A pair of Christian YouTubers sparked outrage after posting an anti-abortion documentary to their family vlogging channel with more than 13 million subscribers.
Cole LaBrant and his wife, Savannah, gained fame for their videos about their family, including their wedding, dance recitals, and pregnancy announcements. The popular channel, The LaBrant Family, features their three children. They frequently discuss their faith and how Christianity informs their lifestyle.
The creators uploaded a 38-minute video titled “Abortion, (documentary)” on April 9.
In the video, the narrator notes the controversial nature of the topic since abortion was legalized in the 1970s.
Graphics display the death tolls of several controversial world events, including 800,000 killed in the Rwandan genocide, 3 million killed in the Cambodian genocide and 11 million killed in the Holocaust.
The documentary attributes over 60 million deaths to abortion in the United States.
Since its publication, there have been calls for the video's removal. Some have said it is insensitive to compare abortion to the Holocaust.
Cole LaBrant posted an Instagram story on April 10 notifying his followers that the platform had removed a post of the video.
“This is ok, fortunately we have talked with our team at YouTube and they’re keeping the documentary up there, which is most important,” LaBrant wrote.
He said YouTube had demonetized the video and removed it from its algorithm, a move which LaBrant said he expected.
“The biggest thing this does is significantly reduce the video’s reach,” he said in his statement. “This makes it where you can really only watch the video if you have a link or go directly to our channel.”
“At this point we’ll leave the message in God's hands and trust that whoever is supposed to watch it, will watch it,” LaBrant said.
Sadie Robertson Huff, a Christian social media influencer who appeared with her family on Duck Dynasty, shared a link to the documentary on her Instagram story and recommended the film to her followers. She praised the LaBrants for making the video “in the midst of a culture that is quick to cancel.”
“Thank you for bringing people in to the journey you two were on to learn,” Huff wrote. “Thank you for helping us educate ourselves on how to help someone in this situation.”
In the description of the video, the LaBrants link to Embrace Grace, a nonprofit that works with churches to “love and support the single and pregnant young women in their communities.”
As of April 11, the documentary has more than 2 million views.
The LaBrants have caught the ire of the internet before. They ultimately removed a 2019 video where they told their then 6-year-old daughter Everleigh that they had to give her dog away as an apparent April Fool's prank.
The prank was widely denounced as cruel and manipulative. The LaBrants, who had just over 8 million subscribers at the time, disabled comments on their videos. Their apology video, which was posted on April 3 and has also been removed, was viewed more than 900,000 times.
