Attorney General Jason Miyares and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron sent a letter to Google warning the search engine not to remove crisis pregnancy centers from search results for abortion services.
“Google has two options – protect the freedom of the marketplace of ideas or face legal consequences. American consumers expect diversity of opinion and thought,” Miyares said in a Thursday press release.
The letter, signed by 15 other attorneys general, is a reaction to a June letter led by Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and Representative Elissa Slotkin (D-MI-08). That letter was signed by a number of other legislators and noted that Google Maps results and Google search results for “abortion clinic near me” and “abortion pill” in states with anti-abortion trigger laws resulted in ads and links for crisis pregnancy centers.
The Democratic legislators wrote, “Google should not be displaying anti-abortion fake clinics or crisis pregnancy centers in search results for users that are searching for an ‘abortion clinic’ or ‘abortion pill.’ If Google must continue showing these misleading results in search results and Google Maps, the results should, at the very least, be appropriately labeled.”
In his press release, Miyares said, “The idea that elected officials are both advocating for the removal of private charities and encouraging Google to outwardly discriminate against crisis pregnancy centers and silence voices different than their own is appalling.”
In the letter, the attorneys general threatened to investigate potential violations of anti-trust and freedom of speech laws.
“Complying with these demands would constitute a grave assault on the principle of free speech. ‘Unbiased access to information,’ while no longer a component of Google’s corporate creed, is still what Americans expect from your company,” the letter states.
“Google’s monopoly power in the markets for search services and online advertising has attracted the attention of federal regulators, the Department of Justice, and many of the States—including many of the States represented here,” the letter later states. “We cannot imagine a potential antitrust violation more odious to American ideals than the deployment of monopoly power to suppress the expression of a particular idea, done at the behest of government actors.”
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
