Women's march photo manipulated to target abortion rights advocates
- Published on November 26, 2024 at 18:55
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"When your mom is 'subtly' saying she doesn't love you," says text over the image, shared November 24, 2024 on Threads.
Similar posts -- many criticizing abortion rights activists -- rocketed across the Meta-owned site and other platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok. Other versions of the picture circulated in Spanish.
The posts followed the reelection in the United States of Donald Trump, who campaigned on leaving states to make their own decisions on abortion access and in his first term appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court that dismantled decades of legal precedent by overturning the nationwide right to the practice.
But the image of the woman and her daughter is altered.
Reverse image searches surfaced the original photo in a March 24, 2023 article on a Mexican website called "La Casa De Todas y Todos" (archived here). The woman's sign says: "Soy mamá de la niña que jamás vas a tocar," which translates to, "I am the mother of the little girl you are never going to touch."
The article described and showcased pictures from the March 8 International Women's Day march in Monterrey, Mexico. It credited the photos to Alejandra García (archived here).
In a November 25, 2024 interview via Instagram direct message, García confirmed in Spanish that she was the photographer.
"It definitely is manipulated," she said of the altered version shared online.
She said the mother in the picture gave her permission to take it and publish it online.
"It seems very unfair to me that they are using her image to share other messages," she said. "It is very sad that the real message talks about violence against little girls, and that they have used that, with the face of a minor in the photograph, to spread lies.
"It only speaks to the kind of people that they have always demonstrated themselves to be."
García provided AFP with the raw image file from her camera, plus the photo in JPG format and a version she lightly edited for color correction. Each shows the mother's poster was about her daughter, not abortion.
Metadata attached to those files also confirms the picture was taken March 8, 2023.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about abortion here.
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