The Patriot Post® · Google Censors Pro-Life Ads
The tech giant Google has started banning Live Action’s pro-life advertisements. The exact date of the ban is unknown, but the timing is rather interesting. Not three weeks ago, a Texas law banning abortion after six weeks of gestation went into effect, so the topic of abortion is at the forefront of the national conversation.
On September 14, Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action, stated that Google had banned all her company’s ads. Rose went a step further by saying Google is demonstrably choosing to side with “extremist pro-abortion political ideology” and that “Google’s censorship baldly reveals that the corporation is in the pocket of the abortion industry.”
BREAKING: At the request of abortion activists, @Google has just BANNED all of @LiveAction’s pro-life ads, including those promoting the Abortion Pill Reversal treatment, a resource that has saved 2500 children to date.
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) September 14, 2021
RT! pic.twitter.com/jfVuvy8Tkc
The consequences of this ad ban are pernicious and far-reaching. By censoring these ads, Google is essentially eliminating choices for these women. Furthermore, by showing them only one option — the most evil option — it is essentially allowing abortion mills and others to prey on vulnerable women and preborn babies.
Google did proffer an explanation for the ban. The ads it particularly objected to were about the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline. Google admitted the reason for the ban was based on a post from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AGOC), which asserts that the reversal pills are not backed up by science.
The AGOC states:
A 2012 case series reported on six women who took mifepristone and were then administered varying progesterone doses. Four continued their pregnancies. This is not scientific evidence that progesterone resulted in the continuation of those pregnancies. This study was not supervised by an institutional review board (IRB) or an ethical review committee, required to protect human research subjects, raising serious questions regarding the ethics and scientific validity of the results. Case series with no control groups are among the weakest forms of medical evidence.
In other words, it asserts that since the 2012 case series were more anecdotal and not necessarily scientifically conducted, and since there hasn’t been an official study of it by a review board, the ACOG had serious concerns. But according to Rose, the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline has saved many babies’ lives in spite of the “serious concerns” of the ACOG.
As far as Google’s censorship of this particular ad is concerned, this reasoning seems fair enough. After all, Google has rules and policies for its advertisements and will use the resources at its disposal to ensure the ads are legit. The only problem is that the abortion pills it allows to be advertised — which have sent thousands of women to the hospital and resulted in the death of at least 10 women — are far more dangerous. So much for standards.
Furthermore, Google also banned the “Baby Olivia” ad, which is indefensible. In fact, Google ultimately conceded this ad did not violate its policies and rescinded the ban. Its final statement on the subject declared: “Beyond protecting users from medical harm, our policies do not distinguish between promoting pro-choice and pro-life messages. Advertisers are allowed to offer either abortion or abortion-alternative services.”
However, Rose insists this is not the case at all. She claims that abortion activists knew that these ads were making a difference and pressured Google into shutting them down. This claim could very well be true. New York Governor Kathy Hochul was very vocal in her objections to Texas’s new law, even threatening to put companies such as Facebook under pressure to stem the flow of so-called misinformation. She said at the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, “There’s accountability and responsibility at the top of those companies to help tell the truth across this nation.”
This Google-ban scandal, coming on the heels of the new Texas law, seems like a strategic strike against the pro-life camp. But for every abortion activist like Governor Hochul, there are pro-life lawmakers who will take up the banner to challenge big companies like Google and Facebook. Yesterday, 12 senators signed letters calling for Google to reinstate all of Live Actions’s ads. Thank goodness for the vigilance of Lila Rose and these senators for quickly standing up for life and calling out the iniquity of this company.