Nearly one year later, Google is still directing those looking for information on “pregnancy” toward the largest abortion mill in the country: Planned Parenthood.
MRC Free Speech America researchers analyzed Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo search results for the word “pregnancy” in a “clean environment” one week before the 51st annual national March for Life in Washington, D.C. Bing and DuckDuckGo elevated neutral results with links to popular health websites like Mayo Clinic and Healtline.com, as one might expect.
But Google’s first result was a link to Planned Parenthood’s landing page on pregnancy. Planned Parenthood did not show up at all on the first page of results for Bing and appeared at the bottom of the page in the DuckDuckGo search.
MRC President Brent Bozell torched Google last year when it produced the same first result “Google may not believe it, but life is sacred,” he said. “Planned Parenthood should not be the first result when searching 'pregnancy' on Google. This is the work of the devil and the progressive left.”
The un-American search engine’s first result leads users to a Planned Parenthood page with an extremely detailed informational video answering “How Does Pregnancy Happen” and the option to learn more. The Google search result is a gateway for promoting abortion and discouraging women from seeking crisis pregnancy centers.
For example, within the same search result, Google placed a link to another Planned Parenthood page ironically called “Pregnancy Options” just underneath the informational link. But the page warns users about pro-life clinics which might go over many services and options other than abortion:
“Be careful when looking for a reliable health center. There are fake clinics that say they have pregnancy services. These are called Crisis Pregnancy Centers, and they’re run by people who are anti-abortion and don’t believe in telling you the truth about all of your pregnancy options. They may use lies and manipulation to try to scare or shame people out of choosing abortion,” Planned Parenthood noted.
Google has repeatedly demonstrated its affinity for abortion and disdain for the voices of the pro-life movement:
- Google and Google-owned YouTube have repeatedly censored pro-life users. From LifeSite News and EWTN Global Catholic programming to banning Live Action’s abortion pill reversal ads, the Big Tech company has repeatedly censored pro-life content. Most recently, the Daily Signal caught that Google Maps would not give directions to D.C.’s Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center. “Instead, Google Maps suggested two different doula locations, a pro-life pregnancy center across the river in Maryland, and ‘Planned Parenthood – Carol Whitehill Moses Center,’ an abortion clinic,” the news outlet reported. A Google spokesperson confirmed in statements to MRC Free Speech America that the pregnancy center’s listing was indeed missing. “This listing was incorrectly removed and we have since reinstated it,” the spokesperson told MRC.
- Google’s Bard failed to acknowledge that abortion ends the life of a baby. MRC researchers found that Bard, Google’s AI chatbot, 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 overturned Roe the Big Tech giant said its U.S. health benefits covered out-of-state abortion costs. Just one day after the Supreme Court decided Dobbs, the landmark case that overturned Roe, 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 Google’s policies reportedly did not change, the company made a point of reminding its employees of how they could still obtain abortions.
DuckDuckGo displayed results for Planned Parenthood toward the bottom of the page as its fifth, sixth and eighth results. According to search engine optimization expert Brian Dean, the higher a search result appears, the more likely a user will click on a particular result. Dean conducted a 2023 study that found that the first three results have a combined click-through rate of over 54 percent, while the fifth, sixth and eighth results have a combined click-through rate of 14.5 percent.
Methodology
For this report, MRC Free Speech America has analyzed the Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo search results for the word “pregnancy” on January 13, 2023, one week before the 51st annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.
MRC Free Speech America created an algorithm to automate this process 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 word “pregnancy” using the algorithm. To determine bias, our researchers looked at each search engines’ results and recorded the rank(s) of results observed.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Google at 650-253-0000 and demand it be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
