Table 1.

Content from high- and low-quality websites.

Characteristics by DISCERN tool		Representative quotes
High-quality website
	Address both survival and long-term disabilities	“For babies born at 23 or 24 weeks, the chance of survival if they receive intensive treatment is about 50:50. If the baby survives, they may have one or more of the problems described in this website...About 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 children who survive have very serious problems affecting their movement or learning or both that mean they will need lifelong help and support for everyday activities.” [23] “The success of improved survival in very premature infants has raised some serious ethical issues. It is now possible to save more, smaller, and earlier babies. The difficult question is whether this is always in the best interest of the baby...Decisions pertaining to these sensitive issues are influenced by a number of factors, not least by parental views.” [24]
	Address patients’ values	“Parents have difficult decisions to make at this time and your views and values are very important.” [23] “For some families, the worst thing that could happen is that their baby dies. For them, intensive treatment is the right choice as this gives the baby the best chance of surviving. For other families, the worst thing that could happen is that the baby has to go through intensive treatment and then survives with a serious disability. They worry about the effect on the child and on the rest of their family. For those families, comfort care may be the right choice. This option has the lowest chance of the baby surviving with a serious disability.” [25]
	Encourage shared decision making	“If you don’t know what would be best for your family and for your baby, you may find it helpful to talk to other members of your family. If there is time, you could speak to different medical specialists about your situation, eg, obstetricians and paediatricians.” [23] “Your doctors will talk with you about your situation and try to understand what is important for you and your family. There is no right or wrong answer.” [25]
Low-quality website
	Sensational news stories	“With his chances of survival being between 15-30 percent, sweet Haiden has beat the odds...Within hours Emily gave birth to her 1.5-pound baby boy—14 hours away from the nearest hospital...Emily credits her boy’s strong lungs, a makeshift incubator and her cruise’s early arrival into a Puerto Rico dock. ‘The doctors really tell us that he’s a miracle baby,’ Emily stated. ‘It’s a miracle he’s here.’” “‘They didn’t think she was going to be alive, but I knew she was. Because I just knew it,’...She remembered the dream she had the night before going into labor. In it, she said God told her he would take care of her daughter, but she had to have ‘faith...’”
	Biased testimonials	“...studies show that depending on medical care, at 22 weeks—the age that Planned Parenthood is killing viable babies—preemies can survive with care. So, Trevor Frolek came into the world at 23 weeks. At the time of his birth, he weighed in at 1 pound, 6 ounces, and like many of the babies born alive in ‘botched’ abortions would do if given the chance, Trevor fought to stay alive. And stay alive he did. Trevor survived, and after spending the first year of his life in Fargo, North Dakota’s Essential Health neonatal intensive care unit, weighing a healthy 20 pounds, he went home.” “She was fully human, just smaller than we had ever seen before in our lives. Four months later, Ava Joy came home with us as a completely healthy baby with a minor case of reflux.”
	Statements with unclear sources of information	“A prematurity prevention program has been developed and implemented at the Pope Paul VI Institute for the last 25 years...This entire protocol cannot be properly discussed in a website such as this, however, it can be stated emphatically that the prematurity rate can be decreased with the use of this protocol...For the entire group, the comparison group had a preterm birth rate of 12.0 percent and the Pope Paul VI Institute group protocol only had a 7.0 percent prematurity rate and in that group, only 1.3 percent were at < to 33.9 weeks of gestation. This is three times less than the comparison group.”