The dizzying rise of false and misleading information  about abortion being shared in Spanish on social media was noted  after the leak  of the news in May this year that  the Supreme Court planned to overturn the ruling known as Roe v. Wade, a 1973 lawsuit in which the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution should protect the individual freedom of pregnant women and guarantee them the option of having an abortion without government restriction.

The Latino Anti-Desinformation Lab, a project of  the national voter registration organization of the Latino and the progressive group Media Matters forAmerica, was launched in 2021 to combat misinformation  about COVID-19 and voter  falsehoods targeting Latinos, according to NPR.

Misinformation about abortion is present in posts that say abortion is no longer legal in a state where it actually remains legal, and in others that make the false claim that the procedure is unsafe, causing severe harm or death.  Fake news ends up being shared by the accounts of tens of thousands of internet users.

According to Lupe Rodríguez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, “community members commonly see messages on the social media platforms WhatsApp and Facebook, where policing for misinformation in Spanish frequently falls short”.

“In recent months, doctors and reproductive rights advocates say they've seen a surge in abortion-related misinformation repeated in conversations among the Latino communities they serve. Some worry that this onslaught of false messages may discourage pregnant Latinas from seeking medical care when they need it — even in places where abortion remains legal”.

Liz Lebrón who oversees the research of the Latino Anti-Disinformation noted that the art of misinformation she has encountered seems deliberately designed to galvanize voters.

According to the NPR publication, she cites, for example, “a social media post by a group called Floridanos con Marco (Floridians with Marco) that targets Rep. Val Demings, the Democratic candidate for Senate running against Republican Sen. Marco Rubio in Florida. The post falsely claims that Demings supports funding abortions with taxpayer money until the moment of birth. […] In fact, Demings supports the right to abortion up to the viability of the fetus, which doctors generally put at about 24 weeks of pregnancy”.

Polls show that abortion has increased in importance among Latino voters in recent months. Most Latino voters support the right to legal abortion, but others do not support or are in doubt.

“Ena Suseth Valladares, director of programs at California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, says her group has traced some abortion disinformation to crisis pregnancy centers located in low-income immigrant Latino communities in the state. She says these centers sometimes help people sign up for food assistance or provide free diapers or formula, but their mission is to prevent abortions by persuading women to carry their pregnancies to term”, according to the same publication.

“Dr. Melissa Simon, a Latina ob-gyn at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, says widespread disinformation is creating fear among the Spanish-speaking Latina patients who come to her seeking abortions. Even though Illinois is an abortion safe haven, she says patients have told her they fear that getting the procedure will result in legal jeopardy”.

I see patients who fear the repercussions of having an abortion not just for themselves, but for their family and loved ones”, she says.

Doctors and women’s reproductive rights advocates are fighting the large amount of misinformation.  The Latin National Institute for Reproductive Justice conducts live broadcasts with updates on abortion news and trains local organizers on how to combat digital misinformation and shared ness among people in their communities, according to NPR.