- The Washington Times - Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Yelp announced this week it is adding a “consumer notice” to crisis pregnancy center reviews on its crowd-sourced website — a warning label that will explain how the facilities are different from abortion clinics.

Anti-abortion activists immediately slammed the new policy as discriminatory toward the pro-life and religious groups that support the centers.

Yelp spokeswoman Amber Albrecht told The Washington Times that business pages on its platform for crisis pregnancy centers and faith-based pregnancy centers will now tell users that these organizations “typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.”

“As you know, it’s been well-reported that crisis pregnancy centers often attempt to provide misleading information to people seeking abortion care to steer them to other options — with this new notification we’re aiming to further protect consumers from the potential of being misled or confused,” Ms. Albrecht said in an email. “Relatedly, for people specifically searching for abortion services, we’ve increased our efforts to better match them with reproductive health services that actually offer abortions, and make it less likely they will see crisis pregnancy centers in their search results.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List., said a truthful label from Yelp would highlight pregnancy centers’ offerings that abortion clinics do not have, including parenting and childbirth classes, education and career help, as well as diapers, clothing, and strollers.

“Shame on big tech companies like Yelp for colluding with the abortion lobby in their war on compassionate pregnancy help,” Ms. Dannenfelser said in a statement. “Discriminatory labels are not meant to inform, but to scare women away from receiving the support and resources they need.”


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The consumer notice label on Yelp arrived in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling this summer that eliminated previous decisions recognizing a right to obtain an abortion. 

Ms. Albrecht said Yelp moderators have evaluated tens of thousands of listings for pregnancy centers since 2018 and recategorized them on its service. Yelp has evaluated nearly 33,500 such business pages in 2022 and recategorized 470 of them as of earlier this month, according to Ms. Albrecht.

Anti-abortion activists are concerned about violence against pregnancy centers and abortion providers’ efforts to limit information about pregnancy. 

Ms. Dannenfelser said abortion providers have fought hard against women’s right to informed consent including hearing a baby’s heartbeat or seeing an ultrasound.

“Pregnancy centers effectively save lives, and the radical abortion lobby and their extremist Democrat allies like [Massachusetts Sen.] Elizabeth Warren are desperate to ‘crack down’ on them,” Ms. Dannenfelser said in a statement. “Pro-abortion lies are fueling an unprecedented rash of attacks against them.”

Yelp is not the only tech platform changing policies involving content related to abortion. 

Google’s YouTube said last month it would crack down on abortion content that the platform determined would mislead people, in an expansion of its rules regarding medical misinformation.

• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.

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