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Originally published May 17 2014

Abortion documentary achieves fundraising goal despite censorship attempt by Project Kickstarter

by L.J. Devon, Staff Writer

(NaturalNews) A popular crowd-funding website called Kickstarter is a great place to raise money for creative endeavors. Kickstarter is "a vibrant ecosystem where backers join creators to bring new things to life."

Kickstarter is advertised as a place where "passion, ideas, and ambition abound." Boasting over $1 billion in project fundraising to date, Kickstarter is meant to be an open platform for anything to become possible, "from homemade postcards to Oscar-winning documentaries."

This is all true unless a proposed project conflicts with Kickstarter's corporate agenda or political bias. This was evident when Kickstarter recently censored a crowd-funding project based on a documentary about Doctor Kermit Gosnell -- the infamous serial killer who performed heinous, third-trimester abortions on live babies.

Allegedly, Kickstarter threatened to shut down the project before it ever had a chance to reach any level of fundraising. This prompted the creators of the film, Ann, Phelim and Magdalena to take their documentary to an alternative crowd-funding site, Indiegogo.

IndieGogo embraces documentary, as project raises $2.1 million goal

Since the switch, the filmmakers have raised a tremendous amount of money, reaching their goal of $2.1 million in donations, which tops all fundraising projects at Indiegogo to date.

More than 23,000 donors chipped in to make the project a reality. The thousands of pro-life, pro-transparency and free speech supporters powered the project to its $2.1 million goal on May 12. Stars like Kevin Sorbo and Nick Searcy helped advertise the project to a larger audience.

Instead of censoring the project for its controversial depictions, Indiegogo embraced it. While Kickstarter has a right to decline the project, Indiegogo has made their rival look like a censorship arm for a bigger political agenda.

The fundraising success sends a message to Hollywood that independent film makers will not be silenced, especially when they are documenting important facts on one of the most shocking decades-long cases of baby killing in the history of the US. The new documentary is now funded and set for production.

Filmmaker Phelim McAleer stated, "The media and Hollywood normally love serial killers. There are movies and whole TV series devoted to the genre but for some reason there were no plans to tell the truth about Kermit Gosnell and his crimes. We were determined to change that and to show that [there] was a public appetite for this truth to be told and that's why we decided to crowdfund the project."

Censored film makers design billboard degrading Kickstarter's tactics.

Enraged by Kickstarter's censorship, McAleer designed a large billboard ad that now stands alongside the stretch of road leading up to the Kickstarter headquarters. Now, when Kickstarter employees make their morning commute, they are greeted by a bold sign that reads, "Kicked out by Kickstarter." View the entire billboard here.

While McAleer respects the rights of Kickstarter to refuse a project as a private company, he said (of Kickstarter), "They claim to like diversity but don't like diversity of opinion."

McAleer thinks that Kickstarter should "be honest and announce that certain opinions and ideas are not welcome."

"It's sad, but that's the truth," said McAleer.

Bringing light to one of America's darkest serial killers

For those unaware of the Gosnell slayings, here is what the Grand Jury wrote about the case in 2013, as quoted on IndieGogo:

This case is about a doctor who killed babies ... What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy -- and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors .... Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.

Sources:

http://www.breitbart.com

http://newsbusters.org

https://www.indiegogo.com






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