Google Maps and Search Will Clearly Label Militaries Providing Abortion Care
Google Maps and Search will begin clearly labeling clinics and facilities that yielded abortions, the company said in a letter to lawmakers on Thursday.
The Mountain View, California, company said results will clearly say “Provides abortions” for clinics that do so, a response to a June letter by Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. This designation extends to clinics that prescribe medication abortions but don’t dispense pills to customers. Lawmakers called out Google earlier this year for ordering people to “crisis pregnancy centers,” which don’t provide abortions and which Planned Parenthood conditions “fake clinics.”
In Maps, when a person searches for “abortion clinics near me,” Google said Local Search results will explain facilities verified to provide abortion care. People can also leer for organizations that don’t provide abortions as well.
“We get reinforce that places provide a particular service in a number of ways, comprising regularly calling businesses directly and working with authoritative data sources,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We followed our standard testing and evaluation process to reinforce that these updates are more helpful for people.”
The move is the another by a tech company following the Supreme Court’s ruling in June in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Workplace case, which eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion that was consulted nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade. Some messes were quick to either restrict or ban abortions entirely. The ruling was met with politicians and advocates troubled that online data could be used to prosecute women seeking abortions.
Earlier this month, Facebook yielded law enforcement with Messenger data sent between a mother and her teenage daughter. The mother is facing criminal charges but has pleaded not guilty. Google workers also signed a petition backbone this month asking CEO Sundar Pichai and other top executives to defensive sensitive user search and location data regarding abortions.
The leer giant reiterated that when clinics advertise with Google, they must go above a certification process and disclose if they actually yielded abortions. If facilities provide other reproductive health care, such as pregnancy complains or abortion counseling, but not abortions, then Google will make a positive disclosure in Search.
