[Marxism] Abortion ban?

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, April 5, 2008
Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore 'Abortion'
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — Johns Hopkins University said Friday that it had 
programmed its computers to ignore the word "abortion" in searches of 
a large, publicly financed database of information on reproductive 
health after federal officials raised questions about two articles in 
the database. The dean of the Public Health School lifted the 
restrictions after learning of them.

A spokesman for the school, Timothy M. Parsons, said the restrictions 
were enforced starting in February.

Johns Hopkins manages the population database known as Popline with 
money from the Agency for International Development.

Popline is the world's largest database on reproductive health, with 
more than 360,000 records and articles on family planning, fertility 
and sexually transmitted diseases.

Mr. Parsons said the development agency had expressed concern after 
finding "two articles about abortion advocacy" in the database. The 
articles, he said, did not fit database criteria and were removed.

Employees who manage the database instructed their computers to 
ignore the word "abortion" as a search term.

After learning of the restrictions on Friday, the dean, Dr. Michael 
J. Klag, said: "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 school is named for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, a 
Hopkins alumnus who has given millions of dollars to the university 
and the school.

Dr. Klag said the school was "dedicated to the advancement and 
dissemination of knowledge, and not its restriction."

Ted Miller, a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion 
rights group, said: "The public has a right to know why someone would 
censor relevant medical information. The Bush administration has 
politicized science as part of an ideological agenda. So it's 
important to know if that occurred here."

A woman answering telephones at the Agency for International 
Development said officials were not available because they were at a retreat.

Librarians at the Medical Center of the University of California, San 
Francisco, expressed concern about the restrictions this week after 
they had difficulty retrieving articles from Popline.

In an e-mail response on Tuesday, Johns Hopkins told the librarians 
that "abortion" was no longer a valid search term.

"We recently made all abortion terms stop words," Debra L. Dickson, a 
Popline manager, wrote. "As a federally funded project, we decided 
this was best for now."

Ms. Dickson suggested that instead of using "abortion," librarians 
could use other terms like "fertility control, postconception" or 
"pregnancy, unwanted."

Gail L. Sorrough, director of medical library services at the medical 
center in San Francisco, said it was absurd to restrict searches 
using "a perfectly good noun such as 'abortion.' "

Under the rule, Popline ignored the word "abortion," just as it 
ignores terms like "a" and "the." Ms. Sorrough and a colleague, 
Gloria Won, reported their experience on an electronic mailing list, 
and librarians protested the restrictions.

"We sent this out on a listserv, and it just exploded," Ms. Sorrough 
said. "Eliminating this term essentially blocks access to reports in 
the database and ultimately to information about abortion. Unwanted 
pregnancy is not a synonym for abortion."

Items on Popline include articles on "demand for abortion by 
unmarried teenagers" and federal judges' abortion rulings.

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.