Giving birth is a beautiful, transformative, and an overwhelming experience. A woman carries her baby in her womb for 9 months, nurtures it with her own blood, and forms a connection no one can define, let alone claim to fathom.
Francie Webb, a mother who runs The Milkin Mama, a breastfeeding coaching resource, posted a photo of her giving birth to her daughter on a private group on Facebook that goes by the name of NYC Birth on her daughter’s first birthday.
She posted this picture, with this caption:
“Today it’s been one year since this happened. 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.”
Within an hour of posting this, someone flagged it off as being explicit and in violation of Facebook’s policies. After which, she was given restricted access to her account, as the photo she uploaded and many others were under review.
In an interview with Mashable, Francie said she shared the photo with “the sense of empowerment I gained with my birth and my daughter’s entry in the world could empower other women”.
A woman shared her beautiful moment in an attempt to empower other women like her, but was torn down anonymously. How is this empowering women? Yes, the picture might be graphic in nature. But how can anyone deem it sexually explicit? How is a very natural process of giving birth deemed sexually explicit by a leading social media portal that should in fact be telling people and distinguishing the right difference between what’s sexually explicit and what’s not.