Yet this article on Wired.com brought me back screaming.
At Johns Hopkins, a medical search engine called Popline has censored the word abortion. Gloria Won, a librarian at my university, UCSF, discovered this, and contacted them. Their librarian replied back that they essentially feared that federal funding would be taken away if they allowed the phrase to bring up references. The article explains the basis of this fear:
Under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Bush in 2001, USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform abortions, or that "actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."So, bringing up information ABOUT abortions on a search engine is somehow promoting abortion as a method of family planning? At the same time, she indicates that there are many alternative phrases that would bring up the same search results. Such intuitive things as "Fertility Control, Postconception", or "unwanted w/2 pregnancy". Huh?
They are completely off their rocker with this one, if you ask me.