A month after some members of Congress urged Google to limit the appearance of anti-abortion pregnancy centers in certain abortion-related search results, 17 Republican attorneys general are warning the company that doing so could invite investigations and possible legal action.
“Suppressing pro-life and pro-mother voices at the urging of
government officials would violate the most fundamental tenet of the American
marketplace of ideas,” the attorneys general wrote in a letter Thursday to
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company.
The effort was led by Republican Virginia Attorney General
Jason Miyares and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, and the letter was
shared with The Associated Press ahead of its public release.
The Republicans took issue with a June 17 letter to the
company from U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and Rep. Elissa Slotkin,
D-Michigan, which was co-signed by 19 other members of Congress.
That letter cited research by the nonprofit Center for
Countering Digital Hate, which found that Google searches for “abortion clinic
near me” and “abortion pill” turned up results for centers that counsel clients
against having an abortion.
Some of these places, known as crisis pregnancy centers,
also have been accused of providing misleading information about abortion and
contraception. Many are religiously affiliated.
“Directing women towards 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,” said
the June letter, which was authored after the leak of a draft opinion
indicating the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade
ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. The court took that step June 24.
The Democrat-led group asked Google to address what steps it
would take to limit the appearance of “crisis pregnancy centers” in its search
results, ads and maps results for users who search for “abortion clinic,”
“abortion pill” or other similar terms.
The group also asked the company if it would add disclaimers
to address whether or not a clinic provides abortions. New York Attorney
General Letitia James’ office also raised similar concerns in a separate June
letter to Google.
The letter from the Republican AGs defends the work of
crisis pregnancy centers. It notes that such centers often provide services
such as free ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, testing for sexually transmitted
diseases, and parenting and prenatal education classes. It also argues that “at
least some” Google users who search for information about abortion expect to
find information about alternatives.
They wrote that if the company complies with “this
inappropriate demand” to “bias” its search results, their offices would respond
by investigating whether there had been any violation of antitrust or religious
discrimination laws. They also pledged to consider whether new legislation
would help “protect consumers and markets.”
“We trust that you will treat this letter with the
seriousness these issues require, and hope you will decide that Google’s search
results must not be subject to left-wing political pressure, which would
actively harm women seeking essential assistance.
If you do not, we must avail ourselves of all lawful and
appropriate means of protecting the rights of our constituents, of upholding
viewpoint diversity, free expression, and the freedom of religion for all
Americans, and of making sure that our markets are free in fact, not merely in
theory,” the letter said.
It asked the California-based company to respond within 14
days and explain whether it has or will take any steps to treat crisis
pregnancy centers any differently than before the leak of the draft Supreme
Court decision.
Google did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
A spokeswoman for Warner said the senator had not received a
response to the June letter. But Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering
Digital Hate, said his organization believes Google recently made a small
change in response to its research.
In cases of searches for “abortion clinic near me,” the
company appears to have changed a maps results headline to say “Places” instead
of “Abortion clinic,” according to the center, which monitors online
disinformation and provided its research and screenshots of examples to AP.
Miyares, who defeated incumbent Democrat Mark Herring in
November, recently traveled to a Lynchburg crisis pregnancy center that was
vandalized after the Supreme Court’s ruling, condemning what he called an act
of “political violence.”
Google and other Big Tech companies also have faced recent
calls for more stringent privacy controls to address concerns that information
about location, texts, searches and emails could be used against people seeking
to end unwanted pregnancies.
Google announced this month that it would automatically
purge information about users who visit abortion clinics or other places that
could trigger legal problems in light of the high court’s ruling.
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