By: Ruyi Wang
U.S. lawmakers are concerned about Google providing inaccurate results about abortion services for users in certain states by deceiving them go to anti-abortion clinics that don’t provide abortion procedures and talk women out from ending their pregnancy.
In a letter sent Friday to the CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, 20 Democratic members of Congress (13 senators and 7 members of the House of Representative) and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) told the company to quickly redress the search accuracy issue for abortion contents.
A report from Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that in “Trigger Law” states (such as Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.), 37% of Google map results and 11% of Google search for “abortion clinic near me” and “abortion pills” were for “anti-abortion fake clinics.” This means at least 1 out of 10 abortion clinic sites on Google are actually “fake” clinics that would oppose abortion and promote alternatives for abortion by talking women out of it with their tactics. CCDH have also found that 28% of Google ads that appear at the top of abortion contents search results were for antiabortion clinics.
The fake abortion clinics, often self-name themselves as “crisis pregnancy centers” or “pregnancy resource centers” outnumber real abortion clinics in the U.S. by three to one. There are approximately 2,600 fake clinics that are still operating in the U.S., according to a study done by Alliance, a coalition of state advocates for women’s rights and gender equality.
If the Supreme Court does overturn Roe v Wade, 26 states are likely to ban abortion, reducing the number of real abortion clinics to fewer than 600, according to the New York Times.
The lawmakers asked Google to either “fix” the results for abortion contents by limiting the appearance of fake abortion center results or adding more prominent information about clinics on whether the site actually would perform abortion for women or not.
In a statement Saturday, a Google representative said they are working on improving the search results and said that “any organization that wants to advertise to people seeking information about abortion services on Google must be certified and show in-ad disclosures that clearly state whether they do or do not offer abortions.”