It started in a private Facebook group called NYC Birth for “pregnant people, people trying to conceive, those who have birthed their children in NYC, and adoptive parents.”
Facebook is known for its rules on sharing explicit content, forbidding genitalia or exposed nipples, except in the case of breastfeeding or mastectomy images.
New Yorker and mother Francie, as a way of looking back to the year she had given birth to her daughter, uploaded a photo of her having just given birth in her home on the bed stark naked with the umbilical cord still attached.
“Today it’s been one year since this happened,” the caption read.:
READ: Incredible photo of newborn: Baby delivered in amniotic sac
“Where do I even begin? I am humbled. I am grateful. I am speechless. I am a badass. I am so glad my baby is one-year-old. And I just can’t believe it.”
When New York Magazine covered the story in March, many other outfits followed suit, from Cosmopolitan to Mamamia.
But all of a sudden the photo, along with Francie, disappeared on Facebook; apparently an unknown user reported the image, and Francie was banned from the website.
Photo credit: Leonardo Mayorga
Facebook is known for its rules on sharing explicit content, forbidding genitalia or exposed nipples, except in the case of breastfeeding or mastectomy images.
“I was definitely surprised that someone reported the photo,” Francie says in a Mom.me story.
“But upon further thought, given our culture’s feelings about birth and women’s bodies, I’m not surprised. I do want Facebook to change their policy on birth photos, and I hope that they will, soon.
“More than anything, I’d like to help change the way we, as a culture, view and treat birth. Women are badasses. It should be more normal to talk about the incredible things our bodies can do—the things WE can do.”
There’s one good thing that stemmed from the controversy, however: social media campaign The Human Birth Project, urging the social media website to change its attitudes on childbirth photo.
But all of a sudden the photo, along with Francie, disappeared on Facebook; apparently an unknown user reported the image, and Francie was banned from the website.
A similar campaign ended in victory in 2013, when the #FreetheNipple movement successfully pushed Facebook to lift the ban on breastfeeding images.
“Our photos are more than our vaginas and nipples,” captioned in a recent The Human Birth Project photo. “They tell our birth stories.”
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