Facebook has stopped running outside ads about abortion in relation to the upcoming Irish election.
Election laws in Ireland prohibit political campaigns from accepting money from foreign donors, and this week Facebook leaders said they want to honor those laws, The Sun reports.
“As part of our efforts to help protect the integrity of elections and referendums from undue influence, we will begin rejecting ads related to the referendum if they are being run by advertisers based outside of Ireland,” Facebook said in a statement.
“We feel the spirit of this approach is also consistent with the Irish electoral law that prohibits campaigns from accepting foreign donations,” it said.
On May 25, Ireland is scheduled to vote on whether to retain its Eighth Amendment, which protects unborn babies’ right to life. Abortion activists, backed by some of the world’s richest men, are pushing the pro-life country to legalize abortion on demand.
Pro-lifers estimate that the Eighth Amendment has saved approximately 100,000 unborn babies’ lives from abortion.
Facebook said it is working with people on both sides of the abortion issue to roll out the new policy, identify problem ads and discuss concerns.
However, given Facebook’s liberal bias, pro-life advocates understandably may fear that the policy could be used against them. The company said it already identified several pro-life ads paid for by people in the United Kingdom and the United States.
CNN reports Facebook eventually plans to expand the policy to every country in the world.
There are very real concerns about illegal, outside political donations in Ireland – especially by American billionaire George Soros.
The Irish government began asking questions of pro-abortion groups in 2016 after a leaked document from Soros’s Open Society Foundations revealed plans to push Ireland and other pro-life countries to legalize abortion on demand, the Catholic News Agency reported at the time.
The Abortion Rights Campaign, one Irish group that received €25,000 from Soros, agreed to return the donation.
However, Amnesty International Ireland, which received €137,000 from Soros, refused.
The donations are illegal under the 1997 Electoral Act, according to the Irish Standards in Public Office Commission, or Sipo.
But Amnesty Ireland described the electoral act as “unjust.” Then, in April, the pro-abortion group claimed it has not used Soros’ money for its pro-abortion campaign, according to the Irish Times.
Soros is one of the richest men in the world. He has given hundreds of millions of dollars to pro-abortion groups, including Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
Irish pro-life advocates have been working hard against a biased media, celebrities like Liam Neeson and U2 and huge donations from Soros and others who are intent on pushing Ireland to adopt abortion on demand. Pro-life volunteers have been knocking on doors across Ireland to save the Eighth Amendment and thousands of unborn babies’ lives.
Many of their efforts at outreach have been met with hostility and vandalism by abortion activists. Last week, an abortion activist allegedly assaulted a pro-lifer in Galway as he was attempting to hang up a poster.
If the amendment is repealed, government leaders plan to push a proposal to legalize abortion for any reason up to 12 weeks of pregnancy and later in a broad range of circumstances.
Two polls this spring show the pro-abortion campaigners are losing ground. Still, support for abortion is higher than opposition. In April, the Business Insider reported 47 percent of Irish voters now say they will vote to repeal the pro-life Eighth Amendment – down 9 points from an earlier poll. According to the poll, 28 percent will vote to retain the pro-life amendment, and 20 percent are undecided.
