OPINION
(Editor's Note: The following opinion column is not an endorsement or any organization, or medical treatment, on the part of Newsmax.)
A woman sits in front of a camera and recalls severe pain, heavy bleeding, and the thought that she was going to die.
She shares that she was “completely abandoned in the greatest moment of need.” And her baby? Dead — lying limp in her hands.
This is Elizabeth’s excruciating story of having a chemical abortion at home, alone, without the presence of a doctor or nurse.
Her testimony was featured in a video that Alliance Defending Freedom recently posted on YouTube. Shortly after it went live, however, YouTube slapped a "context" disclaimer on the video — along with every other ADF video addressing abortion drugs — as if to set the record straight.
The disclaimer read, "An abortion is a procedure to end a pregnancy. It uses medicine or surgery to remove the fetus or embryo and placenta from the uterus. The procedure is done by a licensed healthcare professional."
That disclaimer was truly misleading.
While surgical abortions must be performed by a licensed healthcare professional, that’s not true of chemical abortions.
Those are now usually done at home without a medical professional present.
Why?
Because the FDA recklessly chose to end required in-person doctor visits for chemical abortions. YouTube refused to fix its error to reflect the truth.
Only after a group of 16 state attorneys general threatened legal action on March 4 did YouTube correct the record by making a stealth edit.
This pattern of social media giants manipulating public information has become all too familiar. And it’s a reminder that, sometimes, only government officials have the power to keep these corporate giants in check.
Interestingly, YouTube’s original disclaimer shined a light on why ADF attorneys filed suit against the FDA in a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. We are asking the Court to protect women’s health by restoring critical safety standards on abortion drugs that the FDA discarded.
When the FDA first approved abortion drugs, it required at least three in-person doctor visits. But in 2016, it reduced that requirement to one doctor visit and then, in 2021, scrapped that visit, too.
It made these changes illegally and without a single scientific study to back them up. The grim result is that today, under the FDA’s protocols, women typically take abortion drugs at home, away from medical help.
This is no small trend — we’re talking about the majority of abortions in America.
If more women knew this, they would be appalled at the utter disregard for their health and safety by government officials who are supposed to be protecting them.
If a woman seeks a chemical abortion, a doctor is no longer required to see her in person to check for an ectopic pregnancy, determine gestational age, or see her afterward to check for serious complications like severe bleeding and life-threatening infections.
This despite the fact that the FDA’s own label says that roughly one in 25 women who take these drugs will go to the emergency room.
Doctors are seeing the impact on women firsthand. No wonder they are the ones we represent in the suit against the FDA.
These kinds of abuses of government power are why it is so vital to have a free and open public square, including social media platforms that allow us to freely shine light on the truth.
Unfortunately, YouTube hid the truth until it was no longer in their interest to do so.
The 16 state attorneys general, led by Iowa, who sent the letter to YouTube expressed their grave disappointment in seeing the "platform suppress pro-life and pro-woman messages."
They wrote, "We expect YouTube will recognize the serious harm its notice poses and promptly remove or correct it.
"If no action is taken, however, we will have no choice but to exercise our consumer protection authority to protect pregnant women and other consumers from your falsehoods."
Americans have become all too accustomed to Big Tech companies like YouTube manipulating public information to misrepresent the truth.
As we now know, during the COVID-19 pandemic, government and social media companies actively colluded to suppress views on the virus that turned out to be correct. After the leak of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022), Google began actively censoring search results to exclude anti-abortion pregnancy centers.
Recently, Google’s new AI platform, Gemini, has come under fire for feeding extreme ideological bias and dishonesty. YouTube’s dishonesty is part of a pattern.
Americans rely on social media more than ever to get their news and public health information. When corporate gatekeepers actively hide or misrepresent the truth, our society as a whole suffers. And, in this particular case, it is women who suffered.
Women deserve to know the risks of chemical abortion.
Let’s hope social media giants like YouTube start to realize that they can’t get away with misrepresenting the truth.
Kristen Waggoner is CEO, president, and general counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom. Follow Kristen on Twitter @KWaggonerADF or follow ADF @ADFLegal.