YouTube Temporarily Removes Pro-Life Abortion Procedure Explanation Video

Photo credit: Rego Korosi / Flickr

On Friday, August 7, YouTube (which is owned by Google) removed a 4-year old video describing different abortion procedures. The video posted by the pro-life organization Live Action, which quickly went to Twitter to criticize the removal. The video has since been reinstated, but not before adding fuel to the already-roaring argument about tech companies censoring conservative ideas.

"@YouTube just DELETED one of our Abortion Procedures videos, which had over 1.8 million views, claiming it violated 'Community Guidelines,'" Live Action President Lila Rose said on Twitter. "The video has been live since 2016, includes medically accurate animations of abortion & is narrated by a former abortionist."

The temporarily-removed video is a compilation of three other videos on Live Action's YouTube channel, but none of those original videos were removed in this incident. The videos describe abortion procedures that abortionists would use on unborn children during each trimester of development, and they are narrated by former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino.

Live Action says that these videos have also faced suppression by YouTube before when a tech writer for Slate complained that searching "abortion" on the video-sharing website placed Live Action's medically accurate pro-life content near the top of search results. Google responded by altering its search algorithm, and now simply searching the word "abortion" on YouTube doesn't display Live Action videos at all. This seems to be deliberate suppression since Live Action's videos have over a million more views than the top eight search results, which include a video by Planned Parenthood.

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