We sometimes accidentally tell on ourselves, and the social media platform Instagram has recently done just that while censoring Students for Life of America’s (SFLA) page. In the anti-free speech crusade to shut up the pro-life movement in favor of the abortion lobby, the popular app has actually showed their true colors: they recognize that abortion is violence.  

Here’s what happened: 

*Viewer Discretion: Minimal graphic imagery below which shows the violence of later-term abortion*

In order to combat the increasingly frequent pro-abortion assertion that later-term abortions “never happen” or are just rare enough to make them okay, SFLA recently posted several images on Instagram of later-term aborted babies. These were preborn children in either the second or third trimester who fell victim to the violence of abortion, and the tragic pictures show just how developed these little humans already were (although no stage of development makes abortion humane).  

Using such photos isn’t characteristic of the Pro-Life Generation for a couple different reasons, but we felt recently that such imagery was the appropriate response to the downright false claims being propagated by abortion supporters. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words — so multiple photos were published with a graphic warning for viewers.   

But when Instagram flagged the content, their reasoning was curious. It almost sounded like the company was using pro-life talkers because they admitted the images showed violence.  

This happened when SFLA’s social media team was alerted by Instagram that our page on the app had been updated so that it couldn’t “be shown to non-followers,” meaning the algorithm wouldn’t offer our content to anyone who hadn’t subscribed to our page already. Five pieces of content were flagged as the problem — and you guessed it, it was the five photos of aborted later-term babies.   

According to Instagram, these pieces of content violated their Community Guidelines on violence, and the app can’t recommend “content or accounts that show violence.”  

While we have to roll our eyes at the consistent censorship our social media pages face daily, we’ll concede Instagram this: they’re 100% correct that we were showing violence in these images. Direct, elective abortion — no matter the age of the preborn child or the individual method of killing them — is always violent because when “successful,” an innocent baby dies.  

SFLA Social Media Coordinator Lauren Marlowe, who oversees all SFLA social media pages including Instagram, spoke up on this matter, saying,  

“Time and time again, we see social media platforms such as Instagram and Tik Tok censoring, restricting, or even deleting our pro-life content from our accounts. The hypocrisy is always astounding, but especially in this case. From my years of helping to run SFLA’s social media accounts, if I could say one thing to those who implement the censorship, it would be this: 

“If Instagram agrees that abortion is violent, why are you banning photos of abortion victims, rather than banning abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood? 

“Planned Parenthood’s account, which has more than one million followers (though based on their engagement rates per post, we reasonably suspect that many are fake bots), has been unrestricted in their solicitation of “violent” abortion procedures. If abortion is “violent” and worth banning from the platform, shouldn’t we start by banning the billion-dollar organization that profits off the violent killing of preborn children? 

“Additionally, Meta (the parent company of Instagram and Facebook) pays for employees to travel out of state for these “violent” abortions (their words, not ours). If we can all agree that abortion is violent — according to them, too violent to even talk about what it does — then why are you paying for your employees to partake in this violence? 

“It’s frustrating to see pro-life groups’ content repeatedly being unfairly targeted and censored, while abortion-supporting groups enjoy unrestricted visibility and reach. This bias undermines the principles of free expression. It’s crucial for online platforms to uphold neutrality and provide an equal playing field for diverse voices. 

“One thing that’s great about the Pro-Life Gen — we are never disheartened in the face of opposition. Instead, we are motivated to overcome whatever obstacles are thrown into our path and become even better and more effective than before!”  

If you’re not already following SFLA on social media, you can find us on every platform at @studentsforlife. If you don’t want to miss out on our daily content — which showcases pro-life student activists, SFLA events, pro-life apologetics, and what’s new in the news — you’ll want to make sure you’re subscribing/following. Otherwise, in situations like these, you’ll be in the dark, thanks to pro-abortion censorship.  

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