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| Abby Johnson Photo credit: American Life League / Flickr |
The Trump campaign told Breitbart News that Sandman's appearance will demonstrate the dangers of "cancel culture." They wouldn't be wrong with that assessment. A pro-life student from Covington Catholic High School, Nick Sandmann was shown repeatedly in the national news, talk shows, and social media after a clip from the January 2019 March for Life rally in Washington D.C. went viral.
He was shown standing and smiling at a Native American man who approached his class while beating on his drum and chanting. Sandmann's expression was viewed as a disrespectful smirk by many, but the truth was that he was simply trying to defuse a complex situation. The clip initially shared online was designed to make people believe that the students were mocking the Native American man, but that simply wasn't the truth.
When several news outlets continued to spread false information about him and his classmates after eyewitnesses and additional video evidence vindicated their story, Nick filed lawsuits against them. In January 2020, CNN and Sandmann settled a $275 million lawsuit.
Abby Johnson is a former clinic director from Planned Parenthood who left the organization and joined the pro-life movement in 2009. Now she leads a non-profit organization called And Then There Were None, which helps workers leave the abortion industry. Her story was turned into the successful film Unplanned, despite initial dishonest treatment by social media and the entertainment industry.
Three days after Unplanned hit movie theaters nationwide, the film's Twitter account was suspended for unknown reasons. After it was reinstated, the account had lost followers and some Twitter users reported that they were unable to follow the account for a short time.
As a final injustice, Unplanned was scrubbed from the Hallmark Channel's showing of the Movieguide award show. Lead actress Ashley Bratcher had given a speech at the in-person event, but all mentions of the film and her address were completely scrubbed from the show when it initially aired on television. Hallmark issued an apology and had the show re-edited to include Unplanned, but the initial censorship of her message didn't go unnoticed.
