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I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights - Abraham Lincoln
Word "abortion" disappears from US government-funded search engine
ONE OF THE WORLD’S biggest medical databases has started censoring the word “abortion” after receiving funding from the right wing republican US government. Apparently nearly 25,000 search results referring to terminations are now hidden, according to Wired.
The site, Popline, which is administered by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland, recently got a grant from USAID, the Agency for International Development, which supposedly is provides foreign aid and health care funding to developing nations. This is the same federal agency which revokes that very funding from third world clinics if they educate women about birth control, and which tells Africans that abstinence is the solution to the deadly AIDS virus, not condoms.
But obviously not content with preventing foreigners in the world’s poorest and most desperate countries from accessing information on abortion, they have now decided to censor the information from Americans too. After all, charity starts at home. Any search for the keyword “abortion” on the site now simply gives the dubious "No records found by latest query" result. Would this be a good time to mention that the USA often refers to itself as “leader of the FREE world”?
The blatant censorship first came to light after a librarian at the University of California at San Francisco was in the midst of a research request on behalf of (knocked up?) academics and researchers at the university on Monday. Sure that it must be a mistake, as the search function on the site had worked properly at least until January, she called Debbie Dickson, the manager of the database at Johns Hopkins. Hopkins replied that the university had indeed started to censor the search term due to the fact that the database was receiving government funding. "As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now", she sputtered.
The policy of denying government funding to NGOs who either actually perform abortions, or just happen to mention and explain about it is a policy that goes back to the Reagan era. President Bush saw fit to revive the outdated, ridiculously conservative policy in 2001 (just when he was preaching about bringing freedom and democracy to the Arab world).
Sheepish and apologetic Dickson offered a few hints about how people could circumvent the censorship. She noted that using obscure search strategies and different words for “abortion” would probably get around the keyword blocking. For example, the keywords 'Fertility Control, Postconception', or "unwanted w/2 pregnancy", would probably do the trick. Basically, just as with real, live neo-conservative politicians, if you use big clever words, they probably won’t understand you. µ
L’Inq
Wired
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Works just fine!

Silly people!
or you could use "how to murder unborn humans"

I agree censorship is bad but those who want to kill their offspring should at least give them the opportunity to fight back...give them up for adoption....I can see the effects of your education on the topic...
towards men apparently, the topic appears as a hotlink with 14xx results, although no useful results appear for women perpetrators of violence against men.

Nice to see such an open minded science portal!
I would think that a lot of libertarians have their own opinions on abortion. But what makes a libertarian a libertarian is their belief you do what you want to, as long as it doesn't effect anyone else. There may be a case of aborting a fetus as 'effecting someone else'. But this isn't the site for that. 

Regardless of the opinion of abortion, there are also others that believe the government should or shouldn't be in the business of paying for them. Under the Constitution that our forefathers scribbled together, after giving your forefathers the finger, our government is supposed to be limited to really just a few functions -part of the reason for the aforementioned finger. 

That's obviously changing, today. I recently read a USA Today article about New York City's 1,500 public surveillance cameras and how they are far outnumbered by Great Britain's 100,000+ -or is that London alone? The article was written with the tone that New Yorkers should be ashamed and desperately need to catch up... The neocons, that you mentioned, are looking more like the socialist democrats that they 'oppose'. One is PRO-war, while the other is only pro-war. One is PRO-welfare, while the other is only pro-welfare, if you get my meaning. 

Anyway, your story is probably a case of big government run amuck. Whoever handed over the check probably feels negatively about abortion and made the stipulation that the word should be censored. It could also be the first 'taking of an inch' -umm, 'Give them a centimeter and they'll take a kilometer', if translated correctly. Who knows, really?
As China reduces it's censorship due to the Olympics the US decides to take up the slack

And promoting abstinence rather then condoms in Africa is criminal . How many millions have been murdered by that moronic policy .
It's true, "abortion" yields no results. Neither does "thought control". Try "propaganda", however, and watch the hits roll in...
i dunno but it seems to work for me from .cz. only 37 results though..
Since this story broke on April 1st, it's very likely that it's an April Fools joke (and a good one, at that).
I'm more than willing to grant your points on censorship. But you're practically calling anyone who is pro-choice a Nazi. I don't thing you need to be a raving fundamentalist to believe that an unborn baby is a human being. In fact, I think there's a lot of scientific backing behind that argument.
I can respect reasoned disagreement on the point, but quite a number of pro-choice liberals aren't even willing to consider it a debate, because the possibility that a fetus is actually human has really inconvenient consequences.
I went to the site and searched for abortion and: Your search found 150 record(s).

Those results include such titles as this one
8. 008827 [View full record]
Coleman SJ. Induced abortion and contraceptive method choice among urban Japanese marrieds. Ann Arbor, Michigan, University Microfilms, 1982. 292 p. (No. 7819317)

which probably are exactly the sort of thing they wanted to have supressed.
*they* call US a superpower, but we're virtually cut off from the BBC. It's hard out here for a pimp. I'm ready to pick up my toys and go home.
4870 results
Did someone actually test this before running the story? I just tried it and got 4990 hits.

Or is it regional filtering?
The US government is not "right wing". The executive is broadly centrist republican, the legislature is currently controlled by leftist democrats and the judiciary is a mixed bag of all political affiliations. In order to be "right wing" all three branches would have to consist of an overwhelming majority of right wingers. This is definitely not the case.
"... at least give them the opportunity to fight back ..."

Kind of ironic that it's fine for you americans to murder millions in Iraq for no good reason, that were essentially innocent bystanders, yet you think abortion is wrong.
"I'm more than willing to grant your points on censorship. But you're practically calling anyone who is pro-choice a Nazi."

Well, since you brought them up, it might be worth mentioning that the Nazi's were fans of denying access to information, too. We are talking about medical information regarding abortions. Censorship of medical information is questionable, regardless of your position on the legal issues.
Your search found 26184 record(s).
Even your left wingers are right wing by any objective measure
I don't think any of us think it's "fine". Some of us think it's necessary. I'm of the opinion we should never have gone into Iraq, but having done so, we have a moral imperative not to drop a newly born government on its face unless we have to, because people will keep dying whether we're there or not. However, we've reached the point where maybe, hopefully, we can actually do some good now. But maybe I'm just naive.
On the other hand, Europeans seem to think if we get rid of all the troops, peace will reign. That would be nice, but unfortunately flies in the face of something called "history".
"Leader of the free world" - I always wondered what kind of free world this is that must be lead...
I wasn't aware suicide bombers were actually US military people. What about Osama Bin Laden, are you going to blame the US for the WTC bombing, too?

Dumbass.
Abortion is the slavery of our day, and the Pro-Life community are the abolitionist of our day. Just as popular opinion stood by and watched as men, women, and children were treated as property -- being transported and treated brutally -- so the unborn children are called property and brutalized today.

We need a William Wilberforce to forge a war to turn the tide of our public opinion and policy.