Access to abortion pills a new headache for social media giants
Abortion pills are approved in the U.S. to end pregnancies before the 10th week. The pill has now become a headache for social media after the U.S. Supreme Court in a ruling de facto has stopped access to abortion from being a constitutional right. Directly after the Court’s ruling women offered fellow sisters to help them get access to the pills. Various tests show that for instance Meta and its Instagram take down offers without delay.
Meta’s spokesperson Andy Stone kind of confirmed the policy of taking down any offer to provide pills. He tweeted:
“Content that attempts to buy, sell, trade, gift, request or donate pharmaceuticals is not allowed. Content that discusses the affordability and accessibility of prescription medication is allowed. We’ve discovered some instances of incorrect enforcement and are correcting these.”
President Joe Biden and his administration, having reacted very negatively against the Court’s ruling, have indicated that authorities will take action to make the pill more accessible within the U.S. but how that should be done has not been specified.
Explainers on how to obtain abortion pills in the mail have boomed across social platform US media intelligence firm Zignal Lab has reported a spike in mentioning of the pills on social media and in broadcasts.
Underground abortion pill networks have begun to pop up, Eric Feinberg, a researcher at the Coalition for a Safer Web told the Guardian. Screenshots provided to the newspaper showed the pill Mifepristone for sale in private Facebook groups with names like “MTP Kit and Other Pills” and “Cleaning and Abortion Pills”. Vice Media reported that Facebook and Instagram almost immediately started removing posts directly offering pills to people.
News agency Associated Press reported it had seen a screenshot of an Instagram post from a woman who minutes after the Court’s ruling offered to buy or forward abortion pills through the mail.
“DM me if you want to order abortion pills, but want them sent to my address instead of yours,” she wrote. Instagram took it down immediately.
AP also tested how Meta and Facebook would respond to a similar post on Facebook, writing: “If you send me your address, I will mail you abortion pills.” The post was removed within one minute, AP reported.
However, AP did not stop by that test. When the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun”, the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up and was not considered a violation of the social media’s rule system.
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