Twitter has blocked current Tennessee Representative and Senate hopeful Marsha Blackburn from paying to promote a campaign announcement that falsely claimed she “stopped the sale of baby body parts.”
According to the Associated Press, Twitter told vendors for the campaign that the statement was “inflammatory,” and stopped the ad from being promoted on the service. The ad can still, however, be posted as usual on Twitter, a company spokesperson confirmed to The Verge. The spokesperson pointed to Twitter’s advertising policy, which bans “inflammatory or provocative content.”
“I fought Planned Parenthood and we stopped the sale of body parts, thank god,” Blackburn says in the video. The statement seems to reference a House committee she chaired, empaneled after undercover viral videos charged that Planned Parenthood was illegally profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. During the investigation, Blackburn mentioned the “body parts” claim repeatedly.
Ultimately, the viral anti-abortion videos were found to be deceptively edited, and two activists behind the videos were indicted in Texas, where the charges were dismissed, and later in California. The heavily criticized investigation led to a report that attacked Planned Parenthood, but the group has been cleared in a series of parallel state investigations.
The Blackburn campaign account tweeted the ad this afternoon, and asked viewers to “[stand] up to Silicon Valley” by retweeting it.