Misoprostol sits on a gynecological table at Casa Fusa, a medical center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, January 22, 2021.
Victor R. Caivano / AP
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Victor R. Caivano / AP
Misoprostol sits on a gynecological table at Casa Fusa, a medical center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, January 22, 2021.
Victor R. Caivano / AP
WASHINGTON – Facebook and Instagram have begun rapidly removing posts offering abortion pills to women who may not be accessible after a week. Decision of the Supreme Court stripped the constitutional protections of the procedure.
Such social media posts appear to be aimed at helping women living in states where existing abortion laws suddenly went into effect on Friday. That’s when the high court overturned Roe’s decision against Wade, which in 1973 declared the right to abortion a constitutional right.
Status updates and subscription information explaining how women can legally obtain abortion pills by mail have exploded across social platforms. Some are even offering to mail prescriptions to women who live in states that currently ban the procedure.
Almost immediately, Facebook and Instagram began removing some of these posts, as did millions of people across the US seeking clarity around abortion. General mentions of the abortion pill, as well as posts mentioning specific versions like mifepristone and misoprostol, suddenly spiked Friday morning on Twitter, according to an analysis by intelligence firm Zignal Labs. Facebook, Reddit and TV shows.
By Sunday, Zignal had counted more than 250,000 such mentions.
The AP obtained a screenshot on Friday of an Instagram post from a woman offering to buy or forward abortion pills in the mail, minutes after a court overturned abortion rights. constitutional.
“Text me if you want to order abortion pills, but want them delivered to my address instead of yours,” the Instagram post read.
Instagram took it down momentarily. Vice Media first reported on Monday that Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, had removed posts about the abortion pill.
On Monday, an AP reporter checked how the company would respond to a similar Facebook post, writing: “If you send me your address, I’ll send the abortion pill to you by mail.”
The post was removed within a minute.
The Facebook account was immediately put on “warning” status for a post that Facebook said violated its standards for “guns, animals and other regulated goods.”
However, when the AP reporter made the exact same post but changed the word “abortion pill” to “a gun”, the post remained untouched. A post with the exact same offer for the letter “weed” is also left and is not considered a violation.
Marijuana is illegal under federal law and it is illegal to mail it.
However, abortion pills can be legally obtained by mail after online consultation from trained and certified prescribers.
In an email, a spokesperson for Meta pointed to the company’s policies prohibiting the sale of certain items, including guns, alcohol, drugs, and pharmaceuticals. The company did not explain the apparent difference in enforcement of that policy.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone confirmed in a tweet Monday that the company will not allow individuals to donate or sell pharmaceuticals on its platform, but will allow content to share information about how drug access. Stone acknowledged some problems enforcing that policy across its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
“We have discovered several instances of incorrect execution and are working on fixing these,” Stone said in the tweet.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday that states should not ban mifepristone, the drug used for abortion.
“Countries may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert assessment of its safety and effectiveness,” Garland said in a statement Friday.
But some Republicans have tried to stop their residents from buying abortion pills in the mail, with some states such as West Virginia and Tennessee banning providers from prescribing the drug through medical advice. distant.
