Facebook removes abortion pill posts in US
June 29, 2022
Facebook is blocking posts in the United States in which users ask for abortion pills, while posts about illegal substances remain online. This comes after the US Supreme court voted to reverse the federal right to abortions in the country.
On Monday, the Associated Press reported on the discrepancy in how Facebook treats abortion pills and illegal drugs. Meta, Facebook's parent company, replied to the report, saying the company had "discovered some instances of incorrect enforcement and are correcting these," according to company spokesperson Andy Stone.
By Wednesday, Facebook was still blocking posts about abortion pills.
When posting from an account located in Atlanta, Georgia, "Looking to get abortion pills mailed to my PO Box. Please DM," the post was removed within less than 30 seconds, DW found. A message said the request violated Facebook's community standards on regulated goods. Abortion is legal in the state of Georgia up to the 22nd week of pregnancy.
A test from the same account that asked the same question but about the drug MDMA rather than abortion pills averted censorship requirements.
Where Meta stands on mail-in drugs
Facebook claims that it regulates posts on illegal substances according to its community guidelines.
Information "About Promotion of Prescription Drugs" posted on the company's help page says Facebook does permit the promotion of prescription drugs — with authorization. And "online pharmacies, telehealth providers, and Pharmaceutical Manufacturers" are eligible to apply.
But abortion pills are not prescribed in the United States. They can be legally obtained over the counter and by mail in most states. MDMA, however, is illegal in all 50 US states.
Federal regulations also allow for the delivery of abortion pills by mail. Still, 19 states in the US passed their own laws requiring the presence of a medical clinician to administer them. More Republican-led states in the US plan to block access to the pills in the coming months.
President Joe Biden's top health official said Tuesday that his team would work to ensure that medication abortions remain available to women. Xavier Becerra said the abortion pill would be a core channel to abortion access for the Biden administration.
"Medication abortion has been approved by the FDA for years and is safe for patients," he said.
More than half of abortions in the US are administered via pill, according to research conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
Meta censors employee conversations about abortion
Meta's lack of clarity around its own community guidelines relating to abortion pills access reflects a broader debate around abortion within the company's own walls.
Stone previously indicated that the company intended to assist employees forced to travel out of state should they be unable to terminate their pregnancies in their home states.
"We intend to offer travel expense reimbursements, to the extent permitted by law, for employees who will need them to access out-of-state health care and reproductive services. We are in the process of assessing how best to do so given the legal complexities involved," Stone told broadcaster CBS via email.
When a draft opinion indicating that the Supreme Court was likely to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked in May, Meta reportedly began to prohibit conversations about abortion in the workplace. People at Meta, who chose to remain anonymous, told The New York Times that managers referred them to a May 12 memo citing company policy that put "strong guardrails around social, political and sensitive conversations."
In the May 12 memo, obtained by the US newspaper, Meta took the position that it would "not allow open discussion" on grounds that such conversations had a "heightened risk of creating a hostile work environment."
A Meta employee also shed light on the company's internal policy in a post on LinkedIn, days after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
"On our internal Workplace platform, moderators swiftly remove posts or comments mentioning abortion. ... Limited discussion can only happen in groups of up to 20 employees who follow a set playbook, but not out in the open," wrote Ambroos Vaes, a Meta engineer.
Edited by: Sean Sinico