By Dave Andrusko
You have to hand it to them. The anti-Abortion Reversal Pill contingent just keeps plowing head, garnering headlines such as āThe latest social media misinformation: Abortion reversal pills.ā
The subhead makes the āmisinformationā label seem almost polite:
āAfter Dobbs, platformsā uneven moderation approaches let an unproven ātreatmentā to reverse a medication abortion.
Right out of the chute, POLITICOās Rebecca Kern and Ruth Reader lay out the lowlights of their case:
Social media companies are grappling with a flood of misinformation on an unexpected topic since Roe v. Wade was overturned: Posts promoting āabortion reversal pills.ā
The dangerous and unproven treatment is being touted as a way for a pregnant person to halt a medication abortion before it can take effect. And while claims about these pills have existed on social media for years, theyāre getting a lot more traction with users.
āDangerousā? At one point in times, the pro-aborts were largely content to ignore Abortion Pill Reversal. You know āFake science.ā Hardly worth bothering with.
But not anymore.
The usual suspects are very nervous because APR is getting āa lot more traction with users.ā Facebook, for example, āsaw a dramatic spike of 3,500 interactions with āabortion reversal pillā content on June 24āāthe day Dobbs was handed down.
When you read these advocacy stories, pretending to be ānewsā or ānews analysis,ā the way to understand them is that they tell you the ādangers,ā make not the slightest concession that maybe, just maybe, they arenāt as dangerous as they suggest, before coming to ācorrect conclusionāāsomething āmust be done about this.ā
For example, according to Kern and Reader
This type of content falls into a gray area in many social media platformsā policies about how to handle misinformation ā one where definitive research doesnāt exist and the level of danger is unclear. As a result, theyāre struggling to find the right approach and sometimes allowing abortion-reversal content even as they block posts about how to obtain medication abortions.
Itās a predicament that highlights the unique challenges facing companies from Facebook to Twitter and YouTube as they try to moderate mistruths about abortion on their sites without inserting themselves into a highly politicized debate.
This is serious. Chemical abortionsāāmedication abortionsāānow make up more than half of the abortions performed in this country. āMisinformation researchers say the increase in abortion reversal content appears to be sowing doubt and confusion online, muddying the waters around the effectiveness of medication abortions, which pregnant people can still obtain through the mail even in states that have banned the procedure.ā
What to do next? Call in the āexpertsāāthe pro-abortion āAmerican College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists the nationās leading organization of reproductive health clinicians,
has said the reversal treatment is not supported by science and can cause dangerous hemorrhaging. And a 2019 trial evaluating abortion reversal treatment with progesterone ended early due to three participants experiencing high levels of internal bleeding.
NRLCās Randall K. OāBannon has debunked this study on numerous occasions. But confident that theyāll be never be called to task, pro-abortionists again and again trot out the 2019 study as definitive āproofā that APR not only doesnāt work but is dangerous.
However if you plow through the entire story you find there really are āremediesā that risk womenās lives and health. Only they are from pro-abortionists!
Overall, the largest platforms have removed more content related to potentially dangerous herbal treatments from abortion rights groups, and less content about abortion reversal treatments from anti-abortion groups, said Jenna Sherman, a program manager at Meedanās Digital Health Lab, a global tech non-profit focused on health misinformation research.
āItās good that any posts about natural remedies for abortion are being regulated, but itās concerning that theyāre being overly regulated in comparison to anti-choice rhetoric, which is also very harmful,ā she said.
Right. Sure. Of course.
The abortion industry will palm off its usual list of lies. What else is new?
But once in a while reporters will mention the really dangerous stuff even if the pro-abortionists have the last word.
Thatās progress!
