Dear girl on Facebook,
We went to elementary and middle school together, although we haven’t actually seen each other since graduation. The most we kept in touch is through a couple of sporadic text conversations throughout the past three and a half years, and when I friended you when I finally became a part of the 21st century and got onto Facebook.
And so I see your Facebook activity in my newsfeed. Most of it is uploaded iOS photos, TBHs and LMSs written by people I don’t know on your wall, and “u hve been hacked by [insert friend here]!!!11 [same friend] luvs u!!!1!!”s. Irrelevant to my life, perhaps mildly irritating, but nothing bad enough to make me block you from my newsfeed.
You can imagine my shock, horror, and disgust when I saw that you liked an anti-abortion page that put an extremely graphic picture of an aborted fetus onto my computer screen.
You have every right to be pro-life, and to express that belief by liking anti-abortion Facebook pages. We live in America, and you have the right to freedom of speech. Just like you can like anti-abortion pages, I can like pro-choice pages, feminist pages, gay rights pages, and the pages for all sorts of other controversial topics. It would be hypocritical of me to tell you not to publicize your beliefs on Facebook when it’s something that I do daily. As a result, I will defend your right to like an anti-abortion page on Facebook to the day I die, as abhorrent as I may find it.
However, what I do not support is the graphic image that accompanied the page. I feel like my brain has been violated by the image of that aborted fetus. This incident happened months ago, and I still have a clear picture of what it looked like in my head. I think part of the reason why I was so taken aback by this is because I was not expecting it. I was just routinely scrolling through my newsfeed, rolling my eyes at semi-witty status updates, scrolling past pictures of friends of friends that I do not know, commenting on wall posts. And all of a sudden, this horribly graphic image of an aborted fetus with the words “LIKE if you’re against abortion!” written across it.
I’m sorry, that is just not acceptable.
There’s a guy who stands near a construction site a few blocks off Times Squarewho yells about how abortion is a sin and blah blah blah into a megaphone. He also hands out anti-abortion flyers and pamphlets, and is surrounded by graphic images of aborted fetuses. At least he gives passersby warning by yelling into the megaphone, which can be heard from down the block. At this point, I know he’s gonna be there, so I just make it my business to walk on the other side of the street.
So, girl on Facebook, please don’t like that graphic image again. Feel free to like conservative pages, and anti-abortion pages, and all sorts of pages that I may or may not disagree with. But don’t put an image of an aborted fetus onto all of your friends’ news feeds. It’s just being considerate.