US lawmakers are concerned about the search results offered to women seeking information about abortion.
A group of Democratic lawmakers led by Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin are calling on Google to “stop manipulating search results”that force people seeking abortions to go to anti-abortion clinics. In a letter to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the latter cites a study by the American nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which highlights that 1 in 10 Google search results for “for example, an abortion clinic near me”or “abortion pill”shows anti-abortion centers.
US lawmakers concerned about search results
“Sending women to fake clinics that provide misinformation and do not provide comprehensive health care is dangerous to women’s health and undermines the integrity of Google search results,” the legislators explain. CCDH also found that 37% of Google Maps results for the same query lead people to anti-abortion clinics. Google should not show these results to users seeking abortions, they said, and if the Mountain View firm were to display them, warnings should have been displayed.
offered to women seeking information about abortion
In addition, CCHR found that 28% of the ads displayed in the first search results were for maternity shelters. According to lawmakers, Google added a disclaimer for this ad, a “small, inconspicuous message.””The prevalence of these misleading ads is indicative of what appears to be a worrying backlash from Google’s 2014 promise to remove ads for specialty centers that help deceive women seeking abortion information.”
Mark Warner, Elissa Slotkin and other signatories want to know what Google plans to do to limit the emergence of anti-abortion centers when users are specifically looking for abortion services. And if Google decides not to take action to prevent them, the group is asking the giant to add a clear statement about whether the center offers abortion services.
NEW: @RepSlotkin and I are leading a group of lawmakers to push on the Google CEO to crack down on manipulative search results that lead to scammy “crisis pregnancy centers.”
It’s time for them to limit or label results and ads that lead to fake abortion clinics. pic.twitter.com/LlkTueI2QP