Google has bowed to pressure from American ‘pro-choice’ group NARAL by agreeing to ban advertisements for crisis pregnancy centres that educate women on the alternative options to abortion.
NARAL campaigned extensively to force Google to remove adverts for pro-life pregnancy services after complaining that the ads appeared 79 per cent of the time when users entered the search terms “abortion clinics”.
The group accused the search engineof violating its own advertising policy by allowing the adverts toappear on its site and described the centres as “ideologically driven groups with a calculated campaign to lie to and shame women” who are seeking an abortion.
“Google fell for it,” pro-life writer Nancy Flanders of Live Action said.
She added: “And as a result, women who now search for abortion clinics will be denied the chance to learn about their real choices and the help they can receive when they choose life for their children.
“Crisis pregnancy centres are not created by people who are in the business of shaming women. What crisis pregnancy centers do is provide women facing an unplanned pregnancy with resources, baby gear, and emotional support. They connect women with prenatal care. They provide them with information on housing and on continuing their education. They offer them a helping hand throughout the pregnancy, during delivery, and even after birth. They also talk to them about adoption. The people who volunteer in crisis pregnancy centers invest their hearts in caring for these women and their babies.
“Many women who have abortions complain about the lack of compassion and the herding of women into and out of the abortion clinic.”
President of the National Right to Life Committee, Carol Tobias, said that by banning the free counselling services, “Google is waging a war on women by limiting knowledge of the options and services available” to those contemplating abortion.
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