Opinion
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October 17, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – I work for a pro-life marketing agency called Choose Life Marketing. We provide marketing services to pro-life pregnancy centers all over the country, helping them reach abortion-minded women in their communities with life-affirming services and help.

On October 15, we logged into our Facebook Business Manager account like any other day to check on the ads we run for these pregnancy centers. At the top of the screen was a notice that our account had been restricted because we apparently “violated Facebook’s advertising policies.”

Immediately, we reviewed all of the policies and could find none that we had violated. Confused, we submitted a request to have our account reviewed. Shockingly, we received a notice that it could take weeks for us to receive an answer.

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This means for weeks, we won’t be able to run Facebook or Instagram ads for the pregnancy centers we serve. As paying customers of Facebook, it is appalling our account was locked without reason and their only answer for us is it might take weeks to hear back from them.

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But the real victims of Facebook’s actions are abortion-vulnerable women.

When women find out they are pregnant unexpectedly, they often panic and feel pressure immediately from their partner, friends, and/or family to abort. They also begin searching for abortion information online.

Our inability to run ads on two of the largest social media platforms these women use means they may not find out about the alternatives to abortion available to them. They won’t hear about the compassionate, caring pregnancy center staff who can listen to their fears and concerns about an unplanned pregnancy. They won’t learn about the free resources available to them if they choose life.

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The only option they’ll hear about is abortion, which has lasting negative impact on their lives — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Facebook will be responsible for women missing out on the care they need and deserve in one of the darkest, scariest moments of their lives.

But that’s not all.

Our pregnancy center clients also utilize our social advertising services to reach their donors, people who help fund their life-saving work. In 2020, like other organizations and businesses, pregnancy centers have felt the economic impact of the lockdowns for COVID-19 and need to raise money now more than ever. For many of our clients, Facebook has taken away part of their ability to do so. 

Facebook’s censorship of pro-life companies like ours and nonprofit organizations like the Susan B. Anthony List is troubling. It is also costing lives. We hope other senators and congressmen will join Senator Josh Hawley in calling out Big Tech for their discrimination and unreasonable restriction of our advertising accounts and social media posts. And we hope they do it soon, so lives can continue being saved and women can continue learning about the life-affirming resources available to them.

Marcie Little is the Content Marketing Manager at Choose Life Marketing. She oversees all content-writing and social media efforts at Choose Life to help pregnancy centers serve more abortion-minded women.