As Parliament prepares to include abortion in the Constitution, small anti-abortion groups continue to fight against this right. According to a report released by the Women’s Foundation on Wednesday, January 17, anti-abortion movements have moved from websites that seek to appear first in search results to social networks.
Anti-abortion activists now target young people
According to this study conducted by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), their goal is trick women researching abortion, spreading false information on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.
A change which, according to the Women’s Foundation, occurred after the adoption of obstruction crime to online abortion, in 2017, the year of the tightening of the crime of digital obstacle to abortion. Disinformation sites no longer dominated the first pages of Google searches. To rebuild their lives, anti-abortion groups then migrated to social networks, in particular, to be close to younger people.
“Anti-abortion mobilization primarily takes the form of false information, misleading statements about abortion, and shocking and dissuasive content.”, the DSI notes in the report. The institute provides examples of messages containing “ misleading statements about the alleged suffering of the aborted fetus, the side effects of abortion, and incorrect descriptions of the abortion procedure ».
The silence of the platforms questioned
For several years, pro-abortion associations have denounced the silence of social networks, which sometimes, like Facebook, transmit openly anti-abortion messages. The fault, according to the report, is the absence of common standards between platforms. And for good reason, according to the ISD, some anti-abortion organizations finance advertisements aimed at young women, aged 13 and up, for sums that can go Up to 40,000 euros per year.
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Instagram has already been singled out for its laxity on the issue, with Meta not regulating publications that spread false information about abortion. YouTube is the only platform to have strict rules on the matter. But according to the report, this sometimes happens poorly applied.
“These deceptive tactics, combined with their algorithmic amplification, prevent social media users from having reliable and safe information about reproductive health”, notes the DSI report. Second Anne-Cécile Mailfertpresident of the Women’s Foundation“We must fully embrace the constitutionalization of abortion. To support the right and freedom to have an abortion, we must counter this large-scale spread of false information. »
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
