From the SFLA Blog

Breaking News: It’s Going to Be a Whole Lot Harder to Violate Pro-Life Free Speech Online Now

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Caroline Wharton - 22 Sep 2022

The abortion lobby has gone to great lengths to walk all over pro-life free speech, and on social media platforms particularly, pro-lifers’ First Amendment rights have been made into doormats. As more and more reports of pro-life speech infringements are coming out, a new federal ruling is making many pro-lifers smile. Here’s what you need to know about this recent decision:  

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court upheld a Texas law which seeks to prohibit or deter social media platforms from censoring conservative speech, including those in the pro-life movement. The lawsuit was challenging Texas House Bill 20 (HB 20) which regulates social media platforms in order to ensure that all users are given an uncensored platform.  

In his opinion, Federal Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the Fifth Circuit stated that corporations such as social media platforms cannot “freewheel the First Amendment,” a line that is music to the ears of many who have found themselves censored on social media. He said, “Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say.” 

On speaking on the lawsuit, Oldham said the social media platforms argued for “a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment” that “buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.” 

To read about how SFLA has experienced social media censorship repeatedly, here’s a blog from earlier this year by our Senior Spokesperson Autumn Higashi explaining how a viral Tik Tok of ours got us banned on the platform:  

If you’re on the social media app, Tik Tok, you’ve probably noticed that the topic of abortion is very trendy — and not in a good way. Basically, as long as you joke about abortion, lie about what it does, and mock pro-lifers, you’re golden. This is pretty concerning, but it gets worse: there is a culture of extreme bullying and hatred towards the pro-life movement on Tik Tok. Here’s an example:   

I recently saw a Tik Tok with a young woman joking about how her son would be celebrating his first birthday if CVS had not been open to allow her to buy Plan B. As she was clearly acknowledging, Plan B can work as an abortifacient in certain circumstances — and I was extremely disturbed by her “humor” and the fact that others on the app found this content to be entertaining.   

I decided to film a response video and address the heartbreaking issue of “abortion humor” (what an oxymoron, right?). Regardless of where you stand on the abortion issue, no one should be joking about it — and yet everyone is. Abortion is becoming increasingly popular on social media, and it is a design of the abortion lobby. They are spreading their narrative through well-liked apps by Gen Z and Millennials such as Instagram and Tik Tok.   

I believe that videos like these are a wake-up call, and I wanted to encourage the pro-life movement to not be silent. Don’t just take it; we can use these apps to spread the message of truth and love, as well. If we’re not on the frontlines spreading the word, people will only hear the abortion lobby’s lies. And if all people hear is that abortion is “normal” and “needed for women’s success,” they’ll believe it. It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen.   

My rebuttal video went viral (6.5 million people viewed it) …but not for the right reasons. To say the least, my video was not taken well. And by not taken well, I mean that my simple, minute-long video inspired a colossal amount of rage and an overwhelming number of threatening, violent messages. There were 131,400 comments, and almost all of them were hateful. Take a look at some of the comments below:   

Beyond these comments, thousands of other people filmed their own response videos to mine. The joke ran that they were “silencing me” by creating a new trend of laughing, blasting music, and screaming vile words over my voice so that the audio in my video was off. 

 After three days of overwhelming bullying, death threats, and harassment, I got a notification from Tik Tok that many of my videos had been removed for “bullying and harassment,” and that Students for Life of Amica had been banned from posting. Oh, the irony — I had bullied no one and had received multiple cries for my own death, but I was the bully somehow.   

There are three things we can learn from this:  

  1. Tik Tok is proudly pro-abortion. The company didn’t care that millions of people were threatening me; they were just upset that I had kindly said we shouldn’t kill preborn babies. Freedom of speech isn’t respected on this app — only their narrative is allowed. That’s why pro-life activists get censored and banned all the time on Tik Tok.   
  1. Don’t you think it’s interesting that the same people who promote violence for preborn babies in the womb are also perfectly alright with violence towards people outside the womb? There’s a theme here: these people are a part of a culture of violence and hostility. Instead of having conversations, they seek to eliminate those they disagree with — through either telling someone to commit suicide or telling others to commit murder. It’s evil.   
  1. The Pro-Life Generation needs to be careful online — but they also need to be visible. We have to put our voices out there and be strong when hateful comments pour in on us. We cannot give in to being silenced, and we also can’t give in to the negativity of pro-abortion supporters. We are strong, and we’ll keep fighting. This is a matter of life and death.   

 
We are the Pro-Life Generation, and we don’t care if you don’t like us.  

Go ahead, Tik Tok: Erase my videos, let thousands cry out for my death, and call me a bully. That’s okay — this isn’t about me. It’s about the lives we’re trying to save. You can call the pro-life movement whatever names you want, but you can never stop us from defending the defenseless. I won’t be leaving Tik Tok — I’ll be even more present.   

Click HERE to read another word of encouragement for the Pro-Life Generation in the face of bullying.    

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