Numerous woke news organizations made false claims Headlines about Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court repeating a “debunked” assertion regarding the COVID-19 vaccination in a dissenting opinion that mislead readers.

In a dissenting opinion from the Supreme Court’s decision to decline to hear a case challenging New York’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate brought by 16 healthcare professionals, Thomas allegedly claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines contain the cells of aborted babies. This claim was falsely reported by at least three mainstream news outlets.

On Thursday, in a now-deleted post, Politico tweeted a link to an article with the heading, “Clarence Thomas suggests Covid vaccines are developed using cells of ‘aborted children.’”

“Clarence Thomas claimed in a dissenting opinion that Covid vaccines are derived from the cells of ‘aborted children,” the publication wrote.

However, Thomas didn’t assert anything regarding the COVID-19 vaccinations. He was citing the petitioners’ claims that receiving the vaccine would be against their moral code.

The Supreme Court had earlier in the day said it would not consider a case challenging the vaccination law in New York. A group of unnamed healthcare professionals sued the state in 2021, stating that receiving the vaccine would go against their religious principles.

Thomas, along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, wrote a dissenting opinion condemning the court’s ruling for ignoring religious exemptions before the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Thomas included a description of the healthcare workers’ belief that some Covid vaccines were developed using aborted fetal cells.

“They object on religious grounds to all available COVID–19 vaccines because they were developed using cell lines derived from aborted children,” Thomas wrote.

Since then, similar headlines could also be found on NBC News and Axios, where fact-checker Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post and others promoted the false information.

Reporters claimed that Thomas was making the assertion that the COVID-19 vaccinations contain cells from aborted children, despite the fact that he was clearly repeating the petitioners’ point.

Clarence Thomas suggests COVID vaccines are made with “aborted children” https://t.co/hHHG33qtQb

— Axios (@axios) June 30, 2022

Other journalists also pushed the idea:

Several GOP members of the Supreme Court have gone full MAGA. They are detached from truth and reality.

Clarence Thomas just wrote that Covid vaccines are developed from aborted children.https://t.co/Oh64L9lcMg

— Michael J. Stern (@MichaelJStern1) June 30, 2022

But as any claim made by Thomas that the vaccine was made from aborted children was false, Snopes noted that other media outlets, including Axios and NBC, were forced to change their stories as well.

“The headline and the story have been corrected to note that Justice Thomas was referencing fetal cell lines derived from ‘aborted children’ in his dissent, not ‘aborted children,'” according to a note at the bottom of the story by the Axios.

NBC also changed its reporting from:

“Justice Thomas cites debunked claim that Covid vaccines are made with cells from ‘aborted children,’”

To:

“Justice Clarence Thomas expressed support Thursday for a debunked claim that all Covid vaccines are made with cells from ‘aborted children.’”

Sources: Westernjournal, Foxnews, Theworldnews