Senator Ruben Gallego has accused social media giant Meta of “presumptively bowing” to the Trump administration by making abortion-related content more difficult to find.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, was accused of “shadow-banning” several non-profits who provide medication abortion to women in the US.
“I am deeply concerned at the chilling effect that suppressing content related to abortion has towards women,” Gallego wrote in a letter sent to the company on Friday. “Women around the country rely on medicated abortion as safe and effective way to address deeply personal health decisions.”
A dozen states across the south-east and midwest ban abortion. Four states ban the procedure past six weeks of gestation, before most women know they are pregnant.
Non-profits, such as Aid Access, have responded by providing medication abortion to women in all 50 states using “shield laws” – protections passed by states friendly to reproductive rights that prevent healthcare providers from legal consequences in abortion-ban states.
In Gallego’s letter, the senator describes how Aid Access had posts removed from Facebook and blurred on Instagram. The organization was also locked out of Facebook and briefly suspended from Instagram.
The experience mirrors that of other medication abortion organizations, such as telehealth clinic Hey Jane, whose spokesperson told the Guardian that Instagram made its posts harder to find. Other groups, Women Help Women and Just the Pill, told the New York Times their accounts were suspended and restored.
“I am also troubled by the timing of these events,” said Gallego, in the letter. “Taken together, Meta’s decision to end fact-checking, while simultaneously restricting access to content related to abortion, looks like a calculated move to avoid the ire of President Trump, a well-known opponent of both abortion and attempts to limit mis- and disinformation.”
Gallego asks Meta for its “rationale” for removing content related to abortion; why it was removed “specifically in the weeks” following Trump’s election victory, and whether the removals were in “specific states” or nationally.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson told the Guardian when the removals were first reported: “These groups encountered both correct enforcement and a variety of issues, including over enforcement and a technical bug, that resulted in the blurring of some posts. But we’ve been quite clear in recent weeks that we want to allow more speech and reduce enforcement mistakes – and we’re committed to doing that.”
