Last week, the pro-life group you founded in high school, Live Action, was targeted by YouTube. Can you please explain what happened, and how you resolved it?

YouTube removed one of Live Action’s undercover videos. It exposed how Planned Parenthood employees aided and abetted actors posing as sex traffickers prostituting 14- and 15-year-old girls. The video, titled “Perth Amboy, NJ Planned Parenthood Full Footage Part 1 of 2,” was published in 2011.

This video was removed for alleged “sexual content.” YouTube replaced it with a message. It read: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s policy on nudity or sexual content.” Live Action appealed the decision. But the appeal was rejected. After we publicized YouTube’s deletion of the video, YouTube eventually reinstated the video. Their response is below.

Was this action by YouTube part of a pattern of silencing pro-life voices on social media? What other groups or individuals have suffered?

Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified before Congress that his company does not “manually intervene” on any particular search result. But an internal discussion leaked last week reveals that Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform. This leaked “blacklist” of terms includes words like “abortion” and “abortions.” This news comes a few weeks after YouTube was caught suppressing pro-life videos, including Live Action’s. How? By deliberately pushing them out of the top search results for “abortion.”

April Glaser, a pro-abortion technology writer for Slate, got outraged when her YouTube search for the word “abortion” gave her mostly pro-life videos in the top results. So she emailed YouTube to pressure them to change the search results. YouTube says on its site that top search results are often based on videos its algorithm considers most engaging. That is, with significant view times. Shockingly, she claims YouTube took near immediate action. It changed the algorithms so Live Action’s medically accurate videos no longer made the top search results. Our video series features Dr. Anthony Levatino, a former abortionist explaining the four most common abortion procedures. Our videos and other pro-life videos were promptly down-ranked. This also buried a video featuring a woman’s personal story of being pressured to have an abortion. And even a video with famous pro-life conservative Ben Shapiro.

Twitter Also Censoring Pro-Life Speech

We have seen similar suppression from Twitter, who blocked Live Action and my accounts from any advertising. In emails to us, the company has said that our content violated its sensitive advertising content policy, which prohibits “inflammatory or provocative content which is likely to evoke a strong negative reaction.” That includes tweets of our undercover investigations into the abortion industry, tweets calling for the end of taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, and any ultrasound images of preborn children. Since many of our tweets link back to Live Action’s website, Twitter requires us to scrub our website of similar content. Or it won’t let us promote our tweets or accounts again. In other words, Twitter wants Live Action to scrub almost all of its pro-life messaging.

What’s so destructive about Twitter’s quiet suppression of our viewpoint is that it’s not just another public policy squabble. This is an issue of life or death for millions of children. So Twitter is suppressing our content from being advertised. But it’s allowing pro-abortion groups like Reproaction to advertise petitions that encourage Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to continue banning pro-life voices. So a platform with more than 300 million users chooses to take sides on issues. It suppresses certain voices and promotes others. That can have a negative impact on our national conversations, our politics, and even our laws. We should all be wary when an entity that was supposedly created to democratize speech actually wants to control it.

Planned Parenthood Helps Pimps and Rapists

Please tell Stream readers about Planned Parenthood’s involvement with human trafficking.

A study on the brutal sex trafficking trade published by the Loyola University Chicago’s Beazley Institute documents it. Sex traffickers often force their victims to get abortions and STI treatments at Planned Parenthood. So they can quickly get them back on the streets. The report notes that victims had “significant contact with clinical treatment facilities, most commonly Planned Parenthood.”

In fact, Planned Parenthood was the most-visited free-standing facility for trafficking victims. It came second only to hospital emergency rooms! Why Planned Parenthood? One survivor explained that it’s “because they didn’t ask any questions.” That’s a huge problem.

Live Action’s 2018 “Aiding Abusers” investigative report documents several court cases, state health department reports, and testimonials from former Planned Parenthood managers and employees. We document Planned Parenthood’s history and corporate culture of failing to report incidents to authorities. Even though many pregnant teens who come to the chain for abortions are under the age of legal sexual consent. That’s something that would usually trigger a report. If not out of a basic moral duty, at least out of a legal one. In many states Planned Parenthood is subject to mandatory reporting requirements.

Planned Parenthood employees help sex traffickers to get abortions and birth control for their 14- and 15-year-old victims.

The report also includes Live Action’s 2011 undercover investigative videos. We explored how Planned Parenthood responded to sex traffickers seeking services, including abortions, for their underage sex slaves. Our investigation exposed Planned Parenthood employees aiding the sex traffickers. How? By suggesting how to get abortions and birth control for their 14- and 15-year-old victims. And to avoid reporting and parental consent laws. The 2018 Aiding Abusers report catalyzed 56 Members of Congress. They requested that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigate Planned Parenthood for its alleged failure to report cases of sexual abuse of minors.

Front Line Journalism from the War on Women and Girls

How did Live Action uncover these facts?

Cecile Richards retired as the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 2018. Before that, she frequently claimed that her organization was part of the solution to sexual abuse in America. But in fact, it has been an enormous part of the problem. Victim testimonials, former employees, court documents, sex trafficking victims, and our 2008 and 2011 and undercover investigations proved it. Planned Parenthood is part of the problem. How does a criminal cover up evidence of his sex crime? Abortion.

Planned Parenthood frequently attempts to establish itself as a leading advocate on this critical issue. But it is actually one of the biggest accomplices to sexual abuse in the nation. Despite Planned Parenthood’s public rhetoric. Despite state and federal laws. Time and again, rather than reporting suspected abuse to authorities, Planned Parenthood looks the other way. It performs abortions on victims as young as 12 years old. Then returns those victims to the waiting arms of their abusers. Planned Parenthood’s repeated failure to report such incidents has allowed abusers to continue abusing their victims, often for years. This reputation has led to Planned Parenthood becoming a haven for sexual abusers and sex traffickers. Planned Parenthood is a favorite place to take their victims to cover up their crimes.

Did Planned Parenthood take legal action, and use pressure, to try to cover up your findings?

Planned Parenthood has threatened to sue us but has not taken legal action. Planned Parenthood has repeatedly told the media that our videos are “heavily edited.” That’s to suggest somehow what their employees have said in the videos wasn’t real. Many members of the media have uncritically parroted this talking point for years. Without doing their own research to see that the information Live Action has exposed is factual.

After Live Action released the undercover footage exposing Planned Parenthood employees at seven facilities aiding the sex traffickers by suggesting how to get abortions and birth control for their 14- and 15-year-old victims, the abortion chain claimed to the media that it would retrain thousands of staff members across the country to properly report suspected sexual abuse of minors to authorities. Former Sherman, TX, Planned Parenthood manager Ramona Treviño exposed this. He said that instead, the training sessions instructed staff how to identify undercover journalists like Live Action. To see whether they were being recorded.

“That experience for me left me so disgusted that I couldn’t see how Planned Parenthood could ever redeem themselves after that.” So Treviño said after attending one of the highly publicized training seminars in 2011.

Planned Parenthood cared more about protecting its image than protecting children. The abortion chain also claimed in 2011 that it had “been in contact with federal and local authorities” to identify Live Action’s suspected sex traffickers who had visited its facilities. In 2015 and 2016, Live Action made a series of Freedom of Information Act records requests of law enforcement and child protective services in the states and cities where the alleged trafficking occurred. The responses show that out of five states and Washington, D.C., only one state — Arizona — had records showing Planned Parenthood reported anything to authorities.

Big Government Sides with the Baby Parts Merchants

How have state governments colluded with Planned Parenthood to silence journalists?

Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden recorded videos in 2014 and 2015. He made them at annual meetings of the National Abortion Federation. That corporation represents abortion vendors, including affiliates of Planned Parenthood. David’s footage exposed Planned Parenthood employees discussing the sale of baby body parts. That’s an illegal act if there is any profit. California’s attorney general, then Kamala Harris and now Xavier Beccerra, sprang into action. Not against Planned Parenthood, but against David. They even raided his apartment. State prosecutors have filed charges against David. NAF and Planned Parenthood have filed petitions to the courts to successfully block the release of more footage. California has flatly refused to conduct an investigation of Planned Parenthood. This despite the hours of verified evidence CMP produced and the potential law-breaking documented on video.

You’ve long pressed for the U.S. government to strip Planned Parenthood of funding. How much did they get this past year?

Planned Parenthood received over $500 million last year from taxpayers – $1.5 million every day.

Why couldn’t a Republican Congress fulfill Donald Trump’s campaign promise and strip that?

With only 51 pro-life votes in the Senate the last two years, we could never get the 60 votes to end a filibuster by pro-abortion Democrats. Senate leadership and many senators also refused to end the filibuster rule altogether and have a straight 51 majority vote. When the Senate included the defund measure in a budget reconciliation act that only required 51 votes to pass, Sen. John McCain provided the decisive vote to defeat the bill. He disagreed with the Obamacare repeal that was also part of the bill.

In the Spirit of Margaret Sanger

Is Planned Parenthood’s lawlessness and negligence on human trafficking an aberration from its mission? Or a logical outcome of its governing ethos?

A logical outcome. We have exposed the abortion industry’s fixation on abortion as a profit making machine. Sexual abuse victims and human trafficking victims are just more customers for abortion. Just this week, their new president, Dr. Leana Wen, reaffirmed that their first priority is abortion. Women at a Planned Parenthood are seen as potential customers for abortion.

What can Stream readers do to help?

We are always looking for partners to share our reporting and videos, to invest money in saving lives with us. Also to get involved in the larger pro-life movement. There are several ways to get involved and stay informed here: https://www.liveaction.org/get-involved/