Twitter threatens news outlet with ‘permanent ban’ for showing photo of baby illegally aborted
Twitter has again been accused of “leftist censorship,” this time for threatening to permanently ban the account of a pro-life news outlet that showed an image of a full-term baby it suspects was illegally aborted at a clinic in the nation's capital.
Life News announced on its Twitter account Monday that the social media giant "locked our account and threatened to permanently ban it for posting a picture of one of the five full-term babies aborted in our nation’s capital, even though we followed Twitter rules by marking it sensitive.”
The website provided a screenshot of the notice it received from Twitter, which read, “Hi LifeNews.com, Your account @LifeNewsHQ has been locked for violating the Twitter Rules.”
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BREAKING: Twitter locked our account and threatened to permanently ban it for posting a picture of one of the five full-term babies aborted in our nation's capital, even though we followed Twitter rules by marking it sensitive.
— LifeNews.com (@LifeNewsHQ) April 18, 2022
This is the leftist censorship that has to stop. pic.twitter.com/4kJTQd3dcq
The notice cited “violating our rules against posting media depicting gratuitous gore” as the reason for locking Life News’ account. Twitter's rules prohibit users from sharing “excessively graphic media (e.g., severe injuries, torture)” because “exposure to gratuitous gore can be harmful, especially if the content is posted with intent to delight in cruelty or for sadistic pleasure.”
“Please note that repeated violations may lead to a permanent suspension of your account. Proceed to Twitter now to fix the issue with your account.”
The notice included a screenshot of the April 5 tweet that led to Life News being locked out of its account. It said: “This is one of five babies killed in legal late-term abortions at an abortion center in our nation’s capital, whose body was recently discovered. This baby isn’t a clump of cells. This baby is a human being whose life was snuffed out before he was born."
This is one of five babies killed in legal late-term abortions at an abortion center in our nation's capitol. whose body was recently discovered.
— LifeNews.com (@LifeNewsHQ) April 5, 2022
This baby isn't a clump of cells.
This baby is a human being whose life was snuffed out before he was born.
We MUST end abortion. pic.twitter.com/mOgqtguRgp
In the second part of its Twitter thread posted Monday, Life News asked, “If aborted babies are just clumps of cells, why is Twitter so afraid of people seeing pictures of them?”
Allegations of censorship on the part of Twitter over its response to the tweet extended beyond Life News. Lila Rose, the founder of the pro-life group Live Action, took to Twitter to lament what she viewed as the website “going after” the pro-life news organization.
“The babies found in waste buckets outside DC abortionist Cesare Santangelo’s Surgi-Clinic deserve justice,” she said. “Five of them were infants, approx. 21 to 32+ weeks old, with lacerated or dismembered bodies. Why is @Twitter going after the news groups reporting on them?”
Pro-life activists Terrisa Bukovinac and Lauren Handy, who are affiliated with the group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, first discovered a container filled with the remains of more than 100 aborted babies marked for disposal when they intercepted a bio-hazard waste truck outside the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, D.C. The driver of the vehicle, employed by Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services, allowed the pro-life activists to take the container after they informed him of their intentions were to provide the babies with “a proper burial and a funeral.”
Upon opening the hazardous waste container, Bukovinac and Handy discovered 110 babies aborted during the first trimester of pregnancy and five full-term babies, one of whom was pictured in the tweet that got Life News locked out of its account.
Earlier this month, the duo joined other pro-life advocates in hosting a press conference announcing their findings and calling for an investigation into Santangelo for possible violations of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
The latest allegations of censorship directed at Twitter come as Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of the electric car company Tesla, has expressed an interest in purchasing the social media giant. After buying a 10% stake in Twitter, Musk offered to buy “100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash” last week.
“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” he said. “However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
Before purchasing a stake in Twitter, Musk described the social media platform as “the de facto town square” before warning that “failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.” He shared the results of a non-scientific poll he conducted in which he found that Twitter does not “rigorously adhere” to the principle that “free speech is essential to a functioning democracy” before asking, “Is a new platform needed?”
Life News is not the first media outlet to find itself unable to take advantage of the full benefits of Twitter in recent weeks. Twitter notified The Christian Post via email last month that it has blocked this news outlet from posting articles after reporting that Biden administration official Rachel Levine is a man.
Twitter contended that the tweet violated its “hateful conduct policy.”
Critics of Twitter allege a pattern of censorship directed at conservatives and posts that state biological facts instead of kowtowing to the latest far-left ideology.
CP reached out to Twitter for comment on this story, but a response was not received by press time.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
