This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partners at Maryland Matters. Sign up for Maryland Matters’ free email subscription today.
In the new landscape of abortion discourse following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-8th) and other Democrats are calling on top social media sites to combat potentially harmful misinformation related to abortion access and procedures.
On Dec. 7, Raskin and 12 other Democratic members of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability sent letters addressed to Elon Musk, the chairman and chief technology officer of the social media site formerly known as Twitter, now called X, and Mark Zuckerberg, chairman and chief executive officer of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, calling on them to combat the spread of misinformation on abortion.
“We are troubled by the rapid spread of abortion misinformation and disinformation on your company’s social media platform… and the threat this development poses to safe abortion access in the United States,” Raskin, ranking member of the committee, and the other lawmakers wrote.
The letters instructed Musk and Zuckerberg to provide a briefing regarding the steps their companies are taking to address abortion misinformation and disinformation on their platforms no later than Thursday.
A senior aide with House oversight committee told Maryland Matters that representatives from X have responded to the letter and participated in a briefing with the committee as of Friday morning. The aide said Meta is also cooperating with the committee and a meeting with Meta will occur soon.
But requesting that Meta and X reign in abortion misinformation online reignites questions about the responsibility of social media sites when it comes to the spread of misinformation and how to balance that responsibility with the First Amendment and freedom of speech for users.
The oversight committee’s letter raises concerns about an increase in presence of anti-abortion messaging following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end federal protections for the procedure.
“As the legal status of abortion changes across the country and a number of state legislatures impose drastic new restrictions on health care choices, people seeking information about abortion care and services turn to X for accurate and reliable information — not propaganda,” the letter to Musk says. The letter addressed to Zuckerberg says the same regarding Facebook and Instagram.
As abortion access changes across the United States, Gov. Wes Moore (D) has positioned Maryland as a “safe haven” for people seeking to terminate their pregnancies, which could lead to people from out of state to seek abortion services in Maryland.
The letter sent to Zuckerberg and Meta says that Facebook and Instagram are “rife with posts and advertisements containing false information about reversing medication abortion by a so-called ‘abortion pill reversal.’”
According to a 2022 report from Politico, shortly after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many users of social media platforms saw an increase of such advertisements: “A POLITICO analysis of abortion-reversal content across the major social media platforms showed engagement — such as liking, reposting or commenting — increased significantly after the Dobbs decision. Facebook, for example, saw a dramatic spike of 3,500 interactions with ‘abortion reversal pill’ content on June 24 — the day of the Supreme Court decision — up from 20 interactions on June 23, according to data compiled using CrowdTangle, a social media analysis tool.”
The typical medical abortion procedure is a two-step process. The process starts with taking Mifepristone, and then a second medication called Misoprostol is taken a day or two later. Mifepristone is currently at the center of another Supreme Court case, which place limitations on the accessibility of the abortion pill.
Abortion Pill Rescue Network claims that someone who has regrets after taking mifepristone can “reverse” its effect by taking large amounts of progesterone instead of taking the second pill.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that using progesterone to reverse the effects of mifepristone is “not based on science and do not meet clinical standards.” The group also notes that a 2020 attempt to study medication abortion reversal in a controlled and an ethically reviewed setting ended early due to safety concerns, which included hemorrhages among three participants.
Meanwhile, the letter sent out to Musk and the X Corp. claims that the social media site called X has an “apparent double-standard when it comes to removing posts you label ‘abortion advocacy’…while allowing crisis pregnancy centers and anti-abortion advocates to spread false and misleading information regarding abortion.”
Crisis pregnancy centers tend to be anti-abortion clinics that aim to discourage pregnant people from seeking abortions and instead urge them to carry out their pregnancy to term, but have long been scrutinized for providing misleading information to clients about abortion.
The letter notes that some videos and posts have been removed for advocating access for abortion, yet “posts spreading false information about abortion,” are allowed to remain on Musk’s platform.
Sharon Blugis, executive director of Reproductive Justice Maryland, said that the pro-abortion organization uses Instagram to spread the word about abortion access in the state and to counteract anti-abortion messaging.
Blugis said that while it’s not ideal that people look for pregnancy and abortion information on platforms like Facebook, Instagram or X, “this is the reality.”
She says that working with social media platforms such as Instagram helps give her insight into what the general public knows or have misconceptions about regarding reproductive health, periods, miscarriages or genetic anomalies that can make a pregnancy incompatible with life.
Blugis noted that the concerns regarding anti-abortion messaging from crisis pregnancy centers is a “long time issue” for them, but the issue runs into potential challenges to the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
“Every once in a while, we go ‘we should do something about that with the Maryland Legislature, we should make it where they can’t do X, Y and Z.’ But the problem is when you do something like that, they can use that against you, as well, because those are First Amendment issues.”
As meetings between Meta, X Corp. and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee continue, the question of how to balance the right to freedom of speech and the responsibility of platforms to protect users from harmful medical misinformation will likely be a point of discussion.
