Analysis

ProPublica’s Pulitzer award proves that poor journalism can win if it has the preferred agenda

By Kelli Keane and Cassy Cooke | May 6, 2025 , 05:00pm

The Pulitzer Prizes for 2025 have been announced, and ProPublica is one of the recipients for their series of pro-abortion articles which blame women’s deaths on state laws protecting preborn children. Awarded by Columbia University, the Pulitzer is considered one of the highest honors in journalism, and ProPublica won the award in the “public service” category.

ProPublica’s “Life of the Mother” series was highly applauded by pro-abortion mainstream media, and its anecdotal reports were spread widely by abortion activists who claimed the narratives were proof that pro-life laws harm women. Though there are exceptions in every single state allowing for medical intervention when a pregnant woman’s life is in danger, ProPublica’s series argued that these exceptions are too vague, leading to needless deaths.

Live Action News fact-checked most of these articles, finding ProPublica’s research to be deceptive, misleading, poorly executed, and clearly biased.

After the news outlet’s first two reports, some things became clear about ProPublica’s reporting: ProPublica writers and researchers were intentionally choosing only to search for maternal deaths and injuries in states with pro-life laws, and then dishonestly reported those cases as the fault of pro-life laws regardless of the evidence pointing to another cause, such as medical malpractice (which is not limited to pro-life states).

A sampling of what we found

Sloppy lies about Georgia’s law

From the very first article, which discussed the death of Georgia mother Amber Thurman, who had taken the abortion pill to abort her twins, things went awry.

In analyzing that article, Live Action News found ProPublica did not report accurately about the state’s pro-life law, nor was the outlet forthright about some important details:

1. D&Cs are not illegal in Georgia unless used to intentionally kill a child in the womb.
2. Sepsis is a known risk of the abortion pill, which has a black box warning, despite claims that it is “safer than Tylenol.”
3. ProPublica’s blaming of the pro-life law is speculation; the doctors never explained why a D&C was not performed quickly.

ProPublica claimed that Georgia law “prohibits doctors from using any instrument ‘with the purpose of terminating a pregnancy.'” We showed this claim to be false simply by quoting from the law itself, which says a criminal abortion is done “with intent to produce a miscarriage or abortion,” defining “abortion” as “… the act of using, prescribing, or administering any instrument, substance, device, or other means with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy with knowledge that termination will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of an unborn child.”

Yet ProPublica claimed that Georgia had “made performing [a D&C] procedure a felony, with few exceptions.” This is false and an example of extremely poor journalism.

1. An abortion pill kills Amber Nicole Thurman

2. ProPublica blames her death on state abortion laws instead

3. ProPublica wins a Pulitzer for lying pic.twitter.com/Nl6Wr6vkjE

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) May 5, 2025

Candi Miller also died in Georgia, and ProPublica blamed Georgia’s law for her death, though her autopsy revealed fentanyl in her system and the medical examiner listed “drug toxicity under unknown circumstances” as her immediate cause of death. Miller had obtained abortion pills through online dispensary Aid Access. Had Miller’s pre-existing health conditions actually threatened her life, she could have legally obtained an abortion in Georgia. ProPublica ignored the facts in order to blame Miller’s death on a pro-life law.

Soon after these reports, Georgia fired every member of its Maternal Mortality Review Committee; ProPublica had obtained its information via an unidentified leak from the Committee — a major breach of confidentiality.

ProPublica was forced to later admit that Thurman’s and Miller’s deaths were not the only two maternal deaths in Georgia; it simply cherry picked these two cases for its agenda and narrative. Maternal mortality occurs in every state, and some of these cases are due to negligence and substandard care.

Messing with Texas

In reporting about the death of Josseli Barnica in Texas, ProPublica blamed the state’s ‘heartbeat law’, despite the evidence leaning toward medical negligence. ProPublica even admitted that “the standard of evidence-based care” was not followed in Barnica’s case, and that what she needed was “speeding up labor with medication or a dilation and evacuation procedure to empty the uterus,” as she was already experiencing active miscarriage. Live Action News reported:

In Barnica’s case, Houston OB/GYN Dr. Shirley Lima eventually “delivered Barnica’s fetus, giving her medication to help speed up the labor” — shockingly 40 hours after she was admitted, and only after detecting no fetal heartbeat (which was not required for the law’s medical emergency exception). Assisting labor is not an abortion — but for Barnica, it appears that assistance came much too late.

A mere eight hours later, she was discharged by another OB/GYN, Dr. Joel Ross. Three days after that, she was dead.

Her autopsy revealed death from “sepsis due to acute bacterial endometritis and cervicitis following spontaneous abortion [miscarriage] of a 17-week stillborn fetus (177 grams) with retained products of conception.”

Nothing about Texas’ pro-life law caused Barnica’s death, as the law allowed for induced abortions in medical emergencies under the physician’s “reasonable medical judgment.” But ProPublica, even after admitting a lack of proper care, blamed the pro-life law.

Nevaeh Crain also died in Texas, with ProPublica blaming the state’s pro-life law despite its own consultant doctors stating they believed Crain and her baby might have been saved had she not received substandard medical care. As Live Action News noted, “two different hospitals… dismissed her despite signs of sepsis” at six months pregnant, and “The medical standard of care was reportedly not followed, and the doctor who discharged her when she was too weak to walk, had a history of ‘missing infections’ in other patients.” The danger signs of sepsis were spotted much too late.

But ProPublica continued its attacks, claiming in a later article that Texas’ pro-life law is causing the state’s sepsis cases to rise. And yet, maternal sepsis is a leading cause of death for pregnant women — including in states without abortion restrictions — and accounts for 261,000 deaths each year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sepsis caused almost 13% of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States between 2011 and 2013, and rates of sepsis in pregnancy continue to rise. Live Action News noted that, in this case:

ProPublica was not transparent with the data, failing to link to it or share the methodology it used…
The report ignored additional factors that could cause an increase — or even the appearance of an increase — in sepsis cases.
Rising sepsis rates are occurring across the nation…
The abortion pill comes with a black box sepsis warning and women who take it in pro-life states are advised to lie to emergency room doctors…
The Modern Early Warning System has helped doctors identify and diagnose sepsis more quickly and more often… leading to an increase in the number of sepsis cases and a decrease in sepsis-related deaths. Texas began to implement [it] in late 2019.

A deceptive agenda

ProPublica and other pro-abortion media weaponized the classification of maternal deaths as “preventable” — all for shock value, preying upon the public’s unfamiliarity with maternal mortality reports. As Live Action News reported, “Regardless of the state or its abortion laws, most pregnancy-related deaths are classified as ‘preventable.’” The CDC notes 80% (4 in 5) of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are classified as “preventable”; even in states with permissive abortion laws, most pregnancy-related deaths are listed as “preventable.”

ProPublica and other media chose to ignore these facts, also failing to report that the “leading underlying cause of pregnancy-related death” (23%) is “mental health conditions” including substance abuse. Both New York and California, staunchly pro-abortion states, have seen maternal mortality rates skyrocket in recent years. But this doesn’t fit ProPublica’s agenda, so that information was ignored.

ProPublica wasn’t looking to prevent maternal deaths with its “Life of the Mother” series. It was looking to rid states of their laws protecting vulnerable preborn children from intentional killing. It set out to craft a narrative. As Live Action News previously noted, “Abortion advocates don’t want to know if women are being harmed because of abortion in states with fewer restrictions. But they do want to know if a lack of unrestricted abortion is harming them.”

Induced abortion — the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child — is not the standard of care for any pregnancy-related emergency — not PPROM, preeclampsia, placenta accreta, placenta percreta, placenta increta, placenta previa, gestational diabetes, or even cancer. Early delivery may be medically necessary (even if a child is too young to survive), but intentional killing is not.

It’s extremely problematic — to say the least — that ProPublica journalists…

deliberately chose to seek out maternal deaths and injuries only in states with pro-life laws,
intentionally chose not to compare maternal deaths or injuries in states that do not restrict abortion, and
cherry picked and focused on the deaths they felt they could blame on pro-life laws.

This poor example of “journalism” is being awarded highest honors with a Pulitzer for “public service,” though no public service was done with ProPublica’s series. Instead, the public was deliberately led astray by its deceptive reporting and shoddy ‘research’. It’s disappointing that the pro-abortion agenda matters more than the truth to ProPublica; it’s even more disturbing to now know that the pro-abortion agenda means more than the truth among those selecting awardees.

It’s both a shame and a sham.

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