Under the mandates of the Bush administration, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) blocks funding for non-governmental organizations that perform abortions or even acknowledge abortion as a legal option.
Efforts to abide by the Bush policy lead to ridiculous situations like this one. (thanks to J.D. for the tip)
A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world’s largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word “abortion,” concealing nearly 25,000 search results.
Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It’s funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.
The massive database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like “Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births,” and “Abortion in the United States: Incidence and access to services, 2005.”
But on Thursday, a search on “abortion” was producing only the message “No records found by latest query.”
It’s a government database on reproductive health, but according to the database’s manager, because the system relies on federal funding, Johns Hopkins felt it had no choice but to censor the word from searches.
So, researchers are having to get creative.
Johns Hopkins’ Debbie Dickson, the manager of the database, apparently has advice for researchers and professionals who want to search for the word “abortion.”
Dickson suggested other kinds of more obscure search strategies and alternative words to get around the keyword blocking.
“In addition to the terms you’re already using, you could try using ‘Fertility Control, Postconception’. This is the broader term to our ‘abortion’ terms and most records have both in the keyword fields,” she wrote.
She also suggested using a euphemistic search strategy of “unwanted w/2 pregnancy.” But the workarounds don’t satisfy critics of the censorship.
Ironically, the Bush administration policy may inadvertently interfere with researchers opposed to abortion. As Melissa Just, the library director at a cancer research institute in California, explained, “Even if you were trying to make an argument to someone that abortion is a bad idea for them — whether it’s a health risk, or you’re concerned about their mental well being, you wouldn’t be able to find articles about your claim. It’s shutting off both the pro and the con access.”
Just another reason to look forward to a reality-based presidency.
Update: Good news prompted by the controversy:
I was informed this morning that the word “abortion” was blocked as a search term in the POPLINE family planning database administered by the Bloomberg School’s Center for Communication Programs. POPLINE provides evidence-based information on reproductive health and family planning and is the world’s largest database on these issues.
USAID, which funds POPLINE, found two items in the database related to abortion that did not fit POPLINE criteria. The agency then made an inquiry to POPLINE administrators. Following this inquiry, the POPLINE administrators at the Center for Communication Programs made the decision to restrict abortion as a search term.
I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore “abortion” as a search term immediately. I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Klag, MD, MPH
Dean, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health