(LifeSiteNews) — The attorneys general of 16 states put far-left, Google-owned video giant YouTube on notice to stop attaching disclaimers to pro-life videos falsely presenting them as misleading.
The Daily Signal reports that the top law enforcement officials of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming have signed a joint letter to YouTube Chief Executive Officer Neal Mohan accusing the platform of “deceiving consumers” on facts the U.S. Supreme Court will soon litigate pertaining to whether abortion pills should be dispensed without medical supervision.
Such action, the AGs warn, could potentially require states to “exercise our consumer-protection authority to protect pregnant women and other consumers from your falsehoods” and would strip the company of its “immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,” a federal law that exempts internet companies from liability for the content third parties publish on their websites, on the premise that companies are only responsible for content they actively review.
Specifically, the letter concerns a video by pro-life legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) concerning the impending Supreme Court review of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) abortion pill rules. The video tells the story of a woman named Elizabeth who suffered “intense pain and prolonged bleeding” from taking abortion pills without “a doctor or a nurse to help her navigate her suffering.” ADF states that “[e]ver since the FDA removed virtually all of its safety standards, many women and girls are at an increased risk of going through the same pain that Elizabeth did.”
As of the time of the letter, the video had a “context” note added by YouTube stating that abortion, whether by “medicine or surgery,” is “done by a licensed healthcare professional,” which the AGs maintain “minimizes and downplays some of the serious risks of abortion drugs” via the “both false and misleading” implication that chemical abortions are not done without medical supervision – which is the key point of contention in the legal case against the FDA rule change.
The context note has since been amended to remove the claim. As of March 6, it now reads: “An abortion is a procedure to end a pregnancy. It can be done two different ways: Medication abortion, which uses medicines to end the pregnancy. It is sometimes called a ‘medical abortion’ or ‘abortion with pills.’ Procedural abortion, a procedure to remove the pregnancy from the uterus. It is sometimes called a ‘surgical abortion.’”
“Your bias against pro-life and pro-woman messages is un-American; inconsistent with the liberties protected by the First Amendment; and, in this case, illegal. It must stop,” reads the letter, led by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird.
“Women deserve to know the truth about the dangers of chemical abortion pills,” Bird later told the Signal. “For YouTube to attach deceptive labels to videos of women sharing their testimonies after suffering from at-home abortion drugs is a disservice to women everywhere. YouTube must end its blatant misinformation campaign that puts women at risk and quit targeting pro-life messages.”
A 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”
Pro-lifers warn that with the Biden administration completely eliminating requirements that abortion pills be taken under any medical supervision or with medical support close by, those events are certain to increase.
“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” wrote Catholic University of America research associate Michael New. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”
In November 2022, Operation Rescue reported that a net decrease of 36 abortion facilities in 2022 led to the lowest number in almost 50 years, yet the chemical abortion business “surged” with 64 percent of new facilities built last year specializing in dispensing mifepristone and misoprostol. Citing data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, STAT News says that mifepristone “accounts for roughly half of all abortions in the U.S.”