Why is Google Directing Low-Income Women to Anti-Abortion Centers?

Big Tech has more power than ever -- including over basic information about abortion.

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Since June, American women have been living in a whole new world. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe and strip the right to abortion from millions of American women didn’t just take power out of women’s hands — it put much more of it into the hands of Big Tech.

Now, abortion access isn’t just a matter of where you live; it’s a matter of what information you have access to. The abortion pill, which did not exist in the pre-Roe era, means that regardless of abortion’s legality, women now have the ability to terminate pregnancies safely at home — if they know where to get it. And how do people figure out where to get stuff in the 21st century? They google.

What people find when they google, though, depends on a complex and opaque algorithm; anti-abortion activists and politicians, too, are working hard to prevent Americans from accessing information about abortion.