The nation’s largest organization of pro-life youth was censored by social media platform TikTok Monday after a video depicting Students for Life of America (SFLA) President Kristan Hawkins challenging a woke college student with the actual scientific facts about abortion went viral.
Hawkins called on TikTok to open the process for getting pro-life speech back on the app that contains significant abortion-related content.
The pro-life leader condemned the social media platform for banning SFLA’s account, citing “violating Community Guideline standards,” without notice or an opportunity to appeal the decision.
SFLA’s more than 35,000 TikTok followers were stripped away when the app blocked account managers from appealing the ban.
“If you’re pro-life on TikTok’s social media platform, you have a target on your back,” said Students for Life Action and SFLA President Kristan Hawkins in a statement.
“There is no other explanation for why SFLA’s account was recently banned after posting life-affirming content while abortion supporters continue to run rampant on the app,” she added. “TikTok seems to be practicing corporate viewpoint discrimination.”
TikTok’s ban on SFLA comes after the organization’s latest video, which SFLA refers to as “the most epic beatdown” of abortion logic, garnered over 2.2 million views.
The clip features Hawkins addressing University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA) students as part of her “The Future Is Anti-Abortion” speaking tour.
Hawkins told The Star News Network that, in her experience, abortion supporters typically disregard several essential issues when they argue there is no “science” in the pro-life position:
One way in which you know that there is no “science” in the abortion discussion, is the fact that abortion supporters ignore the humanity and unique life of the preborn baby as well as the biological reality that certain behaviors carry the potential for creating that life. Abortion supporters ignore the fact that most abortions take place after people engaged in sexual relationships consensually, acting as though what was not proactively “planned” is in any way surprising. Most abortions have nothing to do with what we call “the exceptions.” We need to expand our conversations about abortion to what came before and encourage people to build healthy relationships as well as prepare to welcome new life when it’s possible that new life is coming.
So, when they can’t define when life begins, they give up and just pull the relative truth card… on when life begins…….https://t.co/c6Jz1N4D5A
— Students for Life of America | Pro-Life Gen (@StudentsforLife) April 21, 2022
During Hawkins’ presentation at UTSA, one student, who apparently believed she was challenging the pro-life leader to a debate using handmade signs she referred to as “facts,” soon discovered she was not making her case.
“So, my poster reads, ‘Life begins when you understand living women matter more than potential babies,” the student proudly touted as her pro-abortion friends cheered and held up their signs.
“What is it?” Hawkins asked the student. “If it’s a ‘potential baby,’ what is inside of a woman?”
Student: It’s a fetus.
Hawkins: Is it living?
Student: No.
Hawkins: How can it grow if it’s not living?
Student: Actually, actually, that’s like saying an acorn is a tree.
Hawkins: When does the fetus become living?
Student: Um, that’s actually a good question, but that line –
Hawkins: Yeah, of course, because you don’t know it, because it’s living, it’s living … you’re fundamentally denying science to validate –
Student: You, you actively deny science, ma’am –
Hawkins: What science did I deny?
The student then directs Hawkins to the handmade signs of her fellow pro-abortion students.
“You just made an accusation that I denied science,” Hawkins continued nevertheless. “What science did I deny?”
Using the narrative of the abortion industry, the student replied, “That it’s a child inside of you. It is a clump of cells.”
Hawkins: I’m a clump of cells. What makes me different?
Student: That you were born? You were born.
Hawkins: So, what you’re arguing is that, uh, anything that is not born is not valuable of life.
The student denied she said that as her friends shouted out, “It’s subjective!”
But, when Hawkins asked, “When does a child or fetus or clump of cells, whatever you want to call it … become living?” the student responded, “When it can sustain its own life.”
Hawkins then asked, “When is sustainability?” the student did not respond, but turned to her friends for assistance, one of whom shouted out “30 weeks.”
“How do you sustain life?” Hawkins then asked, observing her own newborn children were not “sustainable.”
“You can’t just have a newborn and they just, like, live on their own, right?” she continued. “Right? They’re not sustainable, they need help and assistance to survive. So, is a newborn not worthy of life?”
The student appeared unable to respond to that question, but then said, “I do have one thing to say to you.”
“How is it that when my mom was in college 30 years ago, she was protesting the exact same thing that me and these wonderful other women and men on this side have been protesting?” she asked. “How is it, why, why are we still protesting, why are we still having to talk about this issue?”
“It is a basic human right to have an abortion,” the student insisted. “To have a choice.”
But Hawkins returned:
“The reason we’re still having the question is because some people don’t want to accept the natural consequences of heterosexual sex and be inconvenienced by another human life and want to selfishly choose to end human life in order to have their whims met. That is why you’re still arguing.”
By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
TikTok’s ban on SFLA comes as Twitter’s board has accepted Elon Musk’s offer to purchase the social media platform and take it private, and the reaction from those on the Left is “extreme,” as Musk noted.
The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement.
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Student’s for Life Q+A” by Students for Life.
