U.S. lawmakers have challenged Google over how the company’s search engine shows users in some states inaccurate results about abortion services, diverting them to “fake clinics” that do not provide the procedure and prevent people from terminating a pregnancy. In a letter sent Friday to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, 20 Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) Urged the company to quickly address the issue of search accuracy, noting that Supreme Court ruling later this month could overturn the abortion right introduced in Roe vs. Wade. What if Roe v. Wade was overturning Lawmakers cited a recent report that found that in states with abortion “activation laws,” 11 percent of Google search results for abortion services led users to non-abortion-free medical facilities. The result was 37 percent for Google Maps queries. The U.S.-based Center for the Fight against Digital Hate also found that nearly 28 percent of the Google ads that appear at the top of relevant search results pages were targeted at anti-abortion clinics. “Directing women to fake clinics that circulate misinformation and do not provide comprehensive health services is dangerous to women’s health and undermines the integrity of Google search results,” Democratic Lawmakers wrote the letter, which was spearheaded by Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.) And MP Elissa Slotkin (Mich.). Lawmakers have asked Google to either limit the occurrence of fake clinical abortion results when users search for an “abortion clinic” or similar terms, or add more explicit disclaimers about whether an facility provides abortion services. Both lawmakers and the CCDH say existing disclaimers are too small and easily lost. The request from members of Congress comes after Google pledged in 2014 to remove ads for certain “crisis centers” that violated the company’s policy against misleading advertising. In a statement on Saturday, a Google spokesperson said that it is constantly working to improve its search results to better serve its users, adding that “any organization that wants to advertise to people seeking information about abortion services on Google must be certified and display revelations within the advertisement that clearly state whether or not they are having an abortion. “ The landscape for reproductive rights in the United States is expected to change dramatically in response to the Supreme Court ruling, which could come as early as Monday. In addition to the 13 states that have already enacted “activation laws” that effectively ban abortions at the moment Roe overturned, at least five more are expected to follow suit. What are trigger laws and which states have them? Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have laws that explicitly protect abortion rights at the state level, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research center based in New York and Washington that supports abortion rights. The rest of the states either do not have a specific law or no books are banned. Imran Ahmed, executive director of the Center for Combating Digital Hate, told the Washington Post that the draft Supreme Court opinion leaked in May had stimulated “massive” global growth in fundraising and creativity among groups working together. undermine fundamental reproductive rights. Similar issues regarding reproductive rights and abortion misinformation are emerging in Kenya, Latin America and the United Kingdom, he said. Fighting misinformation through accurate search results is especially important for Google given its global reach, Ahmed said. Google is by far the most popular search engine, with more than 90 percent of the global market share, according to German consumer data analysis firm Statista. “When Google crashes, it can have a huge impact on the whole word,” Ahmed said. How Google’s search algorithm works is a strictly protected trade secret, but the company tells a public guide to its search engine that Google is searching for web pages. is considered relevant to a user search query and then returns results that it believes are “of the highest quality and most user-friendly”. Google says it uses “hundreds of factors”, including location and user language, to determine “relevance” However, Ahmed said the search algorithm can easily play as it tries to identify which websites are relevant, including groups that link to each other. Fake abortion clinics, often referred to as ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ or ‘pregnancy resource centers’, do not provide abortions, although critics say they are trying to create a medical facility by offering pregnancy tests, ultrasounds or post-pregnancy tests. The Journal of Ethics of the American Medical Association argues that while “crisis pregnancy centers” are legal, they are immoral “providing misleading information and causing delays and inequalities in access to abortion.” In contrast, websites for “crisis pregnancy centers” actively prevent patients from choosing abortion, often through misinformation. Among the false claims made by fake clinics reported in the CCDH report are that abortions will make a pregnant woman infertile or that suicidal impulses are “common” after an abortion. Ahmed stressed that the criticism of fake abortion clinics is not their ideology, but the misleading tactics they use to motivate people to behave the way they want. “People have a right to have an opinion on abortions,” he said. “But it is [their] use of deception that makes her so malicious ”. With misinformation and misinformation having a direct impact on people’s personal health, Ahmed said it is vital that major technology platforms act responsibly – and hold policymakers accountable. “This is just another example of how haters and misinformers can arm digital platforms to harm the real world,” he said.
