(NRLC) You have to hand it to them. The anti-Abortion Reversal Pill contingent just keeps plowing head, garnering headlines such as “The latest social media misinformation: Abortion reversal pills.”
The subhead makes the “misinformation” label seem almost polite:
“After Dobbs, platforms’ uneven moderation approaches let an unproven “treatment” to reverse a medication abortion.
Right out of the chute, POLITICO’s Rebecca Kern and Ruth Reader lay out the lowlights of their case:
Social media companies are grappling with a flood of misinformation on an unexpected topic since Roe v. Wade was overturned: Posts promoting “abortion reversal pills.”
The dangerous and unproven treatment is being touted as a way for a pregnant person to halt a medication abortion before it can take effect. And while claims about these pills have existed on social media for years, they’re getting a lot more traction with users.
“Dangerous”? At one point in time, the pro-aborts were largely content to ignore Abortion Pill Reversal. You know “Fake science.” Hardly worth bothering with. But not anymore.
The usual suspects are very nervous because APR is getting “a lot more traction with users.” Facebook, for example, “saw a dramatic spike of 3,500 interactions with ‘abortion reversal pill’ content on June 24”—the day Dobbs was handed down.
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When you read these advocacy stories, pretending to be “news” or “news analysis,” the way to understand them is that they tell you the “dangers,” make not the slightest concession that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t as dangerous as they suggest, before coming to “correct conclusion”—something “must be done about this.”
For example, according to Kern and Reader:
This type of content falls into a gray area in many social media platforms’ policies about how to handle misinformation — one where definitive research doesn’t exist and the level of danger is unclear. As a result, they’re struggling to find the right approach and sometimes allowing abortion-reversal content even as they block posts about how to obtain medication abortions.
It’s a predicament that highlights the unique challenges facing companies from Facebook to Twitter and YouTube as they try to moderate mistruths about abortion on their sites without inserting themselves into a highly politicized debate.
This is serious. Chemical abortions—“medication abortions”–now make up more than half of the abortions performed in this country. “Misinformation researchers say the increase in abortion reversal content appears to be sowing doubt and confusion online, muddying the waters around the effectiveness of medication abortions, which pregnant people can still obtain through the mail even in states that have banned the procedure.”
What to do next? Call in the “experts”– the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the nation’s leading organization of reproductive health clinicians,
has said the reversal treatment is not supported by science and can cause dangerous hemorrhaging. And a 2019 trial evaluating abortion reversal treatment with progesterone ended early due to three participants experiencing high levels of internal bleeding.
NRLC’s Randall K. O’Bannon has debunked this study on numerous occasions. But confident that they’ll be never be called to task, pro-abortionists again and again trot out the 2019 study as definitive “proof” that APR not only doesn’t work but is dangerous.
However if you plow through the entire story you find there really are “remedies” that risk women’s lives and health. Only they are from pro-abortionists!
Overall, the largest platforms have removed more content related to potentially dangerous herbal treatments from abortion rights groups, and less content about abortion reversal treatments from anti-abortion groups, said Jenna Sherman, a program manager at Meedan’s Digital Health Lab, a global tech non-profit focused on health misinformation research.
“It’s good that any posts about natural remedies for abortion are being regulated, but it’s concerning that they’re being overly regulated in comparison to anti-choice rhetoric, which is also very harmful,” she said.
Right. Sure. Of course.
The abortion industry will palm off its usual list of lies. What else is new?
But once in a while reporters will mention the really dangerous stuff even if the pro-abortionists have the last word.
That’s progress!
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News. This article was published by National Right to Life Committee and is reprinted with permission.
