Obama: Mother’s Day Should Celebrate Abortions-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
President Obama has signed legislation that will mark “National Abortion Freedom Day” as a federal holiday that falls each year on Mother’s Day.
The Truth:
A fake news website is behind the hoax that President Obama has ordered that Mother’s Day be used to celebrate abortions.
That story appeared at Fox News the FB Page, a fake news website that is in no way connected to FOX News, under the headline, “Obama Orders Mother’s Day to be Used to Celebrate Abortions.” The story reports:
As families all across America sit down to Mother’s Day brunch,President Obama plans to make use of the popular holiday to “celebrate reproductive diversity” and “honor mothers who exercise their reproductive freedoms.”
In a ceremony Sunday morning Obama singed the ‘Patriot Freedom of Womb Liberty Act’ which would add a new holiday,the ‘National Abortion Freedom Day’ to the already established Mother’s Day holiday.
Obama called the new holiday “a day that celebrates a woman’s freedom to make her own choices about her body and her health, and reaffirms a fundamental American value: that government should not intrude in our most private and personal pubic matters.”
The story, which was published on Mother’s Day, was widely shared on social media. And, given their similar appearance, many readers were tricked into believing that the story came from FOX News, which it didn’t.
Fox News the FB Page regularly targets Obama with false reports that are intended to draw strong reactions. The site has (falsely) reported that the president is making Cuba the 51st state, that he is making Kenya the 51st state and that he has called for a ban of the Tea Party’s flag.