Google Maps will now label clinics that ‘do provide abortions’ and those that don’t

Google has stated that it will offer transparency when it comes to abortion and healthcare by clearly labelling clinics offering abortion services on its both Google Maps and Google search results weeks after lawmakers in June pressed them to block misleading results leading users to “fake” centers.

In early July, Google also announced that it will automatically delete any visits users make to abortion clinics from their location history.

Privacy and abortion activists campaigned for this as they fear than any visits to an abortion center could be used by police in criminal investigations, if abortion is illegal in the user’s state.

Google told Bloomberg that it continues to work hard to provide its users with relevant and accurate results.

Google confirmed on Thursday that it would promptly label medical facilities offering abortion services as “provides abortions” label those that either don’t provide abortions or are unclear as “might not provide abortions.”

Google Maps will also make it easier for users to expand their search area by offering them an option to “search farther away” if there aren’t any abortion centers within their vicinity.  

“When people turn to Google to find local information, we aim to help them easily explore the range of places available so they can determine which are most helpful to them,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch.

“For a number of categories where we’ve received confirmation that places offer specific services, we’ve been working for many months on more useful ways to display those results. We’re now rolling out an update that makes it easier for people to find places that offer the services they’ve searched for or broaden their results to see more options. We followed our standard testing and evaluation process to confirm that these updates are more helpful for people,” the spokesperson said.