Abortion

A majority of the public agrees misinformation in the U.S. is a problem. Many are also uncertain about the accuracy of information they come across about current topics in the news. This poll finding examines this uncertainty for abortion, the 2024 presidential election, COVID-19, and the conflict in the Middle East.

This first edition of the Health Misinformation Monitor explores misinformation about raw milk amid bird flu outbreaks on dairy farms, false vaccine narratives that continue to spread, and legal challenges against abortion pill reversal claims. Additionally, a growing number of states have required public schools to show fetal development videos that some have called biased and inaccurate. This Monitor report also provides a snapshot of new KFF misinformation polling on TikTok and discusses the early challenges faced by The World Health Organization’s new AI tool SARAH in providing accurate answers to health questions.

This issue of the Monitor focuses on recent Supreme Court decisions impacting health misinformation. We examine cases balancing free speech and platform regulation, the Court’s ruling on mifepristone access and public perceptions of social media moderation. We also explore COVID-19 narratives after Dr. Fauci’s congressional testimony and AI developments in predicting misinformation trends during pandemics.

This volume explores false claims suggesting abortions occur after birth, misleading narratives around the safety abortion pills, like mifepristone, and other tactics used to distort the safety of abortions. It also explores research on the acceptance of health misinformation and the proliferation of AI-generated fake news sites.

This Policy Watch provides an update on the status of PEPFAR reauthorization, which expired on March 25, 2025, allowing certain provisions to lapse.

This tracker provides a listing of global health-related legislation introduced in the current Congress.

The Abortion in the U.S. Dashboard is an ongoing research project tracking state abortion policies and litigation following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

This volume highlights how a report criticized for flawed methodology is influencing renewed efforts to restrict access to mifepristone; a federal plan to study the causes of autism that could be contributing to stigma by over-emphasizing environmental toxins; and the resurgence of false claims about fetal tissue in vaccines.

This brief overviews the Biden Administration’s 2024 final rule implementing Section 1557 of the ACA, which is home to the law’s major nondiscrimination provisions. It provides a brief background on 1557 rulemaking and identifies key differences between this rule and the 2020 rule from the Trump Administration. It highlights two areas of growing interest impacted by the rule – nondiscrimination protections related to pregnancy and nondiscrimination protections for transgender people. Table 2 summarizes the major provisions of the new final rule with side-by-side comparison to the Obama (2016) and Trump (2020) administration rules.

This Policy Watch gives an overview of employers offering to cover travel expenses for workers who need to go out of state for an abortion in the context of increasing restrictions on abortion around the country. We discuss who is offering these benefits, the implications for workers, and some of the legal and political concerns for employers.