The Markup has found that Facebook is serving up ads and posts for the “abortion pill reversal” procedure, a medically unapproved and potentially dangerous process that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says is “not based on science.”
Facebook has been circulating this content for years, a practice that both lawmakers and anti-disinformation advocates have publicly criticized. But it’s especially controversial now as interest in medication abortion has spiked with the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and resulting physical clinic closures.
We found 17 ads from two anti-abortion activist groups circulated on Facebook from October through March. We collected that data through our Citizen Browser project, which gathers posts and group recommendations served to a national panel of Facebook users. Meta’s own ad library showed another group’s abortion reversal ad was live on the platform in May. And regular unpaid Facebook posts pushing the procedure also appeared in our Citizen Browser data as recently as June.
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