Algorithmic Ad Blocking Limits Abortion Information In Colombia

Pro-choice demonstration in Bogotá in 2022, as the Constitutional Court debated the As a doctor, María M. Vivas never set out to become a technology expert. Unfortunately reproductive health is much more politicized than other branches of medicine.

“Information is something that is very blocked in abortion rights,” Vivas notes. “That’s one of the access barriers. ” To keep up with the demand for online information about , her organization – the Colombian network of sexual and reproductive health clinics – has had to become well versed in search engine optimization, keywords, and other aspects of website management.

Colombia has been at the vanguard of the hard-fought, decades-spanning Latin American movement toward greater access to abortion. Before 2006, abortion was illegal without exception in Colombia. In 2006, a limited set of exceptions were introduced.

Pro-choice activism coalesced around the network , which included Oriéntame. The movement achieved a major victory in 2022, when Colombia’s Constitutional Court fully decriminalized abortion up to 24 weeks, with the exceptions still applicable after that. “The decriminalization of abortion stands as a historic milestone for Oriéntame,” Vivas reflects.

After the decision in February 2022, “the next day, the service of free, legal, and safe abortion was available through Oriéntame for the first time in Colombia. ” Yet “changing the law is not enough,” Vivas has learned. While it’s pivotal to address stigma and to enshrine rights, “implementation is a huge challenge, and that’s the challenge we are currently going through.

” A key implementation challenge has been ensuring that people can access accurate information about their new rights. “One of the barriers to the exercise of the right to abortion is the lack of objective, timely, sufficient and adequate information by health care providers and authorities, which can lead people to think that they are committing a crime when they decide to have an abortion,” explains Catalina Moreno Arocha, a former lawyer who coordinates the social inclusion work of , a digital and human rights nonprofit in Colombia. Online information isn’t the full story given .

“We need to provide information through many channels, including flyers,” Vivas explains. “But definitely the internet is a very important channel. ” It’s critical for explaining the basics like where the clinics are and what services they provide.

This pipeline of information was shattered in September 2022, seven months after the decriminalization decision, when Google started blocking Oriéntame ads that mentioned abortion. As the most popular search engine in Colombia, this was devastating. The restrictions affected access to information about other sexual and reproductive healthcare as well.

According to Vivas, following an ad block, Oriéntame’s web traffic plummeted by 96% in just one month, for contraception, STI, and gynecology services. Phone calls about its services dropped immediately. As it could no longer rely on ads to direct people in need to Oriéntame’s website, the team had to put a lot of work into growing its web traffic organically, through content like blogs and podcasts.

It also had to find a number of workarounds, like changing keywords (from “abortion” to “legal interruption of pregnancy”) and even creating a second webpage that didn’t mention abortion, to get around Google’s automatic blocks. “It makes our lives doubly complicated,” not to mention adding to the costs of providing information about care. Essentially, this healthcare organization had to play whac-a-mole, coming up with convoluted strategies in an effort to stay one step ahead of the blocks.

And these strategies have only ever worked temporarily; Oriéntame is still not allowed to advertise its abortion services on Google. The right to information about abortion “obliges other actors such as search service platforms to ensure the free flow of quality information in all countries,” Moreno Arocha comments. In August 2023, her organization and partners sent a letter to Google requesting a certification as a legal provider.

It’s a type of maneuver that Colombian feminist and pro-choice activists have had to use before: when facing obstacles, join forces. Fundación Karisma was troubled by the certification gap for most of the world’s countries. “The inability to advertise legal abortion services is due to the fact that the clinic certification process is only available for the United States, UK and Ireland,” according to Moreno Arocha.

Karisma worked alongside Oriéntame and two other organizations working on abortion rights in Colombia, and , to raise the issue with Google. “Today we are waiting for Google’s response and reviewing other cases in which information about abortion has been unfairly moderated from social media platforms,” Moreno Arocha explains. On the clinical side, Vivas muses, “I never thought that I needed to go to Google and say, ‘Please, I’m a legal provider, allow me to advertise myself.

’ That was never in my public health training. ” But this step is an example of how adaptable the pro-choice movement has had to be even with decriminalization, to ensure that the law has teeth. “Every aspect of the implementation needs to be taken care of,” Vivas stresses.

This has been a lesson from . In Spain, the website of medication abortion provider Women on Web even despite a Supreme Court ruling that this blocking was unlawful. Women on Web is also working to reinstate access to its website in South Korea and Turkey.

In the US, on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google, with the companies offering a raft of inconsistent explanations if they give explanations at all. It’s unclear whether Google’s blocking of abortion ads in Colombia is a response to anti-choice pressure or a result of an overly sensitive algorithm. Either way, it appears that abortion providers are having to jump through hoops that other medical professionals are not.

Moreno Arocha notes that social media platforms “must avoid removing informative content about performing safe abortions or suspending accounts that make such posts. They must do the same with respect to activist content that seeks to denounce setbacks in guaranteeing sexual and reproductive rights. ” Google and Meta did not respond to requests for comment.

A TikTok spokesperson commented that abortion is not a restricted topic when discussed in a medical way. The company’s Colombia-specific policies for advertising don’t mention abortion, but note that advertisers of healthcare products must be actively working with a TikTok sales representative. “Technology has always moved medicine and the healthcare field forward,” Vivas acknowledges.

With greater transparency around how tech giants are allowing or disallowing certain types of health content, medical professionals like her will be able to devote more time to providing care. .