Your Body, Google’s Choice

When Rebekah decided to have an abortion, she turned to Google.  It was easy for her to find an abortion provider, where she was given two pills that would terminate her pregnancy.  She took the first one, then changed her mind, choosing to keep her baby.  So she turned to Google again and found information about Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) treatment.  A doctor prescribed hormone therapy, and she was able to stop the abortion process and save her child.  

Rebekah’s son, now seven, is one of some 2,500 children born to mothers who have changed their minds midway through the abortion-by-pill process.  Although APR treatment involves an FDA-approved and regularly-prescribed hormone – progesterone – it’s far less widely known than medical abortion itself.  Google would like to keep it that way.  The Big Tech giant has banned ads promoting APR from its platform, restricting access to this life-saving treatment from women seeking to make informed decisions about their health – and the lives of their children.

This is more than just another assault by a tech company against free speech, which sadly happens too often.  This time, Big Tech has taken a stand against the preservation of life by withholding information that could save it.  And they’re doing it for cynical political reasons.

Pro-life groups like my organization, Live Action, had been running hundreds of thousands of ads directing women to an APR hotline that can provide them with the healthcare information needed to save their baby’s life and then connect them with a local doctor who can help.  For months, Google approved these ads and ran them regularly.  Then a pro-abortion group calling itself the “Center Against Digital Hate” got involved. They launched a dishonest, anti-science attack on APR and demanded Google stop running these ads. Nobody seemed at all curious about why a group whose stated goal is to prevent online hate speech takes such offense at an ad that offers an alternative health care option to women, or what their real agenda might be.

Google did not contact Live Action to ask for further information, or for scientific corroboration of the medical efficacy of APR.  Instead, they apologized to CCDH and took down the educational ads explaining that they now violated Google’s policy against “unreliable claims”. 

The only thing “unreliable” is Google’s capricious advertising policy.  They continue to advertise the dangerous abortion pill, not to mention even more dubious so-called health products. 

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