By now you're likely one of 1.5 million people who have seen the graphic video of Neda Soltan dying after being shot in the chest on June 20, 2009, during protests in Iran following the presidential election.
The video shows Neda collapsing into the arms of two men, who try to stop her bleeding with their bare hands. Suddenly, Neda's eyes roll up and to the right, almost as if they are looking at the cell phone video camera chronicling her death. Blood begins pouring from her mouth and nose, into one eye and down her face. Cries erupt from the crowd, and you know Neda is dead.
I don't know how the tragic video of Neda's death is any less graphic than a video by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform showing the tragic, graphic deaths of children by abortion, but it is according to YouTube, which removed this video.
There's something about showing abortion that sets it apart from all other videos in the Big Brother eyes of YouTube.
YouTube allows almost any surgery video imaginable, like gastric bypass, gallbladder removal, toe amputation, appendectomy and brain tumor removal, and gross-out body parts videos like a buttock fecal fistula or peritoneal cancer – but not abortion.
Open your eyes to the ugliness inside the abortion industry with "Lime 5: Exploited by Choice"
Neither does YouTube have a problem with videos pertaining to the female anatomy like mastectomies, breast augmentations, hysterectomies or even baby deliveries – but not abortion, unless it is in the form of bloodless illustrations.
YouTube also seems to go out of its way to protect the abortion industry, particularly Planned Parenthood.
To date, YouTube has removed eight videos posted by Lila Rose and Live Action Films shot undercover at Planned Parenthoods in several states. In them Lila posed as a 13-year-old impregnated by her 31-year-old "boyfriend." Videos show staffers trying to help cover up the illegal statutory rape and even offering to help Lila circumvent parental consent laws.
Live Action Films tried ever harder to abide by YouTube's rule of maintaining privacy as well as its vague censorship catch-all: "If a video is particularly graphic or disturbing, it should be balanced with additional context and information."
Only one of LAF's videos contained graphic photos, four to be exact. Disturbing? Sure, mostly to Planned Parenthood. But LAF always provided "additional context and information," to no avail.
Included in the censored videos were three that resulted in-state investigations, providing rich "context." Not good enough for YouTube.
YouTube also removed LAF's videos of recorded telephone conversations with Planned Parenthood employees agreeing – and even excited – to take donations specifically to abort black babies. The calls were made solely to states where it was legal to audiotape conversations without the other party's knowledge.
But it's not only Planned Parenthood YouTube protects. It also provides cover-up for run-of-the-abortion-mill skanks.
Take Michigan late-term abortionist Alberto Hodari. Last year Citizens for a Pro-life Society filmed video of garbage retrieved from two of his dumpsters.
YouTube has videos posted of "the world's biggest garbage dump" in the center of the Pacific Ocean as well as of a boy living in a huge garbage dump in India. YouTube even has video posted of a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news team following dumpster divers on the hunt for food.
But CPLS's video was of preborn human garbage Hodari's staff illegally tossed, and for which Hodari was later fined by authorities, corroborating the video's authenticity, or "context." The video was up 10 months and received 25,000 views before being inexplicably removed.
CPLS had a similar video removed of a human dumpster dive at Women's Advisory Center in Michigan. That video lasted six weeks.
YouTube also censors what would be considered benign in any other arena than abortion. I received this email two weeks ago from Peter:
I am a sidewalk counselor at [Choice Medical Group], 2322 Butano Drive, Sacramento, California. We recently shot a video of a woman being taken away via ambulance. We put it up on YouTube and now they are asking us to revise the video or they will delete it. They did not tell us what needed to be revised.
In the video nobody is identifiable. It is shot from far away. It was shot in a nearby lot not on the property of the abortion clinic.
I have a hard time believing YouTube micromanages the thousands of videos it receives on a daily basis to this extent.
Peter winged an edit, waited a few days and reposted his video a week ago. Here it is. "I have not been told to take it down again," wrote Peter. "Not yet anyway." Sometimes it takes YouTube a little while.
YouTube allows graphic social justice videos pertaining to the Holocaust, slavery, the civil rights movement, Darfur and child sex trafficking. It allows graphic videos of wars throughout history.
But abortion, no.
As Monica Miller, head of CPLS told me, "How are you going to talk about abortion without it being disturbing? YouTube is a primary way we can compete in the United States with pro-abortion propaganda and have a voice."
But social engineers at YouTube don't want pro-lifers to have a visual voice.