The self-styled fact-checkers at Snopes had an interesting Friday. On one hand, Rae Deng claimed there is insufficient evidence to label a left-wing conspiracy theory about a proposed bill in North Carolina making murdering women legal if they seek an abortion false. On the other hand, Jack Izzo was adamant that Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is the victim of a “chronically online wing of the Republican Party” pushing claims of veganism. Deng (pronouns: they/them) wrote in the “key facts” summary, “It is not possible to rate the claim that a North Carolina bill would allow anyone to kill a pregnant person seeking an abortion. That's because the actual bill is so vaguely worded that, according to law experts, it would likely be up to a judge or a jury to interpret the law in the improbable event of its passage.” In the second “key fact,” Deng added, “The rumor stems from a real policy proposal introduced by North Carolina state Rep. Keith Kidwell, a Republican with a history of introducing extreme anti-abortion legislation that has so far gone nowhere. The proposal wants to define life as beginning at fertilization and then provide those 'lives' with the same rights as a human being under North Carolina law, including the right to defend oneself or another by use of deadly force.” Deng would proceed to write several words about how the bill was so poorly written that even strong pro-lifers have backed off supporting it. That may be true, but it is not the purpose of Deng’s fact-check. While Kidwell wrote that it is an “indisputable scientific fact” that life begins at fertilization, Deng took a brief timeout to digress, “(It is worth noting that whether life begins at the moment of fertilization is disputed. Scientists have no widely accepted consensus on when life begins.)” Fact-check: 95 percent of biologists, including huge percentages of Democrats, believe life begins at fertilization. Why a liberal biologist would say life begins at conception and still support abortion is a question for them to answer. Other states have laws that say life begins at conception and they haven’t had a problem with people murdering pregnant women seeking abortions. Still, despite Deng saying expert judgment makes it impossible to rule the conspiracy false, two of the three experts interviewed said the bill would not permit murder. The one holdout said Kidwell probably meant to allow violence against abortion providers because it would be illogical to kill the woman because doing so would also kill the unborn baby and a judge would probably rule accordingly. Deng’s unwillingness to bat down leftist conspiracy theorists stands in contrast to Izzo, who wrote that Talarico’s attempts to turn Texas blue has “made him the target of numerous barbed claims from a chronically online wing of the Republican Party, according to Wired. Dubious statements suggesting Talarico is transgender or has low levels of testosterone are an attempt to paint him as un-American, out-of-touch or otherwise unfit for the Senate seat.” He then adds, “Another of those barbs is the claim that Talarico is vegan. Talarico's opponent in the general election, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has made the claim, as has President Donald Trump.” Izzo definitively added, “Talarico isn't vegan, and there's video evidence of him eating meat. The claim is false.” Like PolitiFact, Izzo reduced Talarico’s 2022 comments to a campaign stunt, “The closest thing Snopes found to Talarico saying he was vegan was at an event during the 2022 state House reelection campaign, where he said that the existential risk of climate change made it necessary to reduce meat consumption, and that he was therefore going to run a 'non-meat campaign,' buying vegan products from local vendors.” Also, like PolitiFact, Izzo declined to fact-check any of Talarico’s nutty comments. Back in March, colleague Joey Esposito affirmed Talarico did call God “nonbinary,” but did not fact-check the substance.