Alabama Congressman Jerry Carl sent a letter of concern to the CEO of Google and accused the tech company of pushing a pro-choice agenda after a pregnancy center in Washington, D.C. was temporarily removed from Google Maps in November.
According to The Daily Signal, users who searched for the Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center were given options for a Maryland pro-life pregnancy center and Planned Parenthood’s Carol Whitehill Moses Center.
After the Daily Signal inquired about the omission, Google reinstated the Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center, admitting that it had been incorrectly removed.
Congressman Carl said having the pregnancy center’s location deleted from Google Maps was a threat to women’s and children’s health. In his letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, he expressed concerns as to why the listing was removed and asked if there were similar situations that have not yet been brought to light.
“Pro-life clinics should be listed on Google Maps without being removed under any circumstance, as women’s health and protecting the lives of the unborn is incredibly important to millions of Americans,” Carl wrote in a column at Yellow Hammer News. “It’s even worse to re-direct someone to the location of a clinic performing abortions.”
The Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center is a member of Care Net’s network of approximately 1,200 pregnancy centers across the United States and Canada. Janet Durig, clinic director, told The Daily Signal that she would like to think what happened with Google Maps was an accident, but “couldn’t but wonder if was on purpose” considering the center’s recent history. In June of 2022, Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center was vandalized with red paint splattered on the front door and the words “Jane’s Revenge” sprayed on the building.
“It comes back to totally misunderstanding the extensive services that we offer women in crisis pregnancies,” Durig said.
Carl, a supporter of pro-life legislation in Congress, called the recent incident involving Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center an example of Google pushing its pro-choice agenda and promoting the view of left-leaning organizations while silencing opposing voices.
“Google has been accused of numerous incidents of suppressing or censoring pro-life and conservative viewpoints and content in the past, and this is yet another example,” he wrote in his column.
Google found itself in a tug-of-war with pro-choice and pro-life legislators in the wake of the historic Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. In June of 2022, a group of Democratic congressmen urged Google to limit the appearance of pregnancy centers in certain abortion-related search results, claiming that they provided misleading information about abortion and contraception.
A month later, 17 Republican attorneys general warned Google that doing so could invite investigations and possible legal action.
“Complying with these demands would constitute a grave assault on the principle of free speech…Suppressing pro-life and pro-mother voices at the urging of government officials would violate the most fundamental tenet of the American marketplace of ideas," the attorneys general wrote in a letter to Pichai, CEO of Google.
The letter also cited a study that showed how pregnancy centers benefit local communities, serving over 1.8 million clients in 2019, and providing services valued at $266 million at little or no cost to their patients.
In 2020, a report compiled by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee focused on “Reining in Big Tech’s Censorship of Conservatives.”
“Time and again, Big Tech uses its power to suppress and marginalize conservative voices,” the report said. “Evidence of both underlying bias and arbitrary censorship continues to mount, and these tendencies are shaping corporate policies and their implementation.”
The report included examples of pro-life views being stifled. In 2018, Twitter temporarily censored a paid political advertisement from Senator Marsha Blackburn. Twitter prohibited the Blackburn campaign from promoting a video with pro-life language that opposed “the sale of baby body parts,” deeming the language “inflammatory.”
The House report also details how Google temporarily labeled a pro-life film as “propaganda” in 2019. The film, Unplanned, focused on the former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic who later began working as a pro-life activist.
“Taken together, the actions of Twitter, Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Amazon suggest a consistent level of bias and patterns of capricious censorship in Silicon Valley,” the report stated.
