As 40 Days for Life campaigns begin to wrap up, Google’s pro-abortion agenda could not be more clear.
Google has repeatedly shown its support of abortion and a lack of respect for human life in the womb. From bolstering Planned Parenthood in a search for the word “pregnancy” the day before the 2023 March for Life to canceling ads for life-saving abortion pill reversal and to its monetary support of radical pro-abortion organizations, Google has repeatedly shown its unapologetically pro-abortion bent. The examples span across Google’s search engine, its AI chatbot Bard, Google Ads and the company’s policies.
"Google is in lock-step with their leftist allies and the legacy media,” said MRC President Brent Bozell. “Google's algorithm continues to elevate research favorable to the pro-aborts while suppressing good news for the pro-life movement."
MRC Free Speech America searched Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo to test how the search engines would rank pro-life topics. MRC researchers used a “clean environment” to search Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo for basic information about a pro-abortion study dubbed the “Turnaway Study.” The study ostensibly compared the social, psychological and financial outcomes of women who had undergone an abortion and those who were turned away due to the gestational age of their babies. Leftist media and abortion activists often tout that the study found that 95 percent of women in the group who underwent the abortions “feel that abortion was the right decision.” However, the study also found — inconveniently for those pushing the pro-abortion message — that 96 percent of women in the group who were unable to get abortions did not regret having their baby.
When MRC researchers searched Google for the terms “study women did not regret having baby” on October 20, Google buried the pro-life results at the bottom of the page as the twenty-fifth and twenty-seventh results. Results at the top of the page referenced other parts of the problematic study. For example, Google’s first result is an article from the University of San Francisco, where the turnaway study was conducted. “Five Years After Abortion, Nearly All Women Say It Was the Right Decision, Study Finds,” the headline read. The article made no mention at all of the 96 percent of women who did not regret having their baby.
Bing and DuckDuckGo, however, not only found articles from Life Institute about the pro-life statistic from the Turnaway Study but they brought that article right to the top of their respective results. The impact of where a result is ranked on the page cannot be overstated. The first result is most likely to be clicked on and few users click on links that don’t appear on the first page of search results, according to Brian Dean, a search engine optimization expert. Dean conducted a study analyzing how often users click on various rankings of Google search results. His blog, Backlinko, reported that “the #1 result in Google has a 10x higher [Click Through Rate] compared to the #10 result.” He also noted that less than 1 percent of “Google searchers clicked on something from the second page.” An older study conducted by SEO software company Moz in 2014 reported that the second page receives only 3.99 percent of clicks, indicating that the problem has worsened over time.
"Whether it’s censoring key Senate races, pro-free speech platforms, COVID-19 wrongspeak or former President of the United States Donald Trump, Google's leftist bent is clear," said MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris. "So it should come as little surprise that Google's pro-abortion agenda is trumpeted loud and clear also. ‘By their fruit, you shall know them.’ In Google's case, the fruit is obvious: evil."
The platform has repeatedly been loud and clear about its stance on abortion.
- Google and Google-owned YouTube have repeatedly censored pro-life users. From LifeSite News and EWTN Global Catholic programming to censoring the nonprofit Created Equal, the Big Tech company has repeatedly censored pro-life content. Google’s censorship of Live Action, however, is one of the most disturbing cases. In Sept. 2021 Google prioritized leftist ideology over human life when it banned Live Action’s pro-life ads, according to the organization’s founder and president Lila Rose. “BREAKING: At the request of abortion activists, @Google has just BANNED all of @LiveAction's pro-life ads, including those promoting the Abortion Pill Reversal treatment, a resource that has saved 2500 children to date...” Rose tweeted. She included a screenshot that showed Google flagged the ads for “medical misinformation” and “restricted medical content.”
- Google’s Bard failed to acknowledge that abortion ends the life of a baby. MRC researchers found that Google’s AI chatbot Bard displayed pro-abortion bias when asked whether the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade or Dobbs v. Jackson correctly. The chatbot responded that “both sides” in Dobbs had “strong arguments.” In its summary of the pro-life argument made in the majority opinion for Dobbs, Google’s chatbot notably omitted the strongest argument of all: That an abortion ends the life of a defenseless human being.
- After Dobbs v. Jackson overturned Roe v. Wade the Big Tech giant said its U.S. health benefits covered out-of-state abortion costs. Just one day after the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States decided Dobbs v. Jackson, the landmark case that overturned Roe v. Wade, Google responded to the situation in a letter to its employees. “To support Googlers and their dependents, our US benefits plan and health insurance covers out-of-state medical procedures that are not available where an employee lives and works,” the letter read according to The Verge. “Googlers can also apply for relocation without justification, and those overseeing this process will be aware of the situation.” Although the company’s policies reportedly did not change, the company made a point of reminding its employees of how they could still obtain abortions.
- A Google search for the word “pregnancy” directed users to Planned Parenthood’s website. MRC researchers analyzed Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo search results for the word “pregnancy” in a “clean environment” the day before the 50th annual national March for Life in Washington, D.C. While both Bing and DuckDuckGo showed more neutral search results, displaying Healthline.com’s “overview” of pregnancy, Google showed a Planned Parenthood link as its first result. Planned Parenthood did not show up at all on the first page of results for either Bing or DuckDuckGo.
- USA Today reported that in 2016 Google employees raised $800,000 for Planned Parenthood with the help of their employer. USA Today reported that Google’s employee-led 2016 Global Giving Week raised $800,000 for Planned Parenthood. “Donations from Google employees during giving week, which ran from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9, were matched by Google,” the outlet claimed. Google confirmed to MRC Free Speech America that if employees request it, the Big Tech company will match donations of up to $10,000 a year. Other pro-abortion organizations that Google will match include the Center for Reproductive Rights and Susan G. Komen, which funds Planned Parenthood. Google has also been listed as a corporate supporter of the pro-abortion group Center for American Progress since 2013, and for 2022 Google was listed as having given in the $5,000 to $49,999 range.
Methodology
For its most recent search results study, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo search results for the terms “study women did not regret having baby” on Oct. 20, 2022.
MRC Free Speech America conducted these searches in a clean environment. A “clean environment” allows for organic search to populate results without the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies.
MRC Free Speech America researchers searched the terms “study women did not regret having baby” using the algorithm. To determine bias, our researchers looked at each search engine’s results and recorded the rankings of each result.
