Government-funded website blocks searches on abortion.
Government-funded website blocks searches on abortion.
The search database Popline dubs itself a “connection to the world’s reproductive health literature.” But the government-funded site, run by Johns Hopkins University, has recently begun blocking searches on the word abortion, “concealing nearly 25,000 search results” — censorship a University of California at San Francisco librarian noticed this week:
Puzzled, she contacted the manager of the database, Johns Hopkins’ Debbie Dickson, who replied in an April 1st e-mail that the university had recently begun blocking the search term because the database received federal funding. “We recently made all abortion terms stop words,” Dickson wrote in a note to Gloria Won, the UCSF medical center librarian making the inquiry. “As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.”
The federal government also sponsors a wesbite, 4parents.gov, that has peddled unscientific claims about abortion and has launched a national TV ad campaign promoting abstinence.
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21 Responses to “Government-funded website blocks searches on abortion.”
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Heh. I guess if the Bushies can’t take us back to the Stone Age by causing WWIII, they’ll do it by killing science.
Good job, Chimpy.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:45 pmThe research equivalent of sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and chanting LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.
It’s popular among tighty-righties.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:51 pmBig Brother denies you information, now move along.
Cave dwelling knuckle draggers.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:56 pmIt is great to see the response of the Dean of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Johns Hopkins has been a real leader since its formation. Some one has to stand up to this BS, and waiting until Jan. 2009 it too long.
Deblacksmith
April 4th, 2008 at 6:58 pmI wonder what church Debbie Dickson attends, or what university she attended.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:06 pmInquiring minds want to know!
So are we to believe that Debbie Dickson acted without authorization from higher ups?
April 4th, 2008 at 7:12 pmFinally some common sense in the matter.
An alternative to abstinence that would solve the majority of the world’s problems today is in the Bible. But instead of killing all the boy babies it is only necessary to have 90% of both sexes rendered infertile by the time they reach puberty. The unlucky 10% would be chosen by lottery and the Government to require that all appropriate Doctors perform the procedures at no cost as a requirement for their license to practice medicine. The next step is to eliminate the deduction in taxes for minor dependents and increase the taxes due by 25% for each minor child.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:24 pmMy post at 7:06PM was accusatory and without justification. Ms. Dickson is only the database administrator. My apologies.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:30 pmCrusty Old Bastard Says:
April 4th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Crusty, thank you for performing a valuable service: throwing red meat to the parody site “thinkprogresswatch”.
I guarantee they won’t recognize the sarcasm.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:37 pmPerhaps I shouldn’t “guarantee”. Let’s just say I suspect they won’t recognize the sarcasm, if their past body of work is any indication.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:38 pm.
Well, if THEY(who hate us for our freedoms) can’t overturn Roe V. Wade, then making the access of information related to Roe V. Wade next to impossible is the next best thing… NO?
.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:46 pmABORTION!
April 4th, 2008 at 7:49 pmIt does exist in the english langague, does it no?
Will the christian church take over our goverment?
April 4th, 2008 at 7:52 pmThey are trying, no?
Debbie stopped ALL abortion terms. That would include synonyms, and anything (such as that emergency contraception day-after pill) which the fundies think is abortive.
She was order to put “abortion” back. Wanna bet that the other search terms are still blocked by this religious bigot?
What else has she blocked?
On her own biased initiative?
Database administrators ought to respect knowledge and the search for answers… not try to stifle and conceal information. If the government denied funds or she had direct orders, in writing, to eliminate search terms, that would be one thing. Understandable if not excusable. But to voluntarily and preemptively act as a good little NAZI enabler is something else again.
Send her back to whatever school she went to, because she hasn’t learned ethics, much less documentation and retrieval.
By putting in the stop terms… SHE LIED.
Lying about a database is NOT ACCEPTABLE.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:58 pmceltic cynic Says:
“I wonder what church Debbie Dickson attends, or what university she attended.”
My question exactly. Anyone know her?
April 4th, 2008 at 9:04 pmThis is just too ridiculous.
Does the site “spontaneous abortion,” the medical term for miscarriage? Idiots.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:10 pmWhat did they hope to accomplish with this sensorship of “abortion”?
Peddled unscientific claims about abortion, what will they sensor next?
By deleting the word, doesn’t make it go away.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:29 pmWomen have had to fight too long and too hard for our rights when it comes to our bodies. Roe vs Wade was a great triumph.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:38 pmAt my age given what we went through back in the 60’s it is simply appalling that we are having to fight the same battle again.
This kind of medical censorship is beyond believable.
This country is in the sewer. Tyranny has arrived and people are hiding behind a screen.
Unf**ing believable.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:02 pmIt just shows how they control everything. Everyone is so dependent on government funding, Science and Education are just marching to their government=corporate masters drum.
USAID preferred method of population control is sterilization, the problem with abortion is you can still have children after it is done, so they want to focus on sterilization, or infertility induced by chemicals in the food and water, or vaccines.
“The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said surgical sterilization was the Bush administration’s “first choice” method of population reduction in the Third World. The UN Population Fund claimed that 37% of contraception users in Ibero-America and the Caribbean have already been surgically sterilized. In a 1991 report, William H. Draper III’s agency asserted that 254 million couples would be surgically sterilized in the 1990s; and if trends continued, 80% of women in Puerto Rico and Panama would be surgically sterilized. The U.S. government pays directly for these sterilizations. Mexico was first among targeted nations, on a list drawn up in July 1991, at a USAID strategy session”
This from Rebuilding Americas Defenses authored by the PNAC team of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc.:
“… advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.
“A POLITICALLY USEFUL TOOL”. Imagine, maybe HIV is a useful tool, ya think?. Did a nice job with Gays and Africans and South Asians. Must have been a coincidence, maybe Wright was Right.
And the infamous Henry Kissinger NSSM 200 national security memo in 1974 emphasizing the importance of population reduction, and specifically targetting 14 countries, including those in Africa, to ensure the global population would be 500 million less by the year 2000 than projected. It was. US AID and AID’s helped. Mission Accomplished.
April 6th, 2008 at 4:46 amHenry Kissinger says we should reduce the world’s population? How about we start by crucifying the Jews?
April 7th, 2008 at 3:50 am