Twitter Censors Ad and Locks Campaign Account of Pro-Life Democratic Presidential Candidate

Late last week, Twitter censored a campaign ad and locked the presidential campaign account of Terrisa Bukovinac, a pro-life Democrat who is challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Bukovinac is the founder of both Pro-Life San Francisco and Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU). She is running for president to expose the extreme position that Joe Biden and other Democratic elected officials have on sanctity-of-life issues.

Last year, Bukovinac and another pro-life activist, Lauren Handy, recovered the remains of more than 115 aborted children outside a Washington, D.C., abortion facility. Five of the children were fully formed, and there is evidence that these aborted children may have been victims of partial-birth abortions — a violation of federal law. That said, there has been no formal investigation into the deaths of these preborn children.

One of the reasons that Bukovinac is running for president is to keep the memory of these aborted babies alive. The censored campaign ad includes graphic images of the remains of these children. Indeed, Twitter stated that the account was locked because it violated rules against “posting media depicting gratuitous gore.”

Of course, the decision by Twitter to censor the ad and lock Bukovinac’s campaign account smacks of hypocrisy. Elon Musk has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist.” He said he bought Twitter to create a space where “a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” Furthermore, on Twitter it is certainly easy to find graphic images of violence against Israeli civilians. Twitter needs to reverse its position and reinstate Bukovinac’s campaign account.

Pro-lifers have effectively used graphic images to sway public opinion in the past. Ads and pamphlets with images of aborted children helped Michigan pro-lifers defeat a proposition that would have legalized abortion in 1972. In 1976, pro-life Democrat Ellen McCormack ran for president in part to run pro-life ads on television. Because McCormack was a federal candidate, television stations were required to run the pro-life ads produced by her campaign. Bukovinac, who is on the ballot in New Hampshire, plans to use the same strategy to highlight the injustice of abortion.