A pair of pro-life activists are protesting Facebook’s decision to remove a graphic they had posted on their site that included an image of a pre-born baby aborted at eight weeks. What makes the censorship even more troubling is the fact that Facebook had earlier issued an apology to a pro-abortion site for taking down a post that offered explicit instructions for performing a do-it-yourself chemical abortion with the drug Misoprostol, used by doctors to induce labor in pregnant women. The Facebook officials backed up their apology by reposting the abortion instructions.
The pro-life post, created by Bryan Kemper of Priests for Life and Andy Moore of abortionwiki.org, included six images in the presently popular “What They Think I Do” format, spotlighting the deadly vocation of an abortionist. Paired with the final panel, “What I actually do,” is an all-too-real image of an eight-week-old pre-born baby neatly decapitated and pulled limb-from-limb. (Click here to view the “What I actually do” (abortionist) montage.)
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On his site Kemper explained that the folks at Facebook thought the abortion image was too horrific and objectionable to allow people to see, but allowed the post showing women how they could conveniently end the lives of babies. Wrote Kemper on his blog site: “The popular social media site decided it was Okay for the international abortion provider to teach women and girls how to do an abortion themselves at home using Misoprostol, even telling them to lie to a pharmacist to get the necessary drugs.” (Click here for the Facebook-allowed abortion instructions.)
Kemper said that in the few hours that it was up, his own deeply compelling pro-life post generated thousands of “likes,” shares, and comments, before it was abruptly removed.
“It amazed me,” said Kemper of the social media site’s selective censorship. “Facebook will allow girls to learn how to do an abortion themselves at home with no doctor’s supervision, and encourages them to lie when obtaining the drugs necessary. But they will not allow them to see what an abortion looks like. I guess it is only considered censorship if you censor the pro-choice side; it’s perfectly fine in our culture to censor the pro-life message.”
Kemper has asked those who value the pro-life message to contact Facebook and question them on their selective censorship policy.
Kemper and Moore are not the first pro-life activists to publish graphic and disturbing images of aborted babies. Perhaps the most visible examples of such tactics are the Truth Trucks driven around selected cities by volunteers with the pro-life group Operation Rescue. These full-size panel trucks — plastered on both sides with giant, full-color photos showing the bloody and murderous results of abortion — cruise the streets of cities all over the nation, showing up at beaches, shopping malls, busy downtown areas, the Super Bowl, the Democratic National Convention, abortion clinics — and even making stops at high-end Planned Parenthood fundraisers.
While even many sensitive pro-life proponents object to the exhibition of the horrific images of babies killed through abortion, pro-life strategists say the photos are very effective at changing people’s minds. On its Truth Truck website, Operation Rescue notes that there are “hundreds of millions of Americans who — even after 30 years of legalized abortion in this country — still don’t know what an aborted baby looks like.” Operation Rescue noted that the simple strategy of forcing people on the streets to witness the true carnage of abortion has “saved more babies and changed more people’s minds than with any other project we’ve ever conducted.”
Father Frank Pavone, founder and director of Priests for Life, said that “America will not end abortion until it sees abortion. But those who support and profit from abortion work very hard to make sure America does not see abortion.”
