BALTIMORE, April 5, 2008
Web Site Restores "Abortion" Search Term
Reproductive Health Site Funded By Gov't Was Slammed For Restricting Use Of Word In Searches
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(AP / CBS)
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Interactive Abortion Debate It's one of the most hotly debated political and social issues in America. Review a history of that debate since the historic Roe v. Wade decision.
The move followed criticism from some health advocates and librarians that the restriction on searches about abortion amounted to censorship.
It was unclear why the restriction had been put in place. However, the United States Agency for International Development, which funds the site, denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a methods of family planning in other nations.
The policy began under President Ronald Reagan and was revived when President Bush took office in 2001. Some critics refer to it as the "Global Gag Rule."
After learning that the word "abortion" was being ignored by the search engine on the site known as POPLINE, Dr. Michael J. Klag, the dean of the Bloomberg school, ordered it restored. Klag said he'd begin an inquiry about why the decision was made to limit searches.
"I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore 'abortion' as a search term immediately," Klag said in a statement. "The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction."
USAID officials were at a retreat Friday and could not be reached for comment Friday or Saturday.
Klag said USAID found two items in the POPLINE database that were related to abortion advocacy. Agency officials asked that they be removed, and after that inquiry, POPLINE administrators decided to restrict abortion as a search term.
Gloria Won, a librarian at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, was one of those who sent e-mails to POPLINE administrators after having trouble with searches.
Won got this response from POPLINE administrator Debra L. Dickson: "Yes, we did make a change to POPLINE. We recently made all abortion words stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now."
A "stop word" is a word that a search engine ignores; typically they are common words such as "a," "the" and "is."
Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association, applauded Klag's action, saying the restriction denied "researchers, students and individuals on all sides of the issue access to accurate scientific information."
Wayne Shields, president and CEO of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, said in a statement that restricting access to the information could possibly jeopardize patient care, because it prevented doctors and women from linking to scientific literature on the topic.
"Removing abortion as a search term on a publicly funded reproductive health database is clearly a decision driven by ideology - and not based on the medical or scientific needs of the reproductive health professional community the database exists to serve," Shields said.
POPLINE stands for "population information online." The site is a free database containing citations and abstracts of scientific articles, reports and books about population, family planning and related health issues. It contains nearly 360,000 records.
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 101 CommentsPosted by Rick/Providence_N etc etc
No, but I sure wish YOU were!
Posted by down-ndirty
Exactly, if this god thing they claim exists didnt approve or didnt know this would happen, then he/she/it could simply snap its fingers or wave a magic wand and make the technology to have an abortion vanish- simple as that.
The truth of the matter is, babies are a gift from satan designed to overpopulate the planet, contribute to mass starvation, disease, epidemics, shortages of all kinds one squalling mouth at a squalling mouth at a time.
Posted by DeadBabyCrys "
Yeah a bunch of bleeding heart right wing bullchit- its mommy doesnt want it but then the anti abortion crowd ALSO doesnt step up to the plate and put their money where their nosey fat mouths are and fork over the CASH and homes for 18 years, they''d rather FORCE mom to BECOME an unwilling mom for a baby she doesnt want and resents- great home environment!
" Babies in a trashcan?
down n dirty"
Melodramatic krap that is like the voice-over mentioned of the ''baby'' ''talking'' on the web site, and the irony is religion has caused the deaths of MILLIONS of innocent people- INCLUDING animals and children.
Posted by LookUn2Jesus at 10:23 PM : Apr 07, 2008
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Scare tactics? Sensationalism? Hyperbole?
5000 babies killed every day in America? Babies in a trashcan? What is your source for this BS?
Whatever... You seem to be typical of those who "jump on the bandwagon" and support something you know absolutely nothing about.
Fetuses aren''t babies; and if there were an omnipotent god she certainly wouldn''t allow abortions. On the other hand, legal abortions have been around since the middle ages and that''s not going to be changing anytime soon.
Abortion is just a drop in the bucket compared to the mortalities caused by religion.
Please help me I am a baby thrown into the garbage can. I am trying to find comfort here but all the babies in here with me are dead. I crawl and cannot cuddle in this cold can with no one. My mommy did not want me.
Do you ever wish you were one of the 5000 babies killed every day in America? Seriously now. Maybe you would be fighting for your own life with only a garbage can to look out of and a dead baby sister or brother to crawl up unto and die?
If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their U.S.-born descendants, according to new projections developed by the Pew Research Center.
Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren.
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Now if you add 5,000 a day by outlawing abortion;
438 million in 2050 +1,825,000 /Yr 2010 thru 2050 =73,000,000 added persons, PLUS the babies those in turn would have that otherwise would never have been born. Figuring half are females= roughly 36,000,000 rounded out. The ones born in 2010 would be having babies around 2030 and the first crop of that bunch would having babies of their own by 2050. At the very least just going by ONE child per female and not including their babies in turn- that 36 million becomes 72.5 million ADDED to the projected
438 million comes to at least 510.5 million.
Till there are NONE in foster care, ABORT OR ADOPT, dont breed!
I LOVE Pat Condels anto xtian videos
http://mrbhave.com/2007/12/18/pat-condel-pimping-for-jesus/
Posted by God_vs_Self at 02:01 PM : Apr 06, 2008
Sounds like a good concept for lawyers and the constitution to get on board and fight this all the way to the supreme court! Do you think these two will win?
This reminds me of a H-T-L-E-R movie were all the Jews were put to death by choice! I think we referred to it as an atrocity,
Posted by diabetes80
Thats true, and that explains why no one ever remembers being in the womb or coming out the birth canal (or trough as the case may be if it was widened by lots of guys ;)
You also dont remember a thing about circumcision either.
Where the Hel1 do you think all those people are going to live, work, and where DOUBLE the food, water, electric, waste disposal, landfill space and all the rest is going to COME FROM Rick?
We already have shortages of everything from clean water to electric, oil, land, farmland being built over for condos and malls and the list goes on.
Maybe YOU would like a world as depicted in "Logans Run" where you can only live to age 21 and are executed to make room for more BABIES, or "Soylent Green" but most people WOULDNT- it would be hel1 on earth.
If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their U.S.-born descendants, according to new projections developed by the Pew Research Center.
Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren.
==
Now if you add 5,000 a day by outlawing abortion;
438 million in 2050 +1,825,000 /Yr 2010 thru 2050 =73,000,000 added persons, PLUS the babies those in turn would have that otherwise would never have been born. Figuring half are females= roughly 36,000,000 rounded out. The ones born in 2010 would be having babies around 2030 and the first crop of that bunch would having babies of their own by 2050. At the very least just going by ONE child per female and not including their babies in turn- that 36 million becomes 72.5 million ADDED to the projected
438 million comes to at least 510.5 million.
Do you ever wish you were one of the 5000 babies killed every day in America?
Posted by Providence_Y
If I was you moron, I wouldnt know the difference one way or the other- Id be DEAD now WOULDNT I RICK!
Do you ever wish you were one of the 5000 babies killed every day in America? Seriously now. Maybe you would be fighting for your own life with only a garbage can to look out of and a dead baby sister or brother to crawl up unto and die?
Posted by God_vs_Self at 02:01 PM : Apr 06, 2008
Sounds like a good concept for lawyers and the constitution to get on board and fight this all the way to the supreme court! Do you think these two will win?
This reminds me of a H-T-L-E-R movie were all the Jews were put to death by choice! I think we referred to it as an atrocity,
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