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 Square
who 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.
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