Ipas > Popline pulls Ipas publication

Popline pulls Ipas publication

April 9, 2008

December 2007 issue of A: The abortion magazine, which was pulled by Popline.

Ipas’s publication, A: The abortion magazine, was the impetus behind Popline’s decision to block the word abortion in its database, National Public Radio reported this morning.

On Thursday, April 3, Our Bodies Our Blog reported that Popline, the world’s largest database of reproductive health information, administered by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and funded by USAID, had blocked the term “abortion” as a keyword. Further investigation revealed that the decision was made following a complaint from USAID officials regarding the inclusion of A magazine. The officials claimed that the magazine advocates for abortion and therefore does not meet the criteria for inclusion in the database. Debra L. Dickson, Popline manager, was quoted in The New York Times, “We recently made all abortion terms stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.”

The story spread quickly on blogs and was picked up by news media. Amidst this flurry of controversy, Michael Klag, dean of The Bloomberg School of Public Health restored the search term and called for an inquiry into the incident on Friday, April 4.

“Not only does the current U.S. Administration deny funding to health organizations that provide abortion care, it does not even permit the free flow of information about this important topic,” said Ipas’s Executive Vice President Anu Kumar, “especially when we know that 40 million abortions take place every year; almost half of which are unsafe.”

The issue of A magazine that was pulled focused on abortion as a human right. Specific articles mentioned by Hopkins administrators included: “How can the human-rights system work for women,” “The importance of teaching human rights,” as well as an interview with Latin American human-rights lawyer Monica Roa.

“Ipas approaches abortion from a human-rights and public health perspective,” says Kumar. Thousands of women are dying from unsafe abortion and millions more are injured. “Women are putting their lives at risk while we are dithering about words. How is this not a human-rights issue?”

To subscribe to A magazine, send an email to a_magazine@ipas.org.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258