Facebook has become a major communications network for people of all ages throughout the world. Created as a way to allow high school friends to keep in touch after heading to college, the social media site has erupted into a place where people are free to bully and free to create offensive, harmful pages. One such page is simply titled “Abortions.”
Despite countless e-mails to Facebook to remove the page, Facebook refuses. It doesn’t consider the page offensive or involved in hate speech despite the fact that the page’s creator continuously posts pictures of a girl who lives with Progeria, calling her ugly and comparing her to vampires. But the Abortions page’s main purpose is to make light of abortion, from comments about all aborted babies being in hell to cartoons of a man kicking a pregnant woman in the belly. The page has over 7,000 likes.
Melissa Ohden, abortion survivor and pro-life speaker, says the following about Abortions on Facebook:
The disconnect on this page is striking. To me, it’s symptomatic of our culture. So many people believe they are exceptional, but they never believe that they could have easily been an exception (unplanned, expected to have a disability, etc) and therefore aborted.
The administrators believe that abortion is necessary. They believe that in the first and second trimesters, the unborn child is nothing but “skin cells.” And they are sharing these warped, uneducated opinions with vulnerable young people on Facebook every day.
Ohden isn’t surprised by the page, as it isn’t anything she hasn’t seen before. She says:
As an abortion survivor, I’m appalled but not surprised by this page and others like it. The Internet and social media create positive opportunities for educating and networking, but likewise, create the opportunity for people to engage in de-humanizing behaviors. Not surprisingly, most of these people, when given the opportunity to say something face to face to me, other survivors, or the individuals and families that they target on their page, wouldn’t say these things. They say they would, but experience has shown me that they wouldn’t. It is ‘safe’ for them to act this way on the internet.
It turns out that their reach is going beyond Facebook. The two page administrators don’t stop at calling aborted babies “lumps of meat,” posting pictures of just-born babies in toilets, or attacking a child with disabilities online; they recently spoke on a radio show, sharing their opinion of abortion with anyone who would listen. They consider themselves pro-abortion, saying it is the correct choice because of overpopulation (although one of them says that there is room on the planet and resources, too). They also suggest that men slip abortion pills into their pregnant partners’ breakfast. They go on to compare unborn children to pigs, leaving the radio hosts momentarily speechless. They even promote infanticide, calling it morally acceptable.
During the radio show, one of the administrators thinks he’s blown our minds by saying that we’re killing potential life any moment that we aren’t having sex. He says that there is no difference between adult pigs and newborn babies, and when the radio host responds that the baby has more potential than the pig, the administrator argues unsuccessfully that anyone who is currently not having sex at this very moment is therefore aborting potential life.
While we can hope that the absurdity of the Abortions page won’t influence anyone, it is likely that its posts, which can be seen when a friend comments on them, will affect some young Facebook users.
Whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life, you should find the Abortions page offensive, just as it is likely offensive to abortion survivors, women who regret their abortions, and people with disabilities. Report the page to Facebook. Our voices will change the way the world views abortion and the level of respect we show for others.
