It’s good to know that our public debate on abortion and human life is being regulated by the experts at a social media network known best for meme-posting. The pro-life group Live Action found itself blocked from Pinterest this morning, supposedly for purveying “misinformation” about abortion. The group and its executive director, Lila Rose, announced that the platform had confirmed its decision to bar Live Action:

.@Pinterest has just permanently BANNED Live Action, claiming we are causing "immediate and detrimental effects on Pinner's health or public safety." #LifeCensored pic.twitter.com/jTBLurzI4j — Live Action (@LiveAction) June 11, 2019

What’s the bad advice — that abortion has risks, too, especially to the baby? That abortion clinics don’t follow laws meant to protect young girls from sexual exploitation? Those aren’t disputed at all; in fact, Live Action has done significant work in documenting both. On video. And with supporting documentation, including — as Lila points out — from doctors, especially former abortionists.

More to the point, if Pinterest had an issue with a specific claim Live Action made, then perhaps their citation of the CDC and WHO might make some sense. Barring them entirely without any specific citation makes it sound as though the pro-life point of view in general is considered harmful and dangerous. What’s the citation for that, and what science backs it up? The memesters at Pinterest likely can’t produce any — which makes this just a heavy-handed attempt at silencing a viewpoint they simply don’t like.

There’s more evidence of that motivation, too. It’s not just that the group is barred from using their official account. As Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe reports this morning, a whistleblower reports that Pinterest had LiveAction.org on its ‘porn’ blocklist since February of this year. That would have prevented all Pinterest users from linking anything at the Live Action domain. After O’Keefe began asking questions, Pinterest suddenly removed the group from its blocklist:

BREAKING: A whistleblower at @Pinterest has shared documentation with @Project_Veritas that Pinterest added https://t.co/XumKMsJEoa to a “porn block list,” despite staff knowing we are a pro-life group, censoring our life-affirming content pic.twitter.com/T40FcMN9Yi — Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) June 11, 2019

O’Keefe’s investigative interest might have prompted the decision to ban Live Action from the site. It’s nothing more than viewpoint suppression — and in this case a mainstream viewpoint in a country where a third or more people identify as pro-life. Barring Live Action from pinning memes on the basis of harmful impacts to the “health” of Pinners is absurd, unless the pinning of memes themselves potentially and directly harms one’s physical health.

Basically, Pinterest is arguing that their users are too stupid to think for themselves and to seek out information for informed choice. It’s a paternalistic approach to speech platforms, and unfortunately one that has become all too common among those who manage them. Resorting to a porn-block list to silence Live Action’s point of view shows just how insecure the social-media elites really are — and how much they despise their own customers.