patients are at risk of infection and wait to see if a miscarriage completes naturally before offering a D&C.”

Are Abortion Laws To Blame for the Deaths?

Live Action News published fact checks of both the Thurman and Miller investigations from ProPublica, and each presented similar counterarguments to ProPublica’s stance that abortion laws contributed to the deaths.

D&Cs are Legal in Georgia

Live Action noted correctly that, under Georgia law, “D&Cs are not prohibited,” although supporters of abortion access would likely disagree with how the next line conflates performing an abortion with “deliberately killing a baby.” Live Action also noted that, while the doctors failed to treat a “clear emergency situation,” the world will never know what they were truly thinking when they hesitated to operate on Thurman, so ProPublica can only speculate whether concerns about the law contributed to their hesitation.

ProPublica was indeed misleading about the nature of Georgia’s abortion restriction at some points in the articles, such as by calling D&Cs “newly criminalized” in the Thurman investigation without specifying that they’re only criminal under specific conditions.

But Live Action doesn’t counter ProPublica’s true argument, which doesn’t rely on case-specific proof: namely, that the ambiguity of Georgia’s abortion restrictions could motivate doctors to withhold care until a situation becomes clearly life-or-death. Directly linking a specific patient’s death to a doctor’s internal thoughts is impossible without first hand testimony, and that’s not something a self-interested doctor is likely to admit.

In a country with robust privacy protections for healthcare, the records from the state committee were the best evidence available to ProPublica. If this kind of informed speculation is considered out of bounds, then what tools do investigative media outlets have to shed light on what happens in the medical industry?

The Miller fact check from Live Action goes beyond speculation to state conclusively that the deaths were “not the fault of Georgia’s pro-life law.” For the same reasons given above, this is a simplified claim and therefore inaccurate.

It would be just as inaccurate to say that the deaths were certainly caused by confusion due to the law — but ProPublica didn’t. The closest it came to making this allegation was stating in the Thurman investigation that “at least two women have already died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state.” Perhaps ProPublica should have been more upfront about the takeaway they intended for readers. But then again, the pieces are investigations, not opinions.

Abortion Pills Were Responsible for the Deaths

Live Action lists several studies that illustrate the risk of adverse effects from mifepristone compared to traditional “procedural” abortions. One study it cited, published in 2009, found that women in Finland undergoing abortions at 9 or fewer weeks experienced adverse effects four times as often from the pill than from the procedure.

A more recent study from 2023 (not cited by Live Action) shows mifepristone is indeed somewhat riskier than procedural abortion at 9 weeks, and the gap widens at 14 weeks — the pill stays similarly risky while the procedure becomes half as dangerous:

In the Thurman fact check, Live Action says abortion pills are “often framed as being safe” and cites examples of such framing from media and abortion advocacy organizations. It’s a reasonable conclusion that mifepristone is less safe than over-the-counter medicines like Tylenol, as some of these groups have claimed. (As Live Action notes, mifepristone comes with a prominent warning label, so there’s no reason to assume official sources are publicizing its side effects less than comparable medications.)

Live Action supplemented their fact checks with an opinion piece by a medical malpractice attorney who argues that the abortion provider failed to appropriately explain the risks of mifepristone to Thurman, citing a similar death from sepsis induced by the pill in a state with legal abortion.

Does this counterpoint have merit? ProPublica called complications from mifepristone “rare” and did not compare it to procedural abortion. It also withheld the gestational age of the fetus in Miller’s case — if her pregnancy were at a late stage when she took mifepristone, the risks would have been higher. These are important details in the scope of ProPublica’s articles, and they should have been included.

Discussing the higher risk of the pill could contribute to a negative impression of abortion overall, but including it would have strengthened the authority of the piece. This is a common problem on both sides, in which facts are omitted not because they cut against a thesis, but because their implications cut against a more general partisan group belief — in this case, that abortion access is a good thing.

That said, the risk associated with mifepristone does not disprove any part of ProPublica’s thesis for these investigations: that confusion from an abortion-restricting law delayed medical care and contributed to the deaths. The two factors are independent.

Conclusion

Though ProPublica writes in a more objective than subjective mode — investigative reporting — it implicitly assumes certain values are important to its readers. That’s not a problem unless it’s undisclosed, and ProPublica is open about its goals: in a callout near the top of its articles, it describes itself as "a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power." This signals to readers its pieces are meant to be objective "investigations," but it also signals an ideological position: that the media should shed light on and prevent abuses of power as a top social priority.

Similarly, Live Action News also declares itself as a source of “pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.” Its content is also based on facts, but selectively presents them in a way that casts abortions and laws allowing them in a negative light. The tone of Live Action’s news content is also more emotionally charged: the articles make generous use of italics and bolding, and for example, the Thurman fact check responds with “yikes” to a supposedly misleading part of the ProPublica article. These sensational elements distract from effective analysis.

This is how free exchange of ideas works. We communicate facts not as impartial observers, but with a subjective goal in mind — to convince others to see things differently and take action accordingly. By pitting ideas against each other in an argument, we come to a better understanding of the truth. This principle underlies our adversarial legal system and is arguably a key ingredient for flourishing societies.

But you can only access that better understanding of the truth by exposing yourself to viewpoints with which you might disagree. AllSides is dedicated to just that: every day, we bring our readers the top stories from every perspective, clearly identifying media bias without censorship so you can come to your own conclusion.

Whatever conclusion you draw from comparing ProPublica’s work with Live Action’s fact checks, know that you’re on the right track by taking both sides seriously. You can’t be hurt by an unconvincing idea.

This article was updated September 25 at 4:35 p.m. to add context around Live Action's assertion that aborting a fetus is equivalent to “deliberately killing a baby.”

Evan Wagner is a News Editor and Product Manager at AllSides. He has a Lean Left bias.

Reviewed by Clare Ashcraft, Bridging Coordinator and Media Analyst (Center bias); Henry A. Brechter, Editor-in-chief (Center bias); Julie Mastrine, Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings (Lean Right bias); and Malayna J. Bizier, News Analyst and Social Media Editor (Right bias).