Anti-Abortion Groups Ask State Attorneys General to Protect Them From Online Censorship

Facing violence in the real world and censorship in the virtual one, anti-abortion groups are asking state attorneys general to do more to keep them from being wiped off the map—Google map.

Tension over abortion rights began even before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on June 23 overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade opinion that had made abortion a constitutionally protected right for nearly half a century.

In an unprecedented move, a preliminary draft of the decision was leaked, and published by Politico on May 2. It led not just to demonstrations—including some outside Supreme Court justices’ homes—but to acts of violence and vandalism against pregnancy centers that support pregnant women to encourage them to carry their babies to term. An investigation into the leak continues, Justice Neil Gorsuch said recently, adding he hoped it was finished soon.

CompassCare, an upstate New York group whose Buffalo-area center was firebombed on June 7, said it had documented a sustained pro-abortion effort successfully pressuring tech giants Google and Yelp into censoring and ostracizing them. And the effort has some law enforcement officers, notably New York State Attorney General Letitia James, plus the Biden White House, on their side.

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney and CompassCare CEO Rev. Jim Harden at the reopening of the CompassCare Pregnancy Services center in Amherst, N.Y., on Aug. 1, 2022. (Photo courtesy of CompassCare.)

“Beginning on August 23, despite the threat of chief law enforcement (officers) in 17 different states, both Google and Yelp began the process of defaming and censoring pro-life pregnancy centers through misleading consumer warnings as well as wiping them off the map function so women who think abortion is their only choice could not find them. At the same time, Google raised Planned Parenthood to number 1 in all organic search results for keywords related