TikTok is no stranger to controversy, between the scams, the hoaxes that have emerged, and the Brazilian teen who live-streamed his suicide last year.
Over the last few days, a new video has sparked an angry debate online. The video was posted by a user called @cpcake2 from America and is labelled “Abortion time! TAKE 2”. It seems to show her friend Ashley looking at a positive pregnancy test, before showing off her stomach and then going to a Planned Parenthood clinic to get an abortion.
In the waiting room, they point out a sad-looking couple waiting, with the words “there’s two abortion moods”, and then cut to Ashley fist-pumping. Then we see her on a medical table, before presumably having the procedure. In the background of the 20-second video, Bruno Mars’ “It Will Rain” plays, making it kind of feel like any regular, light-hearted TikTok video.
Women should have the right to do what they want with their bodies, but the video has upset some people online, particularly anti-choice activists. Charlie Kirk, who is the president of a conservative advocacy group called Turning Point USA, wrote that the video was “sick and depraved”, while Lila Rose, the president of pro-life group Live Action, called the video a show of “cruelty”. She asked her followers to pray for the girls in the video.
Despite the controversy, the video is not actually the only abortion-related video on TikTok. There are other videos of girls on the way to abortion clinics, people at pro-choice rallies, and teenagers having conversations with their parents about abortion. There are also videos from anti-choice rallies too, and Live Action often use TikTok to post anti-abortion messages.
@cpcake2, who originally posted the video of Ashley, has now made their account private.