YouTube and Vimeo removed a video posted by the pro-life non-profit Created Equal, showing footage of premature twin boys after they had been delivered in a hospital, only to be denied care by doctors and nurses and left to die.
The video captures moments in the delivery room at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where the boys’ mother, Amanda Finnefrock, said no hospital staff were present as her first son, Emery, landed on the edge of the bed. He received no treatment and lived for 45 minutes. Her second son, Elliot, breathed and cried on his own for two and a half hours before he died. Finnefrock told The Federalist that a neonatologist at the hospital said “it’s inhumane to try” to save him.
YouTube removed the video and told Created Equal it “violated community standards,” but did not specify which standards. Vimeo also removed the video and disabled Created Equal’s account, stating the reason was “You cannot upload videos are hateful, defamatory, or discriminatory.” Neither YouTube nor Vimeo responded to The Federalist’s request for comment.
In late September, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Ohio hospital featured in Created Equal’s video, Riverside Methodist, “had failed in 2017 to ensure medical screening examinations required by EMTALA were performed for twins born prematurely (at 22 weeks gestation) who were not sent to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit and died within several hours after delivery.”
HHS said their Office for Civil Rights will investigate Finnefrock’s case “to determine whether any additional civil rights violations occurred.” Finnefrock told The Federalist she suspects Riverside is now on a “crusade” to get her video taken down off all social media platforms. The censored video is still available on Facebook and Parler.
Watch it here:
