Yahoo is following the lead of Google and has reportedly banned ads from pro-life pregnancy centers that offer women and their unborn children abortion alternatives. The decision came after extensive lobbying from a national “pro-choice” group, NARAL, that appears to favor just one choice, abortion.
Pregnancy center groups eventually informed LifeNews that they could not verify that any ad on Google were taken down — leading to accusations that NARAL overstated Google’s response to its false claims that pregnancy centers were engaging in deceptive advertising. Google never confirmed whether it had taken down any ads and, if so, how many.
This time, a Yahoo representative says pregnancy center ads were removed.
Yahoo this week pulled some anti-abortion ads that appeared in web searches for abortion clinics, following petitions from leading pro-choice groups. As CNET reports, NARAL Pro-Choice America and UltraViolet claimed that when users type “abortion clinics” into Yahoo’s search field, the “majority” of displayed ads were from anti-abortion groups. They urged the web company to remove the ads, on the grounds that they were deceptive and violated Yahoo’s advertising policy.
“We have found at least some of the ads to be out of compliance with our policies and we are taking them down,” a Yahoo spokesperson told CNET. “We’re in the process of reviewing the other ads and will take similar action if any are found to not be in compliance with our policies.”
Pro-life ads reportedly posed as abortion clinics
Yahoo’s advertising policy specifies that displayed ads must be relevant to search results, and that any “misleading, deceptive, false or untrue” advertisements can be rejected or pulled. In their petition, NARAL and UltraViolet claimed that some of the ads deceived users with vague language or by masquerading as organizations that offer abortions.
LifeNews eventually found that Planned Parenthood was deceptively advertising on Google under the term “crisis pregnancy center.” Now, writing at LiveAction, Susan Michelle Tyrell suggests abortion clinics are running deceptive ads as well.
The fact remains that abortion clinics lure unsuspecting, frightened women through their doors daily with the promise of help in time of crisis. A simple Google search for “pregnancy help” brings up this add for an abortion clinic:
The page it takes a reader to has exactly zero options for helping a woman through a pregnancy. But it does let a woman know she can come there for her abortion through the second trimester.
To call a pregnancy resource center misleading but not remove ads such as this one, which any woman who was scared and looking for help might call since it’s a top ad hit, is, at best, tunnel vision. More likely, however, it’s a bow to pressure from the squeakiest wheel, the abortion industry.
The tactics of the abortion industry have always been to lure women in with a promise of help, which ushering them toward the promise of death. Internet searches to this all the time. A search for “adoption pregnant help” on brings up Planned Parenthood on the first page of results.
ACTION: Send Yahoo feedback here or here or contact Yahoo on Twitter.
