Listen to Victor and Jacob talk about the ProLife Freedom of Speech Petition created to influence Google and the US Government to be fair and let pregnancy clinics compete in the marketplace of ideas.
Summary
This is Jacob Barr, and in this episode of the Pro-Life Team Podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Victor Lennartz from irapture.com. Our discussion focused on a significant challenge faced by pregnancy clinics, particularly concerning their online visibility and competition against organizations like Planned Parenthood on platforms like Google.
Victor and I delved into the specific issue of Google’s censorship of content from pregnancy clinics. We noticed a trend where Google flags various content from these clinics as misleading or untrustworthy, resulting in reduced visibility and traffic. This censorship particularly impacts ads related to abortion pill reversal, a crucial service offered by many pregnancy clinics.
We discussed the implications of such censorship, especially considering the time-sensitive nature of abortion pill reversal. When these options are hidden from view, it limits the choices available to women in critical decision-making moments. The lack of visibility for these services effectively removes a choice for women who might reconsider their decision to abort.
The discussion also covered the broader implications of Google’s actions and speculated on the possible reasons behind this censorship, such as pressure from political entities or other influential groups.
In response to these challenges, we have initiated a petition addressed to both Google and the US government. The goal of the petition is to advocate for a level playing field in the digital space, ensuring that pregnancy clinics can compete fairly in the realm of ideas without being silenced. This initiative is not only about garnering signatures but also about engaging and empowering those who support the cause to take actionable steps, like contacting Google or sharing information on social media.
The podcast concluded with a prayer, seeking guidance and support for this initiative, and the broader mission of supporting life and providing comprehensive assistance to those facing unplanned pregnancies.
Hashtags relevant to this podcast’s content include: #ProLifeTeamPodcast, #PregnancyClinicAdvocacy, #DigitalCensorship, #GoogleCensorship, #AbortionPillReversal, #ProLifePetition, #FairDigitalPlay, #PregnancyClinicSupport, #OnlineVisibilityForLife, #ProLifeDigitalStrategy, #ProtectingUnbornLives, #EmpowermentThroughInformation, #LifeChoicesAwareness.
Transcript
The transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.
Jacob Barr :
Welcome to the pro-life Team Podcast. I’m Jacob Barr and I’m here with Victor. And we are going, we’re going to be talking about a petition to ask Google and the US government to provide an equal voice to precy clinics who are competing against Planned Parenthood. Victor, I am really glad to have you on this podcast. I would like you to introduce yourself as if you were talking to just one Executive Director about, well, about who you are and then we’ll go into the petition.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah, so I work for you at irapture.com So this is a fun podcast where we’re working on this together. So basically, you know what I do but for the rest of the people, I help pregnancy centers with their marketing strategies and it’s a bunch of fun. So this is.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah. Well, and in this, in this podcast, we’re essentially the beginning of it is sort of based on this pain or this problem that Prezi clinics have experience which is being filtered or removed off of certain parts of Google Duet yeah what are your thoughts on or how would you describe this experience that people are having on Google when it comes to being filtered, and yeah, filtered off of results?
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah, it’s something that I think a lot of people don’t recognize as happening because they can you know, it’s kind of behind the scenes because unless you’re you’re paying attention closely to things in the news or are doing marketing yourself, you won’t necessarily see the effects of the censorship. But we’ve seen it in multiple ways and one of the primary ways we’ve seen the censorship is in Google advertising. Dave, do you want to talk a little bit more about what you’ve seen so far with that censorship?
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, so Google seems to have a lot of flags like they have a variety of flags, and sometimes they’ll mark content as being misleading or untrustworthy with some of these flags. And what that really means is that they’re showing those ads or that content to less people. And the result is that we’ve seen abortion pill reversal get flagged pretty consistently. And we’ve also have reached out to Google to do like a. We wanted to talk to the public relations person with the desire to respond with doing like a mini documentary and trying to ask to do an in person interview with the Google PR person essentially resulted in several of the flags being removed the following day. However, it didn’t necessarily result in traffic restoring to normal levels the following day. Yeah, so some of these flags have shown up in a variety of ways and there’s a variety of flags that are showing up. Like for example, we’ve seen untrustworthy flags being applied to crazy tests, parenting classes, you know, essentially a wide range of phrases. And for some clinics it’s just abortion, pale reversal but for other clinics it’s actually some of these flags have shown up on a wide scope of words. But the end result is that people are getting less traffic on their content as Google’s the number one vehicle for where people look for answers. And I feel like Google is bending to certain political powers or certain powers that are promoting them to do this way. And our one response could be to ask Conservative government leadership to push back on Google and ask them to balance the scale or level the playing field so that we can compete in the world of ideas without being silenced because like you said, when we’re silenced, it’s really hard to know what you don’t see. And if we’re simply not showing up, it’s not like people can see what doesn’t show up they don’t get to see how people are being wiped out or hidden or removed. They only get to see what does get to show.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah so the main ones so far, it sounds like the main ads that have been censored are the Abortion Pill reversal ones, although there have been other ones to just talk to the listeners who don’t know much about Abortion Pill Reversal or want to learn more, could you, could you describe what that is and also, what are the ramifications if some of these ads get censored? What could happen?
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, so abortion pill reversal is a medical treatment that is designed for when someone takes the first out of A2 pill regiment, the first pill of the abortion pill will starve the baby, meaning the baby’s going to die, and then the second pill that’s often taken shortly thereafter, maybe hours or days after the first pill. That second pill is designed to expel the baby, meaning baby’s coming, and the abortion pill reversal is a way to reverse that. The results of that first pill which is designed to starve the baby by essentially out competing the abortion pill material that is designed to block certain receptors that will then starve the baby and so the essentially the abortion pill reversal is a series of shots or medication that can be taken that will help out compete. The that first pill that’s designed to kill the unborn child. And then the danger of the ads being hidden from view is that people when searching on related phrases will not see this content, this content that is timely meaning they only have hours to make a decision and you know hours count when it comes to making a reversal decision because of the baby’s need for nutrition and then also So yes, essentially if the ads are removed or hidden, the medical option is being removed from the choice that someone might have. And so effectively it’s removing choice from that woman who may decide that I changed my mind i don’t want to abort my child i would like to explore options on how I can reverse my decision. I feel like I was pressured into this by that content being hidden. It’s not allowing her to have to find that choice where she is normally looking for answers.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah. So yeah, essentially it sounds like abortion pill reversal. It does save lives. Would you? Would you know how many babies roughly have been saved through the abortion pill?
Jacob Barr :
Yeah so based on what I understand it, the success rate ranges anywhere for I mean and I’ve heard and over the years I’ve heard a variety of numbers, but they usually it’s ranged anywhere from like 55 and I’ve heard some numbers as high as 70 %. So meaning if they start the regiment within 48 hours, a high percent, more than half will of the if the babies will survive without any added birth and they don’t have any added birth defects, especially when that before that second pill is taken that changes the game. But then when it comes, so essentially a high percent, and I think this works for all women, even the women who happen to fall in that 45 or less % of when their baby doesn’t survive, i feel like if they try and do something and change their mind, there’s value in not just simply giving up or not trying anything. And so I think there’s value there, but obviously there’s a lot of value to be gained when they change their mind and then are actually able to successfully reverse that abortion decision to terminate that young child that they. Yeah so I think there’s value for all women in this scenario, both those who will have a success a successful reversal and those who don’t i think there’s value for both when it comes to the number I believe and I my gut says 2000 but this is relatively new like this has only been around for roughly I want to say about 8 years and it’s been growing in use over that time period but a lot of lives have been saved there’s and really in the end it’s a new opportunity for women to be helped this is a new window that we didn’t have before APR to help women. This is a way to reverse a deadly decision.
Victor Lennartz :
Right, So Jake, do we know why Google is censoring Abortion Pill reversal ads?
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, that’s a good question. That was actually the kind of question, yeah, that’s the question I would like to ask when interviewing someone on their PR team i think that would be a really good question to consider. And that might be the question that we drive to by asking, you know, who made the decision, what was, what were the thoughts when considering this? And you know trying to work towards that building that back story of really understanding the why but the why is sort of like the pinnacle of all of the questions and thoughts that’s like the keystone or the primary, you know force that what might drive all these other elements. And trying to find out that why I would say is an excellent idea. I can assume or consider that they’ve had pressure from people of power. For example, Google works in China and you don’t get to work with China unless you were able to comply with government wishes and they also work within a lot of countries and I think that’s the trend that I see is that they bend to the powers that have power over them. And so I’ve got a feeling that people in our political, you know for example, like the vice president, essentially she is very pro abortion just like many people that have been put into our government. And so I think there’s a lot of pressure that could be being put on the Google, but these are not necessarily public meetings, these are. But I believe there’s pressure being put on them by people with power.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah, that very well could be and I think from what I’ve seen on the ads, they note that they Google claims that it’s false medical information as far as abortion pill reversal, at least that’s what they’re claimed. But it’s my understanding that there have been studies that show that this does work.
Jacob Barr :
Like, yeah, and in the opposition, you know, wants to wants to throw mud at those studies and mud at that data. But the result is that throwing mud doesn’t make something untrue it just makes it not widely accepted because there’s an opposing group that have a different agenda. And that’s why they why that’s why they’re throwing Med is because they have a different objective, a different goal. They’re in the business of making abortions more widely accepted and less medically make making them less medical and making them more accessible.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah.
Jacob Barr :
It’s that might be part of the why as to what’s the driving forces they’re trying, you know, and the result or the result of that why is, you know and the efforts that people are putting into this is that Google’s being pressured to mark that content as untrustworthy because there’s people of power who are calling it such.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah. And we mentioned that Abortion Pill reversal ads are one of the most censored ads, but we’ve seen Jake even one center having pretty much all their ads restricted do you want to talk about that as well?
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, so that, yeah that clinic essentially had like everything from parenting classes to parency test ultrasound they effectively had like every single category get flagged with that same type of untrustworthy flag essentially stopping traffic. And it was very bizarre because some of the content pieces are completely non controversial, like for example, pregnancy symptoms. Nobody’s been arguing about pregnancy symptoms, I don’t think yeah, like that’s not controversial. Or parenting classes again there’s no competing for saying you know parenting classes are terrible, that you know we’re all sort of like everyone seems to be in agreement that parenting classes are fine and there’s no controversy in that space and for obvious reasons because it’s not a controversial topic it’s just but yet Google marked content all over the board for one clinic out of many. But which sort of made me wonder why, Like, you know, why would they do that like what was the cause was it based on their, you know, artificial intelligence picking up something about that group or was it them trying to do a pilot and seeing what kind of response they might get with a smaller sampling? I don’t know which one it was or what was the reasoning for that but it happened and we were the ones that had to try and respond to Google over, you know, trying to get that reversed and corrected.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah that’s that is really frustrating and from what I’ve seen as well it it’s not only censorship as far as the disapproving complete disapproval of ads. They will limit ads to also like you said for certain topics, pregnancy testing, pregnancy symptoms. They will limit those ads more and not show them as much just because it’s a medical topic. Even though it’s not a controversial thing that these pregnancy centers are offering free pregnancies test what’s controversial about that? You know what’s why does that need to be restricted but Google is restricting those ad advertisements.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, and restricted content doesn’t mean it doesn’t get shown, it just means it it’s yeah it goes through well an ambiguous layer of filtering so it’s sometimes hard to understand you know at what point at what amount the filtering is taking place. But yeah, so essentially in response to this pain and in response to this problem, we worked on writing a petition to both Google and to the government in order to try and ask for a level playing field so that we can compete and the world of ideas. Instead of being restricted and removed from the field and having our voice silenced as what I would call our legitimate loving people. Trying to have a voice to help a group who needs assistance. And so all that to say is we’ve worked on writing a petition and it’s available on the pro-life It’s not available on proliferibbon.com If you go there, click on petition, you can read the dual petition, which is essentially 1 petition written for both the government and Google. And there’s a place to sign at the bottom or to agree with this petition. What are your thoughts on that petition because actually, this was your idea, Victor, to have that petition written and I was just on board with helping assist with creating it, yeah.
Victor Lennartz :
So I don’t know how it just it just popped into my head one day but I just thought there has to be something that can be done about the censorship. And I thought how can we as a pro-life community, not just our Rapture but pregnancy centers, churches, all the pro-life community how could we band together and you know have one voice to Google to say you know in the government that enough is enough and that this isn’t fair And we don’t, we don’t accept this. And so obviously we want to do all this very peacefully and cordially and respectfully but we do want to have our voices to be heard by Google and hopefully have a change. So that was kind of the idea behind it and we’ve already received quite a quite a bit of excitement about it and signatures as well so.
Jacob Barr :
What is? Yeah.
Victor Lennartz :
What do you say the goal is as far as signatures, Jake, for you know, by mid of 2022 or?
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, so.
Victor Lennartz :
I’d like to see like 5000 signatures.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, we think that.
Victor Lennartz :
‘d be awesome.
Jacob Barr :
But i think what’s more important than the number I well and the number could be large of course but what’s more important than the number is that people that are interested in this level playing field and women being helped and then these loving Tracy clinic wasters not being silenced. I think what’s more important is that we have a list of the people who are interested in this so that we can send off, send following emails and ideas on what can be done next. And so I think by empowering this group of interested people, we can effectively empower this group to have the idea and tool to effectively push back against Google by sharing ideas down the road as we identify something that is helpful towards this effort.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah that makes sense. So how exactly Jake, as far as like what are some of the steps or some of the calls to actions you could foresee in the future? Obviously we don’t we don’t know all yeah.
Jacob Barr :
Well, like for example, what if one of them was for, you know, to give someone a set of instructions on how to call or contact Google on this issue. And so if we, you know, if we had 5 million people on the list for a petition sign up list, you know, we provided that to Google, they don’t have to spend much time looking at it. But if we have, let’s say we have 500 people who will call Google and tie up their salesperson or that person on the phone for 12 minutes each sharing this idea. And then Google gets 500 notes that people are saying this and this and that. I mean that has essentially a lot more weight than sending them A5 you know, a list of 5 million doesn’t necessarily. And then that might be one thing. But I think having 500 people who are willing to call and voicing that 12 minutes of time and effort has a pretty sizable impact on a group.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah if the actual calling, the hearing, their voices, you know, the written words really shows that these are real people that have these concerns and yeah.
Jacob Barr :
And then you know, for example, if we came up with a beautiful social media post, a nice image that would help in a respectful, helpful, appropriate way that could then be shared on a social media platform. Again, something that could be then created for 500 people to then do something and again having 5 million would be amazing. But I think the idea is that having an action that the group who was who is behind this idea to actually do, I think it is even more amazing than just having a long list.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah. And you know this, i also thought of this as like this is a great way to encourage people to be more involved with your pregnancy center because they have their many forces against the pregnancy center, right. It sounds like Google as well as a lot of people on the pro abortion side are very vocal and often times we see Jake like lots of fake reviews on pregnancy center Google reviews like one star that are from people that haven’t even gone there and they’re kind of hurt the reputation of the pregnancy center so we really need people from the pro-life side to be active in their support.
Jacob Barr :
And yeah and i think one other idea that we could do is just bring an awareness to the problem. So that if someone if someone were to sign this petition and show that they’re interested in setting up for Prezi clinics in both your Google arena and the government arena. By us being able to send them an email that explains the current status and or current developments or updates. They could then share that with their friends and family and church community in order to sort of bring awareness to the problem because otherwise nobody’s going to see what’s being silenced on Google and really in the end these ads are designed to go to women and difficult situations. But it would be really good for supporters, followers of Jesus, people in your church family and in your local family in your community to know that these loving, caring, amazing people providing medical services at no cost are being, are being attacked and are receiving pain and are effectively, you know, it’s a spiritual war. And so it’d be really good to give voice and to amplify, amplify the voice that is being silenced so that people will have an opportunity to pray and to consider sharing it with people who would yeah, for people to know and also consider doing, taking a step or an action in order to make a difference. And all of those things make a difference.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.
Jacob Barr :
Well, I think that might be about it i mean this is exciting we can obviously have a link to the petition in the email that goes with this podcast and on the podcast page. But i think in the end what might be a really good end cap to this piece picture might be for let’s why don’t you go ahead and pray and let’s just pray that this effort will, you know, like for God to bless this effort and for those who hear this to be, yeah, they hear, you know, the call, you know, find God’s calling on what they might be called to do on this.
Victor Lennartz :
Yeah, would you mind leaving us in that Jake, I am sure I’m not as good as thinking of it.
Jacob Barr :
Sure, I don’t. Yeah let me go ahead and let’s see. God, I just want to lift up those who are listening. And Lord, I just want to also say thank you to for Victor and his passion for the women and men who are helping serve couples that are facing unplanned pregnancies and their with their unborn children’s lives in the balance. Lord, I pray that this effort of trying to effectively push back against the Goliath which is the government and Google and to essentially try and support the smaller David like Precy clinic groups. I pray that you will bless this effort and I pray that you bless the actions taken and bless the ideas and give us just direction on how to respond to these spiritual attacks being waged against precis clinics across the country who are working to serve you and honor life being given to young unborn babies and young and the and the light in the end and also honoring the young moms and dads by supporting them with a variety of services and with a caring heart or we thank you for your just your great love and desire and well we just cry out to you for help in this space. And we when we ask that those who are listening will find interest and desire to take the extra step in the in the spend the extra time to sign and then be interested in following up with ideas that are helpful and to share ideas with us too if they see something that the group could benefit by doing and we pray all of this in your name Jesus amen come on.