Fight Abortion Censorship
Laws that will censor abortion content are spreading across the country. Our lawmakers must defend free speech from anti-abortion attacks.
Anti-abortion activists want to control what we can see and say online. Tell state and federal lawmakers to protect our freedom of speech from anti-abortion censorship laws and defend Section 230.
Anti-abortion extremists aren’t just trying to control our bodies. They want to control the internet, too. Now that Roe is overturned, new laws are popping up all over the country to prohibit websites from sharing abortion content. Tell lawmakers to oppose censorship laws and defend Section 230, the last line of defense against abortion censorship online.
In South Carolina, lawmakers want to make it illegal to share abortion information online or provide an internet service that is “reasonably likely” to host information that could be used for an abortion. The blueprint bill comes from a national anti-abortion group, and we expect this extreme censorship language will quickly spread across anti-abortion states.
Section 230, which shields platforms from liability for the content their users post, is the only backstop preventing platforms from being sued for hosting abortion speech. If Section 230 is chipped away, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and others would opt to censor reproductive health content rather than deal with a deluge of lawsuits.
Lawmakers must stick their necks out for free speech before anti-abortion extremists set the rules for the internet nationwide. Tell lawmakers to fight radical censorship bills and defend Section 230!
Here’s where abortion censorship bills are advancing across the country.
Abortion censorship bills are currently taking two forms.
- Texas, Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma have passed or are actively considering bills like Texas’s SB8, which encourages citizens to sue anyone who knowingly “aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.” This language opens a legal quagmire for platforms, because people could allege that platforms are “knowingly aiding” abortions by hosting abortion-related content. Bills like SB8 push platforms to censor abortion speech out of fear of litigation.
- South Carolina is considering a bill that would more directly censor abortion speech from the internet. Their bill is based on a national anti-abortion group’s model legislation. It would make it illegal to host a website or provide an online service that includes information that is “reasonably likely to be used for an abortion,” and is directed at pregnant people in the state.
- Other states, like Louisiana, have introduced abortion censorship bills but they died in committee when the legislative year ended. We’ll keep tracking new bills as they’re introduced when state legislative sessions reopen.