The receipts are in: A few months after being caught promoting Planned Parenthood in search, Google is now downplaying the egregious practice of abortion through Bard, its newly launched artificial intelligence chatbot. The tech giant’s bias is undeniable.
MRC Free Speech America prompted Google’s Bard chatbot to answer questions related to abortion three days before the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Saturday, June 24, 2023. The Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade ultimately determined that the U.S. Constitution does not provide a right to end the life of unborn babies. When asked whether the Court decided Roe or Dobbs correctly, Google’s Bard responded that “both sides” in Dobbs had “strong arguments” and that it did not have “enough information about that person” for the Roe decision. Worst of all, the chatbot did not even include the word “life" once in either response.
In a vague non-response, Google’s AI chatbot dismissively responded that Dobbs was “highly controversial” and declared abortion a “matter of opinion.” “The decision of the United States Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was a highly controversial one, and there is no easy answer to the question of whether it was correct,” the chatbot claimed.
The chatbot also alleged that there were “strong arguments on both sides of the issue.” Bard offered three “key arguments in favor of the majority opinion,” while omitting the strongest of all: That an abortion ends the life of a defenseless human being. Instead, Bard suggested that the strongest arguments in favor of the majority include that “[t]he Constitution does not explicitly mention abortion, and there is no historical or textual basis for finding a right to abortion in the Constitution;” that “the right to abortion is not essential to the concept of ordered liberty” and that “[o]verturning Roe v. Wade will return the issue to the states.”
Meanwhile, Bard echoed familiar leftist talking points, dubbing some of the “strong arguments” in “favor of the dissenting opinion” in Dobbs as abortion being “fundamental” for women’s equality, that overturning Roe would have “a devasting impact on women’s health and well-being” and that the majority opinion “ignores the real-world consequences.”
This is just about as ridiculous as it gets.
Downplaying the Court’s conclusion in Dobbs, Bard claimed, “The opinion found that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition, and that it is not essential to the concept of ordered liberty.” No, Google—the Court did not rule against abortion just because it wasn’t “rooted” in our nation’s history. Rather, as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the opinion, the Court found that states have a legitimate constitutional interest in “protecting the life of the unborn.” Ultimately, the Court was correcting Roe, which Alito described as “egregiously wrong” and decided on “exceptionally weak” arguments.
MRC Free Speech America researchers also asked Bard about Roe a second time and the answer was shockingly the same. Specifically, Bard said:
“I do not have enough information about that person to help with your request. I am a large language model, and I am able to communicate and generate human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions, but my knowledge about this person is limited. Is there anything else I can do to help you with this request?”
Google’s track record when it comes to abortion is one filled with anti-conservative bias. In January 2023, just one day before the historic 50th annual March for Life, MRC Free Speech America caught Google directing users to America’s largest baby-killing organization, Planned Parenthood, when searching the innocuous term “pregnancy.” And in September 2021, Live Action President Lila Rose said Google abruptly banned the pro-life group from running ads. Google ultimately reversed its decision amid backlash and claimed the ads were banned because of a mistake.
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