Hoax claim about Mayo Clinic, Trump supporters and ectopic pregnancy is still false

A 2018 tweet that claimed a doctor was targeting Trump supporters is back in the spotlight — now making the rounds on Instagram as a screenshot, since the Twitter account that made the original claim was suspended. The claim is still false.

The tweet from user @drnifkin says, "When Trump supporters come to my office at the Mayo Clinic, I love misdiagnosing their healthy pregnancies as ectopic so they have to abort their white fetuses."

An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the uterus. That type of pregnancy is not viable because the "fertilized egg can't survive," according to the Mayo Clinic.

A screenshot of the tweet was posted June 13 on Instagram by Young America’s Foundation, a conservative group. The Instagram post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

But the information is false, just as it was in 2018 when it was first shared. In June of that year, the Mayo Clinic tweeted that a parody account was posting the baseless claim.

"We strongly condemn the posts and have asked Twitter to remove the account," the June 29, 2018, tweet from the Mayo Clinic said.

Twitter suspended the @drnifkin account.

Featured Fact-check

Instagram posts

stated on November 24, 2024 in an Instagram post

“Rachel Maddow MELTS DOWN over Elon Musk posting memes about buying MSNBC.”

Later in 2018, conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos shared the misinformation on Facebook, the Associated Press reported. At that time, a spokesperson for the Mayo Clinic told the AP there was no doctor by that name at the clinic and the information was false.

The Mayo Clinic tweeted in October 2018: "In June, a troll w/no relationship to Mayo Clinic tweeted a false, inflammatory message that led Twitter to suspend his account until he deleted the tweet. Images of that tweet are again circulating on various social networks. It's a hoax."

We reached out to Young America’s Foundation for comment but did not receive a reply.

An Instagram post that’s a screenshot of a tweet says a doctor at the Mayo Clinic is targeting Trump supporters for unnecesary abortions.

The false tweet originated in 2018. The Mayo Clinic said at that time there is no doctor by that name at the clinic and the information had come from a troll operating a parody account.

Twitter suspended the account that initially tweeted the information.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!