Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., shared a pro-life meme on Facebook that claims that readers’ grandmothers carried part of them inside their wombs. Facebook chose to impugn the post by claiming it “lacked context.” Well of course it did. It’s a meme. The topic is complex, and the meme only summarizes one interpretation of the facts. It seems clear that Facebook applied a different standard for this expression of a point of view that could be judged an anti-abortion opinion than it had for literally millions of left-of-center memes it users have posted. For example, Facebook had no problem with this idiotic meme posted by a friend of mine who should know better:
Talk about “missing context”! Nor did Facebook have any issued with this meme during the Kavanaugh hearings:
Context? How about outright lies? Nah, there’s no Facebook anti-conservative bias…
If Facebook was genuinely interested in preventing “misinformation,” even obviously satirical memes should be a target. Like this one, a truly moronic pro-lockdown meme from 2020:
Let’s see: the Wuhan virus was not an extinction event like the asteroid strike believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs; the Cretaceous-Tertiary economy resembled the Biden period far more than the Trump economy, which was excellent; and dinosaurs couldn’t talk. Yes, it would have been astoundingly stupid for Facebook to make such criticisms, but only slightly more stupid than its attempt to debunk King’s meme. Matt Margolis explains,
Facebook relied on fact-checking from a site called Factly, which insists that the claim “is not unanimously accepted in the scientific community.”
“Though it was widely believed to be true, some recent research gives a possibility of ovaries growing new eggs though the research is not yet 100% definitive about the statement,” Factly states. “There is no conclusive evidence that new eggs are produced, yet from recent research, a possible ovarian stem cell reserve is disputed among scientists.”
Bizarrely, Factly even cites the Cleveland Clinic on this issue. Here’s what they say on the matter:
“During fetal life, there are about 6 million to 7 million eggs. From this time, no new eggs are produced. At birth, there are approximately 1 million eggs; and by the time of puberty, only about 300,000 remain. Of these, only 300 to 400 will be ovulated during a woman’s reproductive lifetime. Fertility can drop as a woman ages due to decreasing number and quality of the remaining eggs.”
The Cleveland Clinic has a stellar reputation, and one might think that it would be considered a reliable source. Factly has instead decided this is not scientific fact because some research suggests there’s a possibility of new eggs being formed during adult life. However, they concede that the research is “not yet 100% definitive” and that there is “no conclusive evidence that new eggs are produced.”
Margolid concludes from this episode,
But after the leak of the draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which strikes down Roe v. Wade, it seems Facebook’s army of fact-checkers has decided to err on the side of censoring anything that is remotely pro-life — even something that is widely accepted as scientific fact.
I think that’s a fair assessment.
I wonder what Facebook would think of this meme?
Ethics Alarms 
Whatever happened to “I believe in Science!” as we were all scolded mercilessly by the pro-lockdown faction?
The definition of science has changed. Science is what we are told it is and scientific facts are what we are told they are. This makes the definition flexible enough so that we can be told men can get pregnant and that overturning abortion is an attack on women.
They do believe in science. Anything they don’t believe isn’t science…see how easy that is? All you have to do is ban all knowledge and silence all voices that oppose you. That is why the APS won’t let anyone criticize the official global warming narrative. Any research that doesn’t come to the ‘correct’ conclusion cannot be published in an APS journal. That is leftist ‘science’ for you. You are allowed to question gravity, but not global warming. Why is that?
https://www.foxnews.com/science/nobel-prize-winning-physicist-resigns-over-global-warming
https://www.theregister.com/2008/07/21/monckton_aps/?page=2
In Soviet Russia, all biologists believed in Lamacrkian genetics because it fed better into Communist ideology. Likewise, Big Bang Theory was banned because it conflicted with the Dialectical Materialism of Lenin. Cosmology itself was redefined as the study of an infinite universe (excluding Big Bang Theory). Redefining things…huh. Seems like I have seen that recently. Well, I need to go to the pharmacy to get a bottle of Vitamin D vaccine.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222942209_The_Universe_the_Cold_War_and_Dialectical_Materialism
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/yes-the-cdc-changed-its-definition-of-vaccine-to-be-more-transparent/ar-AATtAJ2
I see the changes made in science to allow global warming research to follow its current path as the end of science itself. Global Warming was supposed to be such a massive ‘existential threat’ to humanity that we had to discard our outdated, ‘competitive science’ and replace it with ‘cooperative science’. If everyone cooperates towards a common goal, more can be accomplished than by people competing against each other. However, it was the competition that kept people at least mostly honest. If we are all on the same team, anyone who points out a flaw or falsification or corruption isn’t a ‘team player’ and is just removed from the team. The CCP-virus response was just the extension of this methodology. Did Pfizer do studies to determine if its MRNA vaccine was safe for pregnant mothers and breastfeeding children? Of course not. It was very obvious that there wasn’t nearly enough time for that to have been done. No one said anything about it, though, did they?
A phrase I’ve “borrowed” that I’m using more and more is “Science doesn’t say anything, scientists do.” The point is what we are told is filtered through the lens and biases of the scientists. There is often a mistake that scientists are somehow uniquely above reproach with no internal biases.
Spoken like a true existentialist, or at least someone who understands epistemology.
Now humans just need to learn to reconstruct what they deconstruct. Under what circumstances are they willing to behave as if something a scientist says is true? What are the limits of what they’re willing to risk based on a consensus of elites? What changes as a person learns not merely the scientific knowledge surrounding an experiment, but the reasoning behind the experiment’s design and methods, and why scientists infer what they do from it?
That understanding is what informs how confident we are in those inferences and how far we are comfortable generalizing them. That’s what people need to understand. Then we can have arguments that actually get somewhere, ones that don’t make me disappointed in human civilization.
Maybe I’m stupid (which is entirely possible) but what about the original meme (of which I can’t read the entirety) lacks context? I carried my daughter who was born with all of her eggs. Those eggs, once fertilized, created my grandsons. What am I missing?
“Lacks context” is the catchphrase for “While this is true, we don’t like it and want to mislead people into believing that it is misleading in some way.” Saying it “lacks context” is better than saying “This might in some way make some people question the morality of abortion, so you shouldn’t look at it.”
They’re saying that there’s a theory that women may produce additional eggs after birth, problem is that they just don’t have any proof for it yet.
And if THAT’s the standard now… whew lad.
Well, maybe they are talking about the goofy theory they have.
The context I thought about is that your son’s children will not have been part of you.
For any child, it will be true of only one of their grandmothers.
-Jut
That’s true. My son’s children will have, at one time, been carried by their maternal grandmother. So it holds true for that grandmother. Just not me.
And???
(that’s a rhetorical question; not directed at you, Jut.)
Alicia,
That is what I thought they meant by missing context. But, having hear about this possible theory on egg stem cells, It would not surprise me if that was their point. After all, my point is more accurate and logical, so it would make sense that they would focus on something else.
-Jut
Fwiw, from your mouth to God’s ears that my son finds the granddaughter of said grandmother and provides me with the grandchildren in question. 🙂
Off topic for this post but has anyone visited https://www.aclu.org/ latetly?
There is a huge banner asking for donations to protect abortion.
Protect Abortion Access Now
Roe v. Wade is under direct threat right now, but the ACLU will never stop fighting for every single person’s ability to access abortion care. Rush a donation today and fuel our most urgent work.
Also:
The Fight Against Forced Pregnancy
Policies that force people to remain pregnant and give birth are unconscionable, cruel, and dangerous.
Has Facebook’s action been reported to the Ministry of Truth?
Is here a mechanism for reporting incidents of “misinformation”? If so, could it be deliberately overwhelmed in protest by people inputting any and every concocted or imagined incident with demands for investigation? Didn’t something like that happen a few years back (in NYC, maybe?) when an online site was set up to report neighbors’ misdeeds, or somethig of the sort? People disliked the idea and flooded it with reports of criminal activity at the mayor’s address & similar claims. (I may be off on particulars here, but it was something along those lines).
This is what happens when humans are fearful and stupid: they attack things that aren’t actually threats. Why would a meme about female humans being born with a full set of egg cells in any way support an argument against abortion? As far as I’m aware, literally nobody is saying that unfertilized eggs are people. By that logic, anyone who murdered a human woman would automatically be guilty of mass murder. Are humans bringing back preformationism now?
Additionally, if Facebook is going to be the judge of what’s “fact” and what isn’t, they have an obligation to start taking stances on empirical statements made by religions. At least then they’d be ideologically consistent.
EC: “As far as I’m aware, literally nobody is saying that unfertilized eggs are people.”
Perhaps, but some of the dumber pro-choice people have suggested (seriously, I believe) that pro-lifers would want masturbating males to be prosecuted for destroying “potential human life” and that women could be prosecuted for menstruation.
These examples are not quite what you said, but are almost so, by implication.
-Jut
Aye, the strawmen are getting so big and ugly this year that I’m astonished they work at all. Even within the echo chambers, any sapient being should be saying, “Wait, what? Something’s not right here.
There’s no way our opponents could be that stupid.”
Then again, I suppose if humans do buy into the strawmen, it doesn’t take that much more stupidity to actually be one of those strawmen. Poe’s Law applies, unfortunately. Einstein cautions against underestimating human stupidity.
That Earth will survive is by virtue of housing a being arrogant enough to attempt to cure human stupidity, and humble enough to learn from its own failures. Speaking of which, I’ve got a lot to work on.
Two totally independent thoughts:
I’m not convinced that this is malice rather than simple stupidity. This afternoon I received notification that an anti-Trump meme I’d posted two years ago (!) had been “restored.” I had received no notification that it had been taken down, so maybe that just happened, or maybe it happened two years ago. Not that something seen by 100 or so people, the vast majority of whom are going to agree with it, anyway, was going to change the election or anything, but this seems a little odd.
EC’s wry comment about killing a woman being mass murder reminds me of Monty Python’s “Every Sperm Is Sacred” shtick, but also of a significant real-life contretemps among people who didn’t really want to get caught up in any sort of abortion debate. In this case, we’re talking about an actual pregnancy, but there’s something that made me see a parallel. When the Real IRA detonated a car bomb in Omagh, Northern Ireland in 1998, residents wanted to erect a memorial to the victims. One of those killed was a young woman pregnant with twins… so were there 29 people killed, or 31? The memorial project was held up for several months while people dickered. (They finally decided on 31, although the “official” number was 29.)
Curmie, I was thinking of that Monty Python skit, too! That was meant to poke fun at Catholics, who believe masturbation, especially a man “spilling his seed” is a sin. But again, instead of arguing the case based upon actual Catholic teaching (that masturbation inverts the outward, life-giving nature of sexuality, and thus works against the full self-giving of marital relations), they made their own objection (that Catholics think even sperm is sacred) and attempted to knock down that straw man.
A sperm is not a human individual. An ovum is not a human individual. But united, they do make a human individual. It is neat to think that the egg that would one day unite with a sperm to become you was already present in your mom while she was in your grandmother’s womb. That is distinct from the sperm which was made maybe 48 hours before fertilization. But I agree with EC above when he says that this fact is not a case against abortion. Those ovum are not potential human beings. They are half the genetic code needed for a human being to arise.
After all, the only* species we know that are born pregnant are Tribbles…
(* This statement should not be taken as a scientific survey of all species, and should be properly contained to Animalia, assuming there is an extraterrestrial branch in the Kingdom of Animalia…)
“After all, the only* species we know that are born pregnant are Tribbles…”
Earth has at least one example: aphids.
I saw a bit of an article on that, but didn’t take the time to get beyond the paywall. Thus my disclaimer. The bit that I did glimpse mentioned something asexual about the aphid case, so it might be worth digging into later. Given that Tribbles don’t really exist, I’m hoping I’ll be forgiven for excluding aphids from my tongue-in-cheek comment…
It’s just a bit of entomological trivia, is all. There should be some free sources on it if you’re curious about it.
I am. I just feel a bit sheepish about wanting to make the Tribble joke, knowing that there’s probably something out there that actually is, or is close to, being born pregnant. I did a quick search, saw the aphids, and thought, “Dang, now I need to be sure to throw in the disclaimer!”
Out of curiosity, did you know offhand about aphids before I posted, or did I spark your curiosity?
I knew about the aphids already; I did double-check to make sure I was remembering right, though. The natural world was one of the things I was most curious about growing up.
I’m missing how this fact is pro-life?
Is it because it is admitting there is a human in the uterus?
Are pro choice people that stupid? Really?
This is so lame. I thought they would at least attack the claim on the lines that an egg without a sperm is not a grandchild, but they went with the stupidest possible rebuttal that new eggs might be generated, as if that is in anyway relevant.
That’s what gets me about it as well. I think they’re afraid that if people get sentimental about the incomplete genetic material of future organisms, that will cause cognitive dissonance that will threaten their ability to get what they want.
Some of them don’t have the intellectual skill to contemplate the justifications for what they want, and the rest are afraid to even ask the question just in case they find out they’re wrong and may have to change how they live. Therefore, all they can do is either indoctrinate people to want it as well, or intimidate them into going along with it. Welcome to Earth politics. It doesn’t matter that I happen to agree with their conclusion in this instance; that practice is something I will not allow to continue on this planet. Not when humans can do so much better.