Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted during a recent talk that the social media network banned a number of pro-life advertisements ahead of the Irish abortion referendum.

PJ Media reports that during a recent interview at this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg began to explain how the social media firm is attempting to work with the governments of other countries to determine what political speech should be allowed on the site. Zuckerberg gave an example of Facebook’s interaction with the Irish government ahead of a 2018 referendum on the legalization of abortion in the country.

Zuckerberg explained that American pro-life groups wanted to run Facebook ads targeted towards Irish citizens. Facebook reached out to the Irish government to determine whether or not the ads should be allowed at the time. Zuckerberg stated: “Their response at the time was, ‘we don’t currently have a law, so you need to make whatever decision you want to make.'”

“We ended up not allowing the ads,” Zuckerberg stated. Abortion activist Lila Rose commented on how Silicon Valley tech executives have reacted towards the issue of abortion in a tweet which can be seen below:

FB CEO @MarkZuckerburg blocked pro-life ads ahead of Ireland's abortion vote FB COO @sherylsandberg donated $2M to Planned Parenthood Twitter CEO @Jack banned my & @LiveAction’s pro-life ads, allows @PPFA ads, & says legal protections for preborn babies are “bad for business” pic.twitter.com/ZkrLoY9H2b — Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) July 8, 2019

Breitbart News recently reported that Facebook has been removed from Standard & Poor’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Index after the company received a score of 22 for social responsibility and only 6 for governance, out of a possible 100, scoring extremely poorly.

Reid Steadman, S&P’s social and governance chief, stated that the growing number of privacy concerns around the company including “a lack of transparency as to why Facebook collects and shares certain user information,” resulted in low scores for the firm. S&P cited the Cambridge Analytica scandal as one of the reasons for the tech giant’s poor performance.

“These events have created uncertainty about Facebook’s diligence regarding privacy protection, and the effectiveness of the company risk management processes and how the company enforces them,” Steadman said. “These issues caused the company to lag behind its peers in terms of ESG performance.”

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com