No, Chelsea Clinton didn't say children in the U.S. should be administered mRNA vaccines forcefully

By: Rahul Adhikari
May 10 2023

Share Article:

Context

A post circulating on social media claims that Chelsea Clinton, an American writer, global health advocate, and the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, stated that unvaccinated children in the United States should be forcefully administered mRNA vaccines, with or without parental consent.

The claim arises from an article from The People’s Voice, which was subsequently shared by several users on Facebook and Twitter, falsely claiming that Clinton advocated for the forceful vaccination of children. Many of these tweets and posts have attracted significant engagement.

In fact

The People's Voice (formerly NewsPunch) is a known disseminator of fake, unverified, and fabricated information. No credible news outlets have reported evidence or any statement from Chelsea Clinton suggesting that she advocated for forcibly administering mRNA vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine, to unvaccinated children in the United States. The claim arose from Clinton's statement regarding increasing routine vaccination in children and her association with "The Big Catch-up" initiative, which she discussed at a Fortune press conference.

"The Big Catch-up," a joint initiative involving various global and national health partners, including the WHO, UNICEF, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to address the decline in childhood vaccinations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and to increase worldwide vaccination rates to at least pre-pandemic levels.

The initiative aims to vaccinate children against preventable diseases such as measles, diphtheria, polio, and yellow fever – not COVID-19. While every country has been asked to increase routine vaccinations, it has targeted 20 countries that have low rates of vaccinations in children, which does not include the U.S.

At the conference, Clinton stated that the initiative intends to increase routine vaccination among children but did not mention mRNA vaccines or forceful vaccination. She pointed out that the aim is to address low rates of vaccination, as "in 2022 alone, more than 25 million kids under the age of one missed at least one routine immunization."

Sara Horowitz, a spokesperson for Clinton, clarified to Logically Facts that "She (Chelsea) did not say this, but very much believes (and did say) that no one should die of polio or measles or pneumonia, including in this country where we also need people to be vaccinating our kids."

The verdict

An article by a known producer of misinformation has misinterpreted Chelsea Clinton's statement on increasing routine vaccination for children to falsely claim that she advocated for the forceful administration of mRNA vaccines to children in the U.S. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.

This story has been updated to reflect a response from a spokesperson for Chelsea Clinton.