There’s No “Fetus Debris” In Your Vaccine

May 1, 2025

Howdy Meteor readers,

A reminder that as of next Wednesday, you will need a REAL ID for air travel within the U.S. Why am I bothering with this PSA? Because it’s a pain in the ass: I wasted several hours of my own life at the motor vehicle commission, only to be told that the stacks of paperwork I brought were not enough to confirm my identity. Apparently, that’s a pretty common problem, especially for married women, so…best of luck out there.

In today’s newsletter, we parse through the most dangerous medical lies of the week. Plus, a long overdue honor is bestowed, and your weekend reading list.

Standard ID girlie,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

Pure malarkey: 👏🏼Stop 👏🏼spreading 👏🏼misinformation 👏🏼about 👏🏼 our 👏🏼health. This week, two major instances of misinformation made the rounds. First up is Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s claim that MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccines contain “aborted fetus debris.” To be clear: These vaccines do not, at all, contain parts of fetuses or fetal cells. What he is referring to is the widely accepted and longstanding use of fetal cells to develop vaccines, which involves introducing a virus or bacterium to human cells and then inactivating or killing the virus.

The original fetal cells used to develop the vaccines we now rely on were harvested in the 1960s from two elective abortions. Like all cells, they’ve continued to multiply over the years, and scientists have been using the same line of cells for generations. But as the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia explains, no vaccine injected into a person contains fetal cells. After the vaccine viruses are grown, the manufacturers “purify the vaccine viruses away from the cells.”

So why peddle this falsehood at all? RFK Jr. is a notorious flip-flopper on vaccines. One week, he supports them, the next he doesn’t, but no matter what, he casts baseless doubt on their efficacy at every turn—even in the middle of a measles outbreak in Texas. What better way for a vaccine skeptic to dog-whistle conservative-leaning parents than to say there are dead babies floating in the vaccine liquid? (So far, two children have died in Texas as a result of the outbreak, which is two too many.)

On to the next big lie of the week. A new “study” titled “The Abortion Pill Harms Women” was released by the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center, which advertises itself as “working to apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law.” I will not provide the link to the actual study because, as we’ve written before, we should not share links to false or misleading information for any reason. But that didn’t stop Fox News from doing this tomfoolery.

Deep breath. Here are the facts: This “study” was not conducted by doctors, whereas the rigorous clinical testing for mifepristone’s FDA approval was conducted by multiple doctors over years. (We spoke to two of them last year.) Instead, it was compiled by data analysts reviewing health insurance claims. What they say they found by reviewing claims’ procedure codes is that nearly 11 percent of women who used mifepristone had at least “one serious adverse event” in the 45 days after taking the pill. But as journalist Jessica Valenti points out, the study does not provide evidence that the “serious adverse events” are directly caused by or even related to the use of mifepristone—they simply happened within 45 days of use. And these “serious adverse events” are loosely defined; for instance, according to Valenti, they include “hemorrhaging,” which could include the heavy bleeding that can be normal after a medication abortion.

So why even talk about this “fart” of a study, as Valenti hilariously characterized it? Because it calls on the FDA to “further investigate the harm mifepristone causes to women,” on the grounds that the pill is “considerably more dangerous to women than is represented” on the label. Politicians have already started to parrot that narrative. The new FDA head, meanwhile, is anti-abortion.

For the kabillionth time: Abortion pills are safe!

AND:

Yesterday, detained Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was released on bail after nearly a month in a Vermont jail. He is, however, still facing possible deportation and will have to return to court to block the government from sending him to his birthplace, the West Bank. It’s a fight Mahdawi is prepared for: “To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” he said after his release. The judge who ruled that Mahdawi be released compared the targeting of students to 1950s McCarthyism, saying, “The wheel has come around again.” Should Mahdawi and the remaining detained students win in court, it could be the first strike in stopping that wheel.

MAHDAWI AT A CAMPUS PROTEST IN 2023. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in the case of Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, which seeks to allow for the creation of a religious charter school funded by the state. Court watchers suspect that SCOTUS will rule in favor of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma. Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed particularly into the idea, likening religious public schools to those that specialize in environmental studies or Chinese immersion.
Two weeks after a ruling from the UK’s highest court defining “women” as a category based only on biological sex, the English Football Association (FA) has announced that transgender women will no longer be allowed to play on women’s soccer teams beginning June 1. Previously, the FA did allow for trans women to play at the amateur level, as long as they were below a certain level of testosterone. There are 20 trans women registered for the upcoming soccer season, out of hundreds of players, and all 20 will be asked to leave their teams.
On Tuesday, in a moment that was long overdue, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal. (If you’re surprised that this honor was bestowed in the Trump era, Congress voted on this back in 2022, and it’s taken three years to get the ceremony on the books.) The battalion, known as the Six Triple Eight, was the only all-Black, all-women’s unit to serve overseas during World War II, and while many of the women have died, 300 of their descendants were present at the Capitol when the family of Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams Earley received the medal. If you want to learn more about these unsung heroes, check out their fascinating documentary on PBS or pick up Earley’s memoir, One Woman’s Army.

LT. COLONEL ADAMS (FRONT LEFT), A MAJOR AT THIS TIME, WITH CAPTAIN MARY KEARNEY BEHIND HER AS THEY INSPECT THE FIRST RECRUITS TO THE 6888 IN 1945. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

WEEKEND READING 📚

On bad buys: Women are still learning about the dangers of multi-level marketing schemes the hard way. (The Cut)

On childhood fame: Piper Rockelle, the kid-fluencer at the center of the Netflix documentary Bad Influence, finally breaks her silence. (Rolling Stone)

On something you may have missed: This heartwarming, tear-inducing excerpt from Tina Knowles’ memoir, Matriarch. (Vogue)