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Health database programmed to avoid showing abortion articles
By Sue Mueller
Apr 5, 2008 - 9:27:16 AM

SUNDAY April 5, 2008 (Foodconsumer.org) -- Johns Hopkins University acknowledged Friday that for a short period, it had blocked the public from accessing certain articles by instructing its computers to ignore the keyword "abortion" in a federally funded database on reproductive health, The New York Times reported.

The University disabled the keyword as search term after federal officials raised questions about two articles in the database known as Popline, which is hosted and apparently maintained by the University.    Dr. Michael J. Klag, the dean of the Public Health School asked keyword "abortion" to be restored so abortion-related articles can now be retrieved.

According to emails published on the website of the University of Vermont, Gloria Won, MLIS at H.M. Fishbon Memorial Library of UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion found the problem with the database.

In an email sent on March 31 to Debbie L. Dickson, a POPLINE Database Manager/Administrator INFO Project, Won wrote "When I ran this strategy on Jan 18, 2008, POPLINE retrieved 1684 refs; when I re-ran the same strategy today, POPLINE retrieved fewer refs, ie, 1478 refs.  Usually, when a search is re-run at a later date, the total number of references retrieved is more, not less.    Has POPLINE undergone some major change in the past few months that might explain the decreased retrieval?    What can account for this discrepancy?"

In response, Dickson wrote back "Yes we did make a change in POPLINE.  We recently made all abortion terms stop words.  As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.  In addition to the terms you’re already using, you could try using ‘Fertility Control, Postconception’.  This is the broader term to our ‘Abortion’ terms and most records have both in the keyword fields.  Also, adding ‘unwanted w2 pregnancy’ in place of a borti*.  We have a keyword Pregnancy, Unwanted and there are 2517 records with aborti* & unwanted w2 pregnancy."

Timothy M. Parsons, a spokesman for the school was cited by The Times as saying the restrictions were enforced starting in February.   Popline, funded by U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID (usaid.gov) is the world's largest database on reproductive health hosting more than 360,000 documents on family planning, fertility and sexually transmitted diseases.

Mr. Parsons said USAID had expressed concern after finding "two articles about abortion advocacy" in the database, which he said did not fit database criteria and were removed, according to the Times.  The computers were so programmed that it ignored the word "abortion'" as a search term.

Dr. Klag was quoted as saying " 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."

In an article published on April 04 in Open Access News hosted in the Earlham College computer network, Peter Suber  wrote " Under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Bush in 2001, USAID denies funding to on-governmental organizations that perform abortions, or that "actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."

Responding to Suber's article, three readers with names unknown offered their comments cited in verbatim:

     *  What's stunning is that Johns Hopkins apparently took this step on its own, without waiting for USAID to ask it to do so.  It would have been much better to wait.  We'd have a few more weeks, months, or years of freedom.  And the university could side with the protesting public against a government censor.  Now it is the censor.

    * It's embarrassing enough to have a public agency censor knowledge about abortion in a country where the Supreme Court has ruled that abortion is a fundamental right.   And it's embarrassing enough to have two administrations try to limit public knowledge about a fundamental right.   But it's more embarrassing for a university to act as the censor.   Does the university believe that searching for knowledge about abortion is "actively promoting" abortion?   Does it believe that searching for knowledge about torture is actively promoting torture?

    * Finally, if the university waited and forced the agency to act, then we could address the underlying policy, undistracted by the university's eagerness to carry it out.   Abortion and its active promotion are lawful in the US, and the USAID mission should reflect that.   But in any case, even for users who actively oppose abortion and its promotion, searching for knowledge should be lawful.   Don't abortion opponents ever want to learn something about the practice?   Or do they want to guarantee that their public policy positions are uninformed?