Meta is Removing Abortion Advocates’ Accounts Without Warning

BY LISA FEMIA
September 24, 2025

When the team at Women Help Women signed into Instagram last winter, they were met with a distressing surprise: without warning, Meta had disabled their account. The abortion advocacy non-profit organization found itself suddenly cut off from its tens of thousands of followers and with limited recourse. Meta claimed Women Help Women had violated its Community Standards on “guns, drugs, and other restricted goods,” but the organization told EFF it uses Instagram only to communicate about safe abortion practices, including sharing educational content and messages aimed at reducing stigma. Eventually, Women Help Women was able to restore its account—but only after launching a public campaign and receiving national news coverage.

Continued: https://www.eff.org/pages/meta-removing-abortion-advocates-accounts-without-warning

24.09.2025

Commentary

digital censorship

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Meta and abortion

Meta censorship

Meta’s Transparency Center

RISE Center for Reproductive Health Research

Stop Censoring Abortion campaign

Our Stop Censoring Abortion Campaign Uncovers a Social Media Censorship Crisis

BY JENNIFER PINSOF, Electronic Frontier Foundation
September 15, 2025

We’ve been hearing that social media platforms are censoring abortion-related content, even when no law requires them to do so. Now, we’ve got the receipts.

For months, EFF has been investigating stories from users whose abortion-related content has been taken down or otherwise suppressed by major social media platforms. In collaboration with our allies—including Plan C, Women on Web, Reproaction, and Women First Digital—we launched the #StopCensoringAbortion campaign to collect and amplify these stories.

Continued: https://www.eff.org/pages/our-stop-censoring-abortion-campaign-uncovers-social-media-censorship-crisis

USA – Lawmakers Are Trying to Hold Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Account

Post-Dobbs, the GOP has given them millions in taxpayer dollars.

Laura C. Morel, Mother Jones
April 10, 2025

Last month, during an Indiana state legislative hearing, Republican Sen. Jeff Raatz from Richmond, a small city in the eastern part of the state, discussed a resolution he filed declaring that the state’s General Assembly “strongly supports pregnancy care centers in their unique, positive contributions to the individual lives of women, men, and babies—both born and unborn,” the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported. “We have hospitals in rural Indiana that have no OB-GYNs,” Raatz said during the session. “Why not have an innocent individual stand alongside someone and help them make decisions and connect them with resources?” Abortion is banned in Indiana with limited exceptions.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/lawmakers-are-trying-to-hold-crisis-pregnancy-centers-to-account/

22 Democrats Sponsor a Bill That Could Censor Abortion Info From the Internet

The Kids Online Safety Act is “a blank check” for Republican AGs to "intimidate any way they can," a digital civil liberties advocate told Jezebel.

By Susan Rinkunas
Oct 12, 2023

Imagine you’re pregnant and living in one of the 20-something states where abortion is banned or heavily restricted. You want to know if it’s feasible for you to get care in another state, or learn how to avoid the legal risk posed by ordering your own abortion pills. But, thanks to a bill passed with support from both Republicans and Democrats, you can’t access the websites or social media accounts for abortion funds or online forums where people answer abortion questions.

A controversial, bipartisan Senate bill could create this exact scenario. It purports to protect kids from algorithms that might recommend harmful content online, but advocates warn that it could end up censoring all internet users.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/22-democrats-sponsor-a-bill-that-could-censor-abortion-1850923128

Google Maps Regularly Misleads People Searching for Abortion Clinics

By Davey Alba and Jack Gillum Technology
Design & development by Cedric Sam

August 15, 2022

Chey was a 19-year-old college sophomore
living near Orlando, Florida, when she discovered she was pregnant and decided
to have an abortion. She didn’t have anyone she could ask for guidance, so she
searched Google for a nearby clinic. “I wanted to find somewhere close to my
partner, so I could tell him and bring him with me,” she said in a recent
interview.

A Google Maps query for an abortion led her
somewhere that offered the opposite: a so-called crisis pregnancy center—a type
of non-medical organization with a mission to encourage women like Chey to go
through with their unwanted pregnancies.

continued: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-google-search-abortion-clinic-crisis-pregnancy-center/

USA – ‘Lock it down right now’: Abortion rights advocates prepare for a new wave of digital security threats

Advocates and abortion providers are reassessing their digital security practices ahead of an expected rise in cyberattacks and surveillance.

by SAM SABIN
06/17/2022

Abortion rights groups are using software that protects privacy and are honing other strategies to combat digital threats that they expect will worsen in a post-Roe world.

Those efforts are gaining new urgency as a looming Supreme Court ruling threatens to open a new wave of security threats for people seeking abortions and their health care providers.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/17/abortion-rights-advocates-digital-security-threats-00040654

USA – Looming abortion law changes are pushing clinics to take a look at digital privacy

Some clinic employees say they are embracing encrypted messaging apps and Zoom meetings to leave less of an electronic paper trail.

June 8, 2022
By Kevin Collier

With the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion nearly 50 years ago, some abortion providers are rushing to take precautions to guard their communications and their patients’ data, fearing that the information could be used in future prosecutions.

Others are already a step ahead of them. Mia Raven, the director of policy at the West Alabama Women’s Center, said her clinic runs almost exclusively on paper. It’s a strategy she said is meant to ensure patient privacy.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/abortion-clinics-providers-digital-privacy-roe-overturn-rcna30654