Instagram, Facebook Under Fire for Censoring Posts From Abortion Pill Providers

Instagram and Facebook have recently taken steps to blur, block, or remove posts from abortion pill providers, according to The New York Times. Abortion providers say that censorship on the platforms has intensified over the past two weeks, particularly in the days following Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Instagram has also suspended several accounts linked to these providers, making them unsearchable and removing them from recommendations.

Aid Access, one of the biggest abortion pill providers in the U.S., said its posts started getting taken down from Facebook and blurred on Instagram beginning in November. The organization has been unable to access its Facebook account since November, and its Instagram account was suspended last week, though it was recently reinstated.

Just this past week, the accounts of other abortion pill providers, Women Help Women and Just The Pill, were also suspended. According to the providers, Meta — which owns both of the social media platforms — said that the suspensions occurred because the accounts allegedly violated the company’s “Community Standards on guns, drugs and other restricted goods.” Although abortion pills are not currently classified as a federally restricted good, Project 2025, which Trump is using as a blueprint for his administration, aims to change that. Both accounts have since been reinstated.

Rebecca Davis, head of marketing at abortion pill provider Hey Jane, told The New York Times that the company’s Instagram account recently became unsearchable on the platform, noting that a similar issue occurred in 2023 but was later resolved by Meta.

Meta has previously faced criticism for suppressing posts from abortion providers. In June 2024, an Amnesty International report revealed that the company was not upholding international human rights standards, citing its removal of abortion-related content without clear explanations or sufficient transparency about these decisions.

“When tech companies remove abortion-related information, they can intensify barriers to accessing information and lead to discrimination and human rights violations against people who can become pregnant,” Jane Eklund, Tech and Reproductive Rights Fellow with Amnesty International USA, said in June 2024. “Access to accurate and unbiased information about abortion is an essential part of reproductive healthcare, and tech companies must do better to ensure their users can access that information.”

The recent suppression of abortion providers’ posts and accounts follows Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Instagram and Facebook would eliminate third-party fact-checking teams, loosen hate speech policies on the platforms, and discontinue their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Although Meta has claimed that the recent moderation of abortion providers’ accounts was unrelated to its updated speech policies, the timing of these actions has sparked concerns about whether the platform has been engaging in censorship in order to appease the anti-abortion Trump administration.

“Once again, ‘freedom of speech’ doesn’t actually mean free speech, but rather speech approved by right-wing Christian nationalists,” LGBTQ legislative researcher Allison Chapman told Truthout. “We are days into the Trump presidency and businesses are already preemptively complying in order to win the favor of Trump and his cronies.”

Notably, Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration campaign, which he attended alongside other tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. All three saw their wealth reach record highs in the days after Trump’s inauguration.