Why Google and Facebook are the biggest threats to the British pro-life movement

AUTUMN APPEAL

Dear SPUC supporter,

I’m sure you are familiar with our opponents' efforts to silence the pro-life message by denying activists the right to free speech and assembly.

Most notably this is taking the form of draconian ‘buffer zone’ laws which threaten pro-lifers with substantial fines, or indeed imprisonment, simply for offering vulnerable women eleventh-hour support to keep their babies.
Offering women alternatives to abortion is now a CRIME in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Another 'buffer zone' bill has been lodged with the Scottish Parliament by Green MSP Gillian Mackay, with the first vote expected later this month.

However, the trend towards chemical abortions coupled with Parliament’s sanctioning of the abortion pills-by-post scheme last year (2022), has seen the number of women having their abortions at clinics fall significantly.

This means that new WAYS must be found to reach women who are considering abortions

One such opportunity lies with accessing the Internet, not least because online platforms have the potential to reach many thousands of vulnerable women.

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But a far bigger obstacle preventing us from having conversations with vulnerable women comes in the guise of “Big Tech”.

The truth is the likes of Google and Facebook are no friends of unborn children and the pro-life movement.
Censorship and the Irish abortion referendum
In 2018, the Irish people voted in the nation’s abortion referendum.

A previous referendum in 2002, had failed to legalise abortion, albeit narrowly.

Shockwaves were sent through the pro-life movement when 2 in 3 (66.4%) voted in favour of striking down the pro-life amendment in the Irish constitution which had guaranteed unborn children the right to life.

Frankly, none of us had expected to lose by such a margin (if at all) and many were left wondering whether the result would have been different if Google and Facebook hadn’t interfered.

In the days leading up to the referendum, Google, announced that it was suspending all online adverts on its search engine and YouTube relating to the referendum.

This was highly significant because mainstream media coverage of the referendum had leaned heavily in favour of the YES campaign—which supported abortion legalisation—so was relatively unaffected by the ban.

However, the NO campaign, which opposed abortion, had been highly reliant on Google searches and YouTube ads to redress the balance and get out its message to the Irish people in the run-up to the vote.
Scandalous attempt to rig the referendum?
A joint statement issued at the time the ban was announced from the No campaign, said:


This decision by Google is not about "concerns about the integrity of elections”.

It is about concerns that the "No" side might win.

This campaign has been marked by attacks on every form of legitimate campaigning the NO side has taken part in, and a complete absence of scrutiny for the YES side.

Despite all of that, the polls have narrowed, and clearly there is fear in establishment Ireland that this referendum will be defeated.

That explains the massive pressure exerted on Google, Facebook, and other platforms to deny advertising space to the NO campaign.

It is scandalous, and it is an attempt to rig the referendum.

Even the Irish Times, which generally has a pro-abortion slant, seems to view the development with suspicion.

A report from the newspaper at the time stated that:


If you wanted further evidence of whom the Google move favours, look no further than the reaction of Yes campaigners and supporters, who wholeheartedly welcomed and applauded the decision.


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The Google ban followed the decision by Facebook to ban foreign-funded adverts in the campaign.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg later admitted that his company deliberately banned pro-life adverts from running on the social media site in the run-up to Ireland’s abortion referendum.
Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, admits that he was responsible for initiating the ban on social media ads during the Irish abortion referendum, putting the pro-life side at a big disadvantage.
“In Ireland in the last year there was a referendum on abortion,” he said.


"During that election leading up to that referendum, a bunch of pro-life American groups advertised…to try and influence public opinion there.

"We went to the Irish and asked folks there: ‘Well, how do you want us to handle this?

"‘You have no laws on the books that are relevant for whether we should be allowing this kind of speech in your election, and really, this doesn’t feel like the kind of thing a private company should be making a decision on.’

"And their response at the time was: ‘We don’t currently have a law, so you need to make whatever decision you want to make’.

"We ended up not allowing the ads."


Zuckerberg doesn’t say which “folks” in Ireland he spoke to about Facebook's advertising policy, but one thing is for sure, it wasn’t representatives of the pro-life NO campaign.
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The “Old-fashioned” ways work
Earlier this week I wrote to you about the success of Project Truth, a SPUC project which entirely bypasses mainstream media platforms.

It does so by striking up conversations about abortion with members of the public on the streets of Britain—an effective strategy employed by the pro-life movement well before the advent of social media.
Project Truth is the UK’s largest pro-life youth initiative.

Each summer the team visit towns and cities across the UK providing precious opportunities to start conversation and change hearts and minds.

Each event:
* Reaches around 2,000 people
* Generates 200 hours of pro-life dialogue

The next step for Project Truth will be to expand its outreach to university campuses.

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I would like to build on Project Truth’s successful template and create many more opportunities for one-to-one pro-life outreach.

Last month’s SPUC conference at Milton Keynes, saw the launch of the Heart-to-Heart project which is modelled on Project Truth’s public-facing outreach but with a number of important differences:

Heart-to-Heart will:
* Be open to volunteers of ALL ages
* Run ALL year round with the input of SPUC’s 56-strong branch network
* Enlist the support of faith groups to get the message out.

Investment in grassroots projects like Project Truth and Heart-to-Heart means that it’s possible to bypass Big Tech censorship.

With your generous financial support, we can reach thousands more people on the streets in the year ahead with an unfiltered fact-based pro-life message FREE from media distortion and bias.

It will cost approximately £400 to equip each SPUC branch for the Heart-to-Heart campaign, that’s a total of £24,000.

This will include:
* Training workshops to ensure branch members feel confident discussing sensitive issues
* Media training so that any opportunities to spread the message further are grasped should they come along
* Portable gazebos to give protection from the elements
* Pro-life literature for the public to take away.

Will you give £10 or £20 or £35 or £50 or £100 or £500 or £1,000 or £5,000 or more to DOUBLE the number of conversations that we have with the public over the next year, starting this autumn?

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Thank you for the vital role that you are playing in keeping pro-life speech free.

Yours in defence of life.

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