Far-right websites The Gateway Pundit and Natural News attempted to discredit Christine Blasey Ford by claiming her report that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her was politically motivated because of Ford’s previous work for a pharmaceutical company that manufactures a so-called “abortion pill.” In reality, the pill that the company makes is not approved for that use and cannot be prescribed for people who are pregnant.

On September 20, Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft published a blog post attacking Ford, claiming that Ford was “affiliated with Corcept Therapeutics (2006 – 2011)” and citing “her new Wikipedia page” as evidence. Corcept Therapeutics, Hoft said, “has only one product: Korlym (mifepristone),” which he characterized as “the ‘abortion pill.'” In addition to working for a company that produced this pill, Hoft argued that Ford had also “participated in 8 published studies, which researched uses for the ‘abortion pill’ or mifepristone. In five of these studies, Professor Ford is listed as affiliated with Corcept Therapeutics.” Based on this, Hoft implied that Ford’s decision to share her story was politically motivated, writing, “Liberals and feminists are very worried that Judge Brett Kavanaugh may participate in reversing Roe v. Wade. Christine Blasey wants to stop Kavanaugh from reaching the country’s highest court.”

This false claim was then picked up by another fake news purveyor, Natural News, run by Mike Adams, a far-right blogger who also created a site to smear Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg as a so-called crisis actor and member of the “Hitler Youth.” Adams made an even less compelling case for Ford’s supposed motivations, writing, “Christine Blasey clearly fabricated the false allegations against Kavanaugh in order to protect her own income and profits coming from an abortion pill drug company whose future may be impacted by Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court.”

A September 17 San Francisco Chronicle article about Ford noted, “According to her faculty biography in a course catalog, she worked as director of biostatistics for Corcept Therapeutics in Menlo Park.” Corcept Therapeutics does manufacture Korlym, also known as mifepristone, but the company’s website notes that the drug is intended “to control hyperglycemia associated with Cushing's syndrome, a rare, debilitating endocrine disorder.” Hoft and Adams both acknowledged that this is the medication’s intended use.