U.S. lawmakers have urged Alphabet’s main Google search engine to give accurate results to people seeking abortions rather than sometimes sending them to “crisis pregnancy centers,” which keep women away from procedures.
The request came in a letter, the main signatories of which were Senator Mark Warner and Representative Elissa Slotkin, sent to Google on Friday and first reported by Reuters.
The letter was prompted by a study published last week by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. The study found that 11% of search results for “abortion clinic near me” or “abortion pill” in some states were for centers that oppose abortion.
The research was conducted in the 13 states with laws that would ban abortion if, as expected, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade who legalized it nationwide as early as this month.
Google declined to comment on the letter to Alphabet’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, but said of the report, “We’re always looking for ways to improve our results to help people find what they’re looking for or understand if what they are looking for may not be available.”
The letter was signed by 14 senators and seven members of the United States House of Representatives. All are Democrats.
Crisis pregnancy centers, which have existed in one form or another for years, reflect disagreements in the United States over the right to terminate a pregnancy. Some of these centers have been accused of giving women inaccurate information about their pregnancy, which can compromise their access to abortion.
“Google should not display fake abortion clinics or crisis pregnancy centers,” the lawmakers wrote. “If Google is to continue to show these misleading results… the results should, at the very least, be labeled appropriately,” they wrote.
Google has treated other health issues differently. Research regarding suicide or sexual assault is complemented by a curated list of resources and trusted sources.
The research group also found that in the states it studied, 28% of Google ads were for abortion centers, as were 37% of results on Google Maps. The letter said some centers had disclaimers, but not all.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
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