Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) responded Monday to Twitter’s refusal to run her Senate campaign ad due to its mention of Planned Parenthood’s sale of “unborn baby body parts” which it deemed offensive. Blackburn called out Twitter’s “double standard” pointing out that they show NFL players protesting during the national anthem but they won’t show a “pro-life, pro-women” message.
"It is astounding to me that Twitter, which is an important outlet, would choose not only to censor a political ad but that they would censor a pro-life message,” she told Fox News.
“This is a pro-women, pro-baby, pro-life message,” she emphasized, “and yes indeed as chairman of the Select Investigative Panel, the work that our committee did stopped this practice of selling baby body parts.”
Blackburn said Twitter had told her that the ad was “too inflammatory and that it would evoke a negative response” but that “if I were to take that out, omit the pro-life part, then they would allow us to push forward that video.”
Fox’s Brian Kilmeade pointed out that Twitter accepted an advertisement from the abortion advocacy group NARAL which said “the GOP’s 20 week abortion ban will harm women and families and criminalize doctors for providing routine care.” Kilmeade said to some that might be considered offensive but Twitter allowed that ad.
"It is a double standard,” Blackburn said, “and while they doubled down and issued a second statement today, they disallowed my video, I said, 'Look, I'm just doubling down on the fact that, yes, I am pro-life, and I stand by my message.'"
The pro-life organization Live Action ran into similar problems with Twitter in June and were told, in order to be allowed to advertise, they had to “delete all tweets related to: the group’s undercover investigations; the Center for Medical Progress undercover investigations; images and videos of abortion procedures, including but not limited to late-term abortions; content related to defunding Planned Parenthood, including petitions; ultrasound images; and any links to sections of the Live Action website containing videos with any of the above content.”
Blackburn was the chair of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives which was created following the release of undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in summer of 2015 that appeared to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the harvesting of unborn baby parts for profit. When the videos were initially released in 2015, even Hillary Clinton called the footage “disturbing.”