In an outrageous and baseless smear, Hannity claims Sunstein “wants to... force sterilizations”

Written by Matt Gertz

Published

Citing no evidence whatsoever, Fox News host Sean Hannity baselessly claimed that Cass Sunstein, director of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, “wants to... force sterilizations.” Hannity has previously echoed other right-wing commentators in offering similar, false attacks on White House science and technology adviser John Holdren.

Citing no evidence, Hannity claimed Sunstein supports “force[d] sterilizations”

From the November 23 edition of Fox News' Hannity:

HANNITY: Alright, you remember Cass Sunstein, this is a guy that wants to ban hunting and force sterilizations and oh, we should all be presumed to be organ donors, etcetera etcetera.

Hannity has previously -- and falsely -- offered a similar smear of Holdren

Hannity repeatedly claimed Holdren supported “forced sterilization.” On the September 18 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity asserted that White House science and technology adviser John Holdren has “written about population control and has come close to advancing some very unusual theories, including the idea that sterilization capsules could be implanted in people when they reach puberty or by spiking drinking water with chemicals to prevent pregnancy. Now, doesn't it kind of sound like forced sterilization? It does to me.” Likewise, on the September 8 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity claimed that Holdren “spoke out in defense of compulsory abortion and sterilization.” And on the September 2 edition of his Fox News show, Hannity said Holdren has “spoken out in defense of compulsory abortion.”

PolitiFact.com gives “Pants on Fire” status to claim that Holdren “proposed forced abortions.” After Fox News' Glenn Beck claimed that Holdren “proposed forced abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population,” PolitiFact concluded that “the text of the book clearly does not support that. We think a thorough reading shows that these were ideas presented as approaches that had been discussed. They were not posed as suggestions or proposals. In fact, the authors make clear that they did not support coercive means of population control. Certainly, nowhere in the book do the authors advocate for forced abortions.”

Indeed, Holdren and his co-authors advocated for non-coercive means of population control. After Holdren and his co-authors discussed involuntary fertility control in an environmental sciences book published more than 30 years ago, they concluded that "[a] far better choice, in our view, is to expand the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that the means of birth control, including abortion and sterilization, are accessible to every human being on Earth within the shortest possible time. If effective action is taken promptly against population growth, perhaps the need for the more extreme involuntary or repressive measures can be averted in most countries."