Health Database Ignored Abortion-related queries

John Hopkins University, which manages the world’s largest health database, set up its site to ignore abortion-related online queries. Officials ordered lifting the restrictions on Friday, restoring access to more than 22,000 abortion-related studies.

John Hopkins manages the publicly financed database, known as Popline, which includes more than 360,000 articles on family planning, sexually transmitted diseases, fertility and sexual problems.

The restriction was lifted only after librarians and women's health advocates packed complaints of censorship at the blogosphere -- and e-mail boxes at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The concerns heightened after one librarian was told the action was intentional an effort to comply with Bush administration rules restricting dissemination of information about abortions in foreign countries.

Dean Michael J. Klag said in a statement that he had learned about the restrictions on Friday morning and ordered administrators of the health website to restore ‘abortion’ as a search term at once. He also said he would thoroughly investigate the case, to see why this decision was taken.

“I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore ‘abortion’ as a search term immediately. I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred,” the statement read.

Timothy M. Parsons, a spokesman for the school said the Agency for International Development, which funds Popline, was concerned after finding “two articles about abortion advocacy” in the database. The articles, he said, did not fit database criteria and were removed.

Employees who manage the database instructed their computers to ignore the word ‘abortion’ as a search term.

Ted Miller, a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, said, “The public has a right to know why someone would censor relevant medical information. The Bush administration has politicized science as part of an ideological agenda. So it’s important to know if that occurred here.”

Dr. Klag said the school was “dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge, and not its restriction.”