In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade, Google and Yelp have been skewing online search results to censor Women’s Choice Center (WCC), a pregnancy resource center in Bettendorf, Iowa. At a time when traffic at the center should have been on the rise, WCC instead noticed a decline. At the bottom of it all was Big Tech censorship.
WCC provides free support and services to pregnant women and new moms, including medical-grade pregnancy testing, limited obstetric ultrasound, limited STI testing for females, attempted reversal of the medical abortion pill (RU-486), and a plethora of non-medical services such as free diapers, wipes, formula, maternity clothing, baby clothing, and other essentials. As their website explains:
Since 2002, Women’s Choice Center has been providing caring, compassionate, and confidential pregnancy counseling and services to women and families.
Despite the value of the services WCC offers and the recent change in abortion laws, they began to notice a decrease in the typically high numbers of women they serve who are considering abortion, according to CatholicVote. As that report states:
According to WCC call records provided to CatholicVote, the center had been receiving around 18 calls a month from women specifically considering abortion as of January 2022. However, after Roe vs. Wade was overturned in June 2022, staff noticed the call numbers began to decline. They received only 14 that month and the number of calls steadily plummeted to merely two abortion-related calls in December 2022.
Researching the possible causes for the inexplicable decline in traffic, WCC staff discovered that Google was hiding the WCC website from search results. As Catholic Vote reports:
After researching the cause, the center discovered that their website had been hidden from Google search results, specifically for searches including the term “abortion.”
In an interview with CatholicVote, WCC Outreach Coordinator Sarah Jensen said that they noticed a sudden decrease in calls from women considering abortion.
“They censored us from coming up even though one of our search engine keywords was ‘abortion,’” Jensen said. “Because we do offer abortion education, just not abortions. So that happened and we saw a dramatic decrease in phone calls right away.”
Not content to merely block WCC from search results, Google went even further by adding a disclaimer to the center’s Google Business page stating that WCC “might not provide abortions.” Placing its thumb further on the scale, Google has added an option to filter searches to only show locations that do provide abortions.
Google is not alone in this activity. The popular online review site Yelp has likewise added a disclaimer to WCC’s listing. The disclaimer — in the form of a “Consumer Notice” — states, “This is a Crisis Pregnancy Center. Crisis Pregnancy Centers do not offer abortions or referrals to abortion providers.”
WCC is a valuable resource for many young women who conduct internet searches about pregnancy testing and abortion options, as they are frightened and confused about the prospect of being with child. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers only present one option — abortion — and they do all they can to present that option as if it does not mean the death of the unborn child. WCC and similar crisis pregnancy centers provide the full range of information. As the “What to Expect” page of WCC’s website states, “At our center, you will receive accurate and honest information on an array of subjects including pregnancy symptoms, abortion, adoption, parenting, STDs, and sexual health,” and “you will be met with a caring environment with a professional staff that respects you and your body. We will not judge you, pressure you, or treat you with anything but our best — every time.”
This censorship is part of a larger problem of Big Tech skewing results to meet their agenda. As CatholicVote reports:
This incident in Iowa is a result of Google’s recent efforts to directly suppress information about pregnancy resource centers after the tech giant was pressured by Democratic leaders. Fox News reported in August 2022 that Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA, and 19 other Democrats had requested that Google begin cracking down on pregnancy resource centers.
Warner openly tweeted about his role in the censorship:
“Soon, those who search for ‘abortion clinics near me’ will only see facilities that have been verified to provide abortions in the local search box on Google,” Warner wrote in a Twitter thread, “meaning that far fewer women will be mistakenly led to ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ that often provide misinformation … Additionally, as our letter requested, Google says results for searches such as ‘abortion clinics’ will ‘be clearly labeled as to whether the facility provides abortions.’”
Yelp has also admitted to censoring results for pregnancy resource centers, according to Axios. In response, 24 Republican attorneys general issued a letter to Yelp demanding an end to its discrimination against pro-life resource providers.
This writer did a quick search of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers across the country and the results were predictable — the same censorship WCC is being subjected to is rampant across Google and Yelp searches. It is clear that Big Tech and the rest of the abortion lobby only want women to hear one side of this issue. They seem to be afraid that if women have all the facts, they may make a choice that is different from what the abortion lobby would have them make.
So much for Democrats being the party of “choice.”
