Imagine scrolling through your Twitter feed one day and suddenly coming across a picture of your own disabled child being used in a promotion for abortion. That’s what happened to this North Carolina mother and she went to war over it, eventually bringing the social media giant to its knees.
The Daily Mail is telling the story of Natalie Weaver, founder of Advocates for Medically Fragile Kids North Carolina, who came across a post promoting abortion which featured a picture of her nine-year-old daughter, Sophia. The child suffers from severe facial deformities as well as Rett Syndrome, a very rare brain disorder that mostly strikes girls which causes slow brain growth, breathing and walking problems.
The photo was accompanied by the message, “It is okay to think that every child matters, however, a lot of them do not, hence the amino test. (It) should be a mandatory test and if it proves negative and the woman does not want to abort then all bills accrued after that is [sic] on her and the father.”
Shocked at how her daughter’s image was being used to promote such a hateful message, Weaver immediately reported it to Twitter.
They responded by saying, “We have reviewed your report carefully and found that there was no violation of the Twitter rules against abusive behavior.”
Natalie Weaver (Twitter)
Weaver immediately went onto the site to share how her daughter was being treated on Twitter.
“@TwitterSupport Just received an email that Twitter doesn’t think a person using my child’s image as the poster child to ABORT & to weed out all the ‘defectives’ in utero is a violation,” Weaver tweeted. “Why? Bc they won’t recognize hate toward ppl w/ disabilities in their regulations/reports.”
Her message went viral with thousands of people weighing in to express their support for Weaver and outrage over Twitter’s response.
It didn’t take too long for Twitter to respond to realize they were in the middle of a public relations nightmare.. As Natalie reported to Fox News, Twitter abruptly reversed its position and officially suspended the offender’s account.
“When we make a mistake, we work to ensure it’s quickly corrected,” a Twitter spokeswoman explained in a statement emailed to Fox News. “Our team reviewed the report again and suspended the account in accordance with the Twitter Rules.”
This offense clearly fit into the parameters of Twitter’s hate speech policy, which reads: “Hateful imagery will now be considered sensitive media under our media policy. We consider hateful imagery to be logos, symbols, or images whose purpose is to promote hostility and malice against others based on their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin. If this type of content appears in header or profile images, we will now accept profile-level reports and require account owners to remove any violating media.”
The social media site told Weaver: “Our goal is to create a safe environment for everyone on Twitter to express themselves freely. After reviewing your earlier report, it appears as though we missed a violation. We suspended the account you reported as it was found to be participating in abusive behavior. We apologize for this error.”
Weaver’s tenacity in the fight, and the courage required to bring it to the public’s attention, has not only raised awareness of how cruelly the disabled are being treated by some in this world, but to remind us all that their dignity is worth fighting for.
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