By: Jovia Zhang
On Friday, June 17, U.S. lawmakers requested Google to mend the incorrect results about abortion services, driving users toward “fake clinics” and false information regarding abortion.
In a letter sent to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, twenty Democratic members of Congress and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) encouraged Alphabet to immediately amend the accuracy of the search results.
According to articles in The Washington Post and on CNBC, Democratic lawmakers wrote: “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.” “The prevalence of these misleading ads marks what appears to be a concerning reversal from Google’s pledge in 2014 to take down ads from crisis pregnancy centers that engage in overt deception of women seeking out abortion information online.”
While Google refused to respond to the letter sent to Pichai, according to Reuters, they commented on the reports: “We’re always looking at ways to improve our results to help people find what they’re looking for, or understand if what they’re looking for may not be available.” According to CNBC, the company added, “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.”
In a recent report, lawmakers found that states with abortion “trigger laws” had 11 percent of Google search results lead users to nonmedical facilities that don’t provide abortions; the outcome was 37 percent for Google Maps. As shown during a report by the U.S.-based non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), nearly 28 percent of Google advertisements that emerge at the top of related search-result pages were for abortion clinics.
In response to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, drastic changes are anticipated to reproductive rights in the United States. In addition to the 13 states that have already passed abortion “trigger laws,” it is predicted that at least five others will follow along.
Crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S. display conflicts over the right to discontinue a pregnancy. Some centers are accused of sharing false information with women about their pregnancy, risking their access to abortion.
In an article published in The Washington Post, journalist Kim Bellware wrote, “The sites for the ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ earnestly discourage patients from choosing abortion, often through misinformation. Among the false claims made by clinics cited in the CCDH report [are these]: that abortions will make pregnant women infertile [and] that suicidal impulses are ‘common’ after an abortion.”
“Fighting misinformation through accurate search results is especially significant for Google given its global reach,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate said in an article for The Washington Post. “When Google screws up, it can have an enormous impact on the whole world,” he added.
Ahmed made it clear that the misinformation given by fake abortion clinics is not their political point of view, but the deceitful strategies they use to convince people to behave in a way that they want.
According to The Washington Post, Ahmed said, “This is just another example of how hate and disinformation actors can weaponize digital platforms to cause real-world harm to people.”
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/18/google-abortion-clinic-searches-fake/