Inside Daily Brief: “Congressional Democrats have sent a letter to Google encouraging the search engine to improve its results for users seeking abortions. The letter follows a study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate which found that 11% of abortion searches in states with “trigger laws” – states which will automatically ban abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade – directed users to “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) or “pregnancy resource centers,” groups they accuse of dissuading people from having the procedure. Those “anti-abortion fake clinics,” as the study calls them, also came up in 37% of Google Maps results for the searches “abortion clinic near me” and “abortion pill.”

• The top signatories on the letter were Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Elissa Slotkin, though 13 other senators and six other House representatives, all Democrats, signed the letter.
• Prior studies have found that CPCs “mislead and misinform” about the health risks of abortion, though they still receive millions of dollars in state and federal funding.
• Some such centers have been the sites of vandalism and arson in recent months, and House Republicans have asked the Department of Justice to investigate these incidents as domestic terrorism.
• The letter from Congressional Democrats asks Google to either remove these locations from searches for abortion centers or appropriately label them.
• The study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate also found the centers showing up in 28% of Google Ads for such searches…”