Politico attempted to attack Justice Clarence Thomas earlier this week in a hastily drafted “fact-check”, which turned out to be false.
Politico claims that Thomas claimed that COVID-19 vaccines were created from cells taken from children who had died. Politico insists that this claim is false.
Thomas stated that “they object on religious grounds all available COVID-19 vaccinations because they were created using cell lines from aborted children.” This quote was cited by Politico. Politico responded to Thomas’ claim by saying, “None the Covid-19 vaccines available in the United States contain cells from aborted fetuses.”
This so-called fact checking had two problems.
First, Thomas did not actually make the statement. Politico finally realized this and corrected it:
An earlier version of this article misattributed Thomas’ claim that Covid-19 vaccines had been “developed using cell line derived from aborted child” to Thomas. We have updated the headline and article to clarify that Thomas was referring to petitioners’ claims.
Next, the problem is that the claim was not that the vaccine contained cells taken from aborted fetuses. These cells were used to develop the vaccines. Politico admits this fact in the next sentence, after declaring it false.
None of the Covid-19 vaccines available in the United States contains cells from aborted fetuses. The Covid vaccine was developed using cells from elective abortions that were performed decades ago. This is a common practice in vaccine research.
No matter who claimed that the vaccines were created, it wasn’t about whether they contained cells from aborted fetuses. It was about how the vaccines came to be. It is irrelevant to the point that this correction about who said it is. Politico suggests that no one claimed vaccines “contain cells from aborted foetuses.” They wanted to destroy Clarence Thomas, but didn’t care about facts. So they falsely attributed a claim to him and then altered the claim to suggest that it was incorrect.
