By: Chloe Huang

Last Friday, 21 members of Congress sent Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, a letter urging Google to stop spreading misinformation about abortion clinics. This was sent in response to a report revealing that anti-abortion clinic websites showed up when people in some states searched for abortion clinics.

The report in question is by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). They found that when people in certain states searched “abortion clinic near me” and “abortion pill”, 11% of Google search results were websites to fake abortion clinics. In addition, 28% of the ads that appeared on these pages promoted anti-abortion organizations. This letter asks Google to limit the number of fake abortion clinics that show up in their search results and add a disclaimer when they do.

Fake abortion clinics, often called “pregnancy crisis centers”, are not legitimate abortion clinics. They don’t have to follow the same rules and regulations that abortion clinics do, and they try to dissuade patients from getting abortions, often through misinformation. According to the CCDH’s report, some of their claims are that abortions will cause infertility or that suicidal impulses are “common” after an abortion.

While legal, these centers are not ethical in the eyes of many scientists. The American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics states that fake abortion clinics are “providing misleading information and causing delays and inequities in access to abortion.” The letter echoes this idea, stating that “directing women toward fake clinics that traffic in misinformation and don’t provide comprehensive health services is dangerous to women’s health and undermines the integrity of Google’s search results.”

This comes after a draft of a Supreme Court majority opinion was released, revealing that they were set to overturn Roe vs. Wade, a landmark case that guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion. Since then, abortion has been a widely debated topic, and 13 states have trigger laws. Those trigger laws will ban or limit abortion as soon as Roe vs. Wade is overturned, and those were the states investigated in CCDH’s report.

The misleading search results could have a massive global impact, as Google is the most widely used search engine in the world. According to Statista, a data company, Google owns more than 90% of the global market share on search engines. As Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, so aptly says, “When Google screws up, it can have an enormous impact on the whole word.”

Update: As of June 24, 2022, Roe vs Wade has officially been overturned. At least five states have laws banning or limiting abortion.

Sources:

– The Washington Post: https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1655667897911x455898890068321600/Google%20results%20for%20abortion%20clinics%20are%20suggesting%20%27fake%20clinics%27%20before%20SCOTUS%20ruling%2C%20lawmakers%20say%20-%20The%20Washington%20Post.pdf

– Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/exclusive-us-lawmakers-urge-google-fix-abortion-searches-that-steer-women-fake-2022-06-17/

– Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2022/06/17/democratic-lawmakers-to-google-abortion-search-results-shouldnt-direct-women-to-fake-clinics/?sh=5312799e6266