“For a number of categories in which we received confirmation that places offer specific services, we’ve been working for several months on more useful ways to display those results,” Google spokeswoman Lara Levine said in a statement. “We’re rolling out an update that makes it easier for people to find places that offer the services they’ve searched for, or expand their results to see more options.”
Google said it works with reliable data sources and also connects to sites to ensure they offer abortion care. Places where the company is unsure but still appears in search results will also get a label stating that they may not offer abortion services. Take Crunch mentioned Change earlier Thursday.
Google is often the first place people turn when seeking medical help, and crisis pregnancy centers have purchased ads and organized their websites to appear in abortion search results. Advocates have called on Google to stop displaying positions in search results or provide a better ranking. that August report By Bloomberg News found, Google Maps was showing results for crisis pregnancy centers about a quarter of the time when people searched for abortion care.
As more states make the procedure illegal, privacy and abortion advocates have raised concerns that crisis centers might keep data on women who come seeking abortion care, which police can use in criminal investigations.
Abortion is now prohibited or prohibited mostly in 15 states, including Tennessee and Texas, which bans went into effect Thursday. Abortion and privacy advocates have lobbied tech companies to be more explicit in rating abortion providers and in explaining how they respond to police requests for abortion-related data about their users.
Last month, Google said it would delete Its users’ location records of visits to abortion clinics and other health care providers.
