Social media companies Facebook and Instagram, as well as other companies like Amazon and CVS, have begun limiting access to abortion pills and emergency contraceptive pills in the days following last week’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Facebook and Instagram removed posts offering abortion pills to women who may not be able to access them following the Supreme Court ruling.
On Monday, an Associated Press reporter tested how the company would respond to a similar post on Facebook, writing: “If you send me your address, I will mail you abortion pills.” The post was removed within one minute.
When the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun,” the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up.
In addition to removing posts about abortion, Instagram appeared to be blocking posts that mention abortion in general. In some cases, the social media site included a warning describing the posts as “sensitive.”
“We’re hearing that people around the world are seeing our ‘sensitivity screens’ on many different types of content when they shouldn’t be,” Instagram’s communications department tweeted Tuesday. “We’re looking into this bug and working on a fix now.”
A spokesman for Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Instagram, said in an email the company does not place age restrictions around its abortion content.
In addition to the social media companies taking down abortion pill posts, Amazon has placed a temporary purchase limit on emergency contraceptive pills. The limit was set at three units per week.
Amazon’s announcement came on the same day CVS said it was in the process of removing purchase limits the company had already put in place following the Roe ruling. Walgreens said it had no purchase limit in place for emergency contraceptive pills at this time.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
