“She's Fighting for Pro-Choice Speech, One Account at a Time: Repro Uncensored's Martha Dimitratou on keeping abortion speech alive online”, Jul 25, 2025, Kylie Cheung, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
“We unite creatives, researchers, and technologists to defend the right to access information and express ideas freely.”, Global Map from this site, Repro Uncensored, at < https://www.reprouncensored.
~~ recommended by desmond ~~
Introduction by desmond. This article is centered on an interview with Martha Dimitratou (originally from Greece), and who lives in Europe where the fight against Capitalist attacks is also fierce though the legal framework is better than in the U.S. The website has worked up a map that shows known examples of Internet Censorship that gives the lie to the posturing of Free Speech and Liberty, spouted by the decadent and declining U.S.-led Finance Capitalist Bloc. The highest levels of censorship are found in the U.S., 180 cases, 87 in the Netherlands, 76 in Turkyie, 75 in the U.K., 51 in Germany, and 44 in Australia. Meanwhile we see 2 in Indonesia, 2 in Russia, 2 in Thailand 3 in China. The ruling class of the “West” is struggling to maintain control and to implement harsh reactionary and fascist social policies. They find it necessary to attack dissent coming from populations accustomed to relatively free speech and at least somewhat independent media.
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How This Activist Is Fighting Abortion Censorship Online
A South Dakota law banning ads for pro-choice websites. Bills in Texas, Iowa, and South Carolina outlawing internet service providers from hosting websites with abortion pill information. A Texas university canceling a speech by an abortion provider. A professor demoted over a pro-choice op-ed.
Why is this happening? Because the anti-abortion movement knows that knowledge isn’t only power—knowledge is also abortion access and bodily autonomy. We’re in the midst of an all-out war on pro-choice speech, and this war on speech, Martha Dimitratou says, is also a war on democracy:
“The freedom of gathering online very much impacts the freedom of assembling, and therefore democracy. When people cannot gather and share information in these online spaces, it’s very much a threat to our democracy.”
Dimitratou is the founder and executive director of Repro Uncensored, a nonprofit dedicated to tracking the censorship of pro-choice, queer, and feminist accounts on digital platforms. The group helps reinstate accounts that are blocked for their feminist speech, and researches patterns of online suppression around the world. As its name would suggest, Repro Uncensored particularly focuses on accounts suppressed for sharing information about abortion.
Abortion, Every Day is no stranger to online suppression: Jessica’s Youtube, TikTok, and Instagram videos on abortion have been flagged, and even removed—mislabeled as promoting illegal drug sales (aka, discussing medication abortion). AED, like nearly all other abortion rights creators online, has also been forced to use “algo-speak.” In other words, spelling abortion as “@b0rti0n” or “🆎ortion” lest videos be suppressed or removed.
When we can’t even say the word abortion, Dimitratou warns, this “perpetuates stigma.” And when reproductive rights organizations that are often already under-staffed are constantly forced to beg social platforms to reinstate them, this takes away precious time and resources.
The threats against our speech are massive and growing: from bills that claim to ‘protect’ children online, but would really censor information on abortion and LGBTQ rights, to legislation that would criminalize websites with abortion-related resources.
Thankfully, both behind the scenes and front and center, activists like Dimitratou and her team at Repro Uncensored are fighting to keep pro-choice speech alive on the internet. The stakes are high: hundreds of thousands of people—particularly vulnerable demographics—could be stranded without abortion if they can’t find out how to access care, Dimitratou says.
She talked to AED about a day in the life helping reproductive rights groups stay online; the biggest (and most insidious) threats to pro-choice speech; anti-abortion groups’ ironic, online self-victimization campaigns. Most importantly, how we fight back—and win.
AED: What does an ordinary day look like for you?
MD: There’s always an emergency. Today as an example: I’ve been moving between continents doing our digital advocacy works, constantly waking up to some kind of emergency. In Turkey, more than 120 feminist and queer accounts have been taken down in the last few days, and several critical accounts providing abortion information in Poland. We put them back up, and they were taken down again. There’s always some place in the world that is suffering from censorship, which affects a lot of people.
Then on top of that, if ever time allows, which often it doesn’t, we’ll be trying to think of things like funding and longer term projects to keep our work sustainable. But most of the day has to do with critical things that are happening that moment.
AED: You come from a background working in art and technology. How did you start working in reproductive justice?
MD: I started working in aesthetics, politics, and new media. But my work in reproductive justice began when I connected with a journalist and reproductive health advocate from Iran, who herself was prohibited from going back to Iran because of her work. From there, I got into abortion work and worked with a lot of abortion access organizations in the U.S. and globally. Way before Covid, the landscape of abortion access was very different—in the U.S. and everywhere.
Then, unfortunately, Dobbs happened, and so it became more and more important to think of digital strategy. In recent years, we’ve also seen how use of AI has accelerated, and digital strategy is constantly changing. This is an extremely difficult landscape to navigate.
I myself have had a lot of hands-on experience with these little things, like, “We’re blocked in this media, how do we move to that one?” All these things where you really need to roll up your sleeves and see what works, where we get restricted so many times with all these accounts, and there’s a lot to learn, and it’s so important to get the word out with what we learn. That’s how I got here.
AED: What are some of the day-to-day threats to online abortion info that you encounter in your work?
MD: I see two main categories: people who need information and abortion access right at that moment, are searching for it via search engine, but aren’t able to access it. And people who are having ads or posts taken down—experiencing shadowbanning. With shadowbanning, sometimes you can’t message with, collaborate, or interact with other users anymore. Or just your engagement going way down.
The impact this has is that hundreds of thousands of people all of a sudden lose access to immediate, accurate abortion information, if, say, an account like Abortion Dream Team in Poland or I Need an A in the U.S. are taken down from Instagram. Plus, these are run by very small teams—it’s a lot of money and time for them to try to reinstate their accounts instead of doing the very important work that they do. And it’s becoming harder and harder to reinstate accounts.
We also see issues involving abortion stigma. For instance, people can’t spell the word “abortion” and have to use algo speech, and they might still be suppressed.
We know right now, more and more people are turning to ChatGPT for abortion information. We’ve seen data that shows recently, a 100% increase in people searching for abortion information through AI platforms like Claude and ChatGPT in restrictive states. So, we need to make sure online abortion information remains visible.
AED: What does your process of helping people restore their accounts or content look like?
MD: We’re really trying to make sure people understand the impact of this suppression, working closely with creators, artists, influencers. When a request for assistance with a banned or suppressed account comes in, we track this, and put it on our map so people know what kind of censorship is happening and where.
Then, our team has a tri-fold process for trying to reinstate accounts. We work with contacts we may have at Meta or whichever platform. If needed, we campaign to try to get the word out as much as possible online about the suppression that’s happening. And then we go to the press and apply pressure to have the accounts reinstated—especially the European press, because in Europe there are stronger laws around digital services and protections.
AED: What are some of the biggest policy threats to abortion-related, online speech right now?
MD: KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act) in Congress is one of our main focuses. Many things that we’re seeing online that are supposed to ‘protect’ children are about limiting access to information about abortion, sex, sexuality. State-by-state, there are many versions of that. Anything to do supposedly with ‘children’s safety’, we’re seeing many restrictions to information not just in the U.S. but globally. In the U.K., in Australia, different ID and VPN requirements supposedly to protect children are extremely problematic.
AED: Why is the anti-abortion movement—with help from online platforms—cracking down so heavily on online speech right now?
MD: We know the anti-abortion movement is very well-funded and powerful, but has done an excellent job leading the narrative that big tech spaces are censoring them. They’re living in a different world and it does seem like they’re dominating the narrative that they’re the ones whose speech is under threat when it’s very much the opposite: progressive movements, abortion access, queer accounts, are the ones that are most censored.
The right is the one passing policies going after abortion and extremely dangerous anti-LGBTQ policies, and in Europe, attacking the Digital Service Act that protects online speech. They’re the ones harming and attacking abortion rights and queer folks. It’s a very effective strategy. They’re very well-funded and well-organized.
What they also do very well is they’re very coordinated online, they’re able to come together and report en masse, abortion accounts and take them down—on Reddit, in all the spaces. The goal is to stop as many people as possible from accessing abortion.
AED: What are the stakes of your work? What happens if people can’t freely access information about abortion, gender-affirming care, or related health services online?
MD: The stakes are, this could take away really hundreds of thousands of people’s access to accurate information. It’s in states that are extremely restrictive [on abortion]. It’s always the same groups most harmed by these anti-abortion measures—marginalized groups, lower-income people, immigrant families, that may have less access to critically needed information. When people don’t have access to this information, it very much threatens their health.
On top of that, the freedom of gathering online very much impacts the freedom of assembling, and therefore democracy. When people cannot gather and share information in these online spaces, it’s very much a threat to our democracy. We have a lawsuit in the Netherlands right now representing queer rights groups that have been affected by online suppression, where, in the Netherlands, there are strong freedom of expression laws in their Constitution.
What we’re seeing, too, is queer cultural spaces are affected, information is limited. Part of that is, we have to flip the narrative that the right is being suppressed. All too often, we see the algorithm amplify hate, radicalize youth, make people question whether they can believe what they read, jeopardize human debate and conversation. The stakes are very high.
AED: How are you unwinding and taking care of yourself these days?
MD: Well, I love to swim, I love to go to Athens, where I’m originally from, and swim. Swimming has always been how I get through things. But also, I do love the people I work with, people like you, people who are truly motivated and innovative.
The work we do together has shifted a bit, where there are more barriers but we’re getting more creative, we’re doing events like in South by Southwest, events in Berlin, connecting with each other globally, breaking into the mainstream, seeing how things are interconnected in a way that was harder before. I love that.
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“We unite creatives, researchers, and technologists to defend the right to access information and express ideas freely.”, Global Map from this site, Repro Uncensored, at < https://www.reprouncensored.
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