YouTube banned a popular Catholic pro-life site for violating its policy over “misinformation” regarding COVID-19.
John-Henry Westen, editor in chief of LifeSiteNews, said in a video posted on the group’s webpage that it had posted more than 2,000 videos over nearly a decade that reached some 314,000 subscribers.
Some of its shows reached an audience of 2 million.
Yet it never received a warning about inappropriate content until after Joe Biden was elected, Westen said.
Westen acknowledged that in the three months since Biden’s election LifeSite had received a few strikes from YouTube.
One was for airing comments made by a Canadian doctor at a city council meeting. The doctor called the coronavirus a “bad flu,” and added that “the proposal that COVID necessitates economy and social-life killing lockdowns is a hoax which is being used to usher in a Great Reset dreamed of by elites of this world for decades.”
The Great Reset is a reference to a plan to use COVID as a way to introduce socialism into many capitalist economies.
YouTube issued another strike after LifeSite interviewed microbiologist Pamela Acker. Acker discussed a link between vaccines and abortion, saying aborted fetal tissue is part of the research into vaccines. Some of the current or pending COVID vaccines were developed in this way, the interview indicated.
The final straw for YouTube, according to Westen, came with a tweet by Bishop Joseph Strickland of Texas, about the role abortion plays not just in vaccines but other medicines.
Edward Furton, an ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told the Catholic News Agency on Feb. 11 that he disagreed with how the information was presented but defended the right to present it.
“The National Catholic Bioethics Center condemns the arbitrary decision of YouTube to censor content simply because they find it disagreeable or in opposition to their own political views,” Furton said.
“YouTube is not staffed by scientists, but by engineers and technicians who understand little to nothing about scientific matters. Far worse, they favor a liberal ideology that supports abortion not only here at home but throughout the world. They believe that there is a universal right to kill the unborn. Such a view revokes their claim to moral superiority over others.”
Furton added, “Censorship by big tech is one of the greatest threats to the principles of democracy that we have seen in decades. This is done solely for the purpose of controlling information and preventing the free discussion of ideas among their fellow citizens.
“Unfortunately, this will become increasingly common until our political leaders gather up the courage to enact legislation that will protect the free expression of ideas.”
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