The online censorship of pro-life groups continued again this week.
On Thursday, Students for Life of America said Facebook censored one of its ads about the dangers of abortion drugs, claiming it “may be shocking and scary to viewers.”
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, said their ad used footage from the pro-life movie “Unplanned” to provide an accurate depiction of what can happened to a woman when she takes the abortion drugs.
She noted that approximately 40% of abortions in the U.S. are drug-induced abortions, and the abortion industry is pushing to expand access to the deadly drugs through mail-order abortions.
“The abortion industry’s next play is to flood the country with dangerous RU-486 chemical abortion drugs, encouraging women to take the pills as they downplay the risks,” she said. “RU-486 drugs and chemical abortions indeed are scary–that’s why we wanted to highlight the horrific experience in an appropriate manner. Facebook must revise its policies to allow groups like ours to highlight serious problems with chemical abortion drugs.”
According to the pro-life organization, Facebook flagged the post as “sensational content” on Memorial Day weekend. In an e-mail exchange with Facebook, Students for Life said it was told that the video could be posted on its page but not run as an ad.
Facebook told the organization: “The key difference is that you choose who you follow or friend, and we don’t have a responsibility for what type of content those individuals choose to share or like so we don’t have the same standards. On the other hand, with advertising we accept money to promote content to users who have often times not chosen to see that content or have any relationship to that content.”
However, Students for Life said it did not target the ad at teenagers. It also found evidence of other similarly graphic video ads that Facebook did not censor, including an ad showing concentration camps and comparing them to children in cages, PETA ads that showed abused and killed animals, and an ad showing police brutality.
Students for Life said its ad included a viewer discretion warning.
Facebook also censored Students for Life Action, the 501c4 arm of Students for Life of America, after it shared an article from LifeNews.com about U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s comments on abortion and tonsillectomies, the pro-life organization said.
“We demand that Facebook allow us to run our ads,” Hawkins said. “This is one more good reason why President Trump recently released an executive order on social media censorship.”
The ad is part of their ThisisChemicalAbortion.com project, which raises awareness about the dangers of the abortion drugs to both women and unborn babies.
Pro-life and conservative groups, including LifeNews.com, recently formed the Free-Speech Alliance to raise awareness and fight against online censorship. The alliance released a letter about Facebook’s new “Oversight Board” and the biases of the overseers.
In late May, President Donald Trump signed an executive order holding social media giants like Facebook and Twitter accountable for censoring pro-life conservatives. The big tech companies have repeatedly subjected leading pro-life groups to substandard treatment, subjecting them to shadowbans, false fact-checks, and prohibiting them from advertising to grow their audiences.
Here are other censorship incidents that LifeNews.com has documented:
- Facebook Censors Pro-Life Page for Calling Planned Parenthood an “Abortion Business”
- Billboard Companies are Censoring Pro-Life Billboards Like This One: “Abortion Endangers Us”
- Facebook Censors Interview With Woman Who Miraculously Survived an Abortion
- Instagram Censors Planned Parenthood Meme: We Kill More Black Babies in 2 Weeks Than the KKK Lynched in a Century
- Instagram Removed Christian Writer’s Comic Strip Comparing Abortion to Slavery
- Instagram Blocked the Entire Daily Caller News Account Briefly, Claimed It Was an Accident
- Facebook Tags Pro-Life Group as False News for Saying Abortion is Never Medically Necessary
- Instagram Censors LifeNews Post about Babies with Down Syndrome
- Twitter Censors President Trump’s Pro-Life Video Featuring Pictures of Unborn Babies
- Twitter Suspended “Unplanned” Movie’s Account, Then Its Followers Mysteriously Disappeared
- Woman With Down Syndrome Says Twitter Suspended Her Account for Tweets Opposing Abortion
- Twitter Censors Pro-Life Group: “No Advertiser is Permitted to Use the Phrase ‘Killing Babies’”
- Pinterest Caught Listing Top Pro-Life Website as Porn to Censor Its Content
- Twitter Censors Pro-Life Group’s Ads about Defunding Planned Parenthood
