In the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade earlier in the year which made it much more difficult for many people to access abortions in the US, numerous tech company leapt to offer help and support to their customers and employees. Having already introduced a feature that automatically deletes abortion clinic visits from location history, Google is now taking things a step further.
In both Google Search and Google Maps in the US, the company is adding labels that make it clear that particular medical facilities provide abortion services.
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The aim of the move is to provide users with the information they need, and also to help to differentiate between centers that provide abortions and “crisis pregnancy centers” that have a tendency to discourage abortions.
Speaking to TechCrunch, Google said that when the company has been able to verify the provision of abortions at a particular facility, it will display the label “Provides abortions”; when this information is not available, the label will read “Might not provide abortions”.
In a statement, a Google spokesperson said:
When people turn to Google to find local information, we aim to help them easily explore the range of places available so they can determine which are most helpful to them. For a number of categories where we’ve received confirmation that places offer specific services, we’ve been working for many months on more useful ways to display those results. We’re now rolling out an update that makes it easier for people to find places that offer the services they’ve searched for, or broaden their results to see more options.
The company adds: “We followed our standard testing and evaluation process to confirm that these updates are more helpful for people”.
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