Facebook’s community guidelines have been criticized in the past for putting restrictions on images of women breastfeeding and topless women (but not men).
Now, a doctor who posted a photo from his patient’s birth has discovered that the image was taken down after being labeled “pornography” by the platform.
Take a look at this birth-positive doctor’s story.
Dr. Jason Lin is an obstetrician in Taiwan.
He practices medicine at the Dianthus MFM Centre and as you can probably gathered, he delivers babies. A lot of babies.
It might not be too common for OBs to be active on social media, but Dr. Lin posts funny and educational photos on his Instagram and Facebook accounts.
In this photo, he is modeling the classic “birth” pose. Gotta give the doc props for committing like this.
Clearly, this doctor likes to have a sense of humor.
I’m not exactly sure what he is communicating to this baby doll, but it looks like an interesting conversation.
It’s not all fun and games, though.
With his patient’s permission, Dr. Lin also posts photos of real pregnancy exams and live births. These photos are often quite graphic, but at the same time, they depict the beauty of giving birth.
He even shared this photo of a big sister meeting her sibling in the delivery room for the first time.
What an incredible photo! She looks like she’s ready to start her big sister duties as soon as possible.
Dr. Lin hopes that by sharing these images, he can help remove the fear of birth.
He believes that we discuss the pain and gory parts of giving birth and forget to focus on the positive aspects like seeing a baby cry for the first time.
Dr. Lin was surprised when one photo in particular was removed by Facebook.
According to Facebook, the photo didn’t meet the platform’s community guidelines and they flagged the photo as “pornography”.
The photo was of a woman assisting her own baby during its birth.
After the photo was removed from Facebook, Dr. Lin posted it on Instagram.
“But all I want to show to my audience and the world is that giving birth is one of the most beautiful and [natural] thing [sic],” he said on Instagram.
Dr. Lin said he also wanted to share the photo to remove the fear of giving birth.
Even though we were all born one way or another, birth is still a very taboo topic to talk about and see pictures of. Maybe doctors like Dr. Lin can change those attitudes.
The image has stayed up on his Instagram account.
It currently has over 3,000 likes and lots of comments from people sharing their support for this photo.
Many said that this photo captured an incredible moment.
Birth photography is becoming more mainstream but these images still take my breath away every time I see them. Amazing!
A lot pf people agreed that this image is simply beautiful.
You can see the mother’s happiness as she reached down to meet and hold her baby for the first time. Beautiful doesn’t even begin to describe it!
Dr. Lin’s photo is an important reminder of the beauty of birth.
” We should always be thankful how brave of our moms and wives have been through [sic],” he wrote on Instagram.
By sharing images like this, this doctor is changing the way we think about having babies.
Empowering moms to feel good about their birthing experiences is important to their mental and physical health. Keep up the amazing work, Dr. Lin!
