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Instagram Removed Babylon Bee Founder’s Pro-Life Comic ‘In Error’

Courtesy, Adam Ford

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Anders Hagstrom Justice Reporter
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Instagram reinstated a censored post from Babylon Bee founder Adam Ford Wednesday, hours after Ford noticed the pro-life comic had been deleted.

Ford, who no longer owns The Babylon Bee, frequently posts Christian-themed comic strips to his Instagram profile. The comic originally banned “in error” by Instagram sought to show how similar the arguments used to defend abortion are to those that were used to defend slavery in the U.S.

Ford received a message saying the March 29 post had been removed for “hate speech,” and the app did not give him an option to appeal. Ford argued the deletion was “totally unjustified,” in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“This image was removed in error and will be reinstated shortly,” Instagram told TheDCNF in a brief statement.

The now-reinstated post can be seen in full below.

View this post on Instagram

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A post shared by Adam Ford (@adam4dcom) on

“There is no way any human being could believe my comic is promoting slavery, since the two women talking are clearly identified as living 200 years ago, and the woman on the right is clearly the ‘bad guy,'” Ford wrote in a statement. “Does Instagram consider it ‘hate speech’ to contend for the humanity and personhood of the unborn?”

This is not Ford’s first experience with “erroneous” bans from social media companies. Facebook “fact checked” and censored several of The Babylon Bee’s satirical articles while Ford ran the outlet. Snopes fact checked a Bee article in 2018 titled “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication” and found that it was false. Facebook then used the fact check to warn Ford that publishing more “disputed info” would result in demonetization and reduced viewership.

Facebook later apologized, but the experience contributed to a sentiment that ultimately led Ford to sell the Bee, partly due to the anti-Christian bias he felt on Facebook and Google. (RELATED: Facebook Blocks Daily Caller Story)

“You’re going to have to alter whatever needs to be altered — even your worldview — to accommodate Facebook,” Ford wrote at the time. “If you miss a payment or step out of line, you’re going to get a beating. And if they ever decide you’re too much trouble, they’ll just shoot you. Facebook has the power to kill publishers, and they do, not only based on publishing techniques, but based on worldview. Just think about that.”

Ford remained in media, however, running the Drudge Report-esque Christian Daily Reporter, which he had launched a few months prior in January 2018. With a self-contained website, he thought, he wouldn’t need to meddle with gatekeepers.

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