In recent years, the birth community has created a presence on Instagram, celebrating the wonder of pregnancy and birth, connecting with other birth professionals, and sharing inspiring stories and educational resources. It is clear there is a huge audience who appreciates this content and wants to see these images. The birth community has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers and continues to grow each day. We contribute to the power and popularity of Instagram's platform, and now we ask for change and support for our cause. 

Instagram's censorship policies continue to inhibit and discourage our work by allowing photos to be removed and entire accounts to be shut down. Instagram continues to categorize physiological birth with pornography, graphic violence, profanity, and other subject matter it deems too offensive for the public eye. Birth does not belong in the same category as any of these things. 

This pervasive attitude toward birth is counterproductive to our mission of normalizing birth and releasing it from shame, stigma, and social taboo. The only way we can begin to change the way society views and appreciates birth, is to stop categorizing it as offensive material and start allowing our community the freedom to share uncensored images and information. 

We ask that Instagram collaborate with its birth community and users of its platform to find a better and more productive solution than censorship. We propose the following: 

1. Recategorize all birth related content as educational material, in its own unique category if necessary

2. Allow our community to post graphic images of physiological birth with the images blurred or greyed out, so users can tap to see the images and choose whether to view them. This gives the birth community the freedom to share more meaningful content, and the users of Instagram control over what they see. 

3. Continue to provide additional layers of protection to birth related accounts and work with influencers and users to restore content and accounts as needed, including protection from Instagram's shadowban 

Thank you Nicole and the Instagram team for protecting our accounts and restoring content and pages that have been taken down unjustly. We now ask for your support in this next phase of our mission to normalize birth and begin to heal society's shame and stigma around the miraculous event that has given life to us all. 

#IGallowuncensoredbirth

Sincerely,

Katie Vigos

Founder @empoweredbirthproject