Ministry of Truth?
Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore ‘Abortion'
By Robert Pear
NEW YORK TIMES
April 5, 2008
This report lets everyone outside the specialized world of medical librarianship know that the world's largest database on reproductive health - Popline - with more than 360,000 records and articles on family planning, fertility and sexually transmitted diseases, had stopped allowing researchers to find articles by using the word abortion as a search term.
Why in the world did they do this?
The New York Times and other news sources have made preliminary investigations (e.g. 1, 2, 3); but perhaps none have presented the results better than the noted British medical journal BMJ. I have labeled the essential elements of their presentation below to highlight the main points.
WHAT HAPPENED: The world's largest database for reproductive health, which is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), last week made it impossible to search its contents for the word "abortion."
WHY IT HAPPENED: The explanation given for the ban by the administrator of the website, which is called Popline (population information online) was that because the project was funded by federal money it was thought "best for now."
BACKGROUND: Under the US president, George Bush, USAID has been banned from giving funds to any foreign organisation that performs, refers, or counsels on abortion, regardless of whether abortion is legal in their country.
ANALYSIS: Critics were quick to assume that the decision to ban the word "abortion" as a search term was political.
Once this ban had created a large public outcry among medical librarians and others, it was quickly reversed by a top administrator of the program.
Most likely nobody will ever be able to prove that political motives led to this policy. It might simply be that a few influential people who were so inclined had their own way in a small out-of-the-way office that affects the overall operation. Unless others notice and speak up when these kinds of changes are made, the changes tend to become permanent because after a while people say it's always been done this way.
A change as radical as this will not be accepted if it is noticed and enough people say something because George Orwell has already alerted us to the dangers of governments attempting to determine truth. But people who want changes such as this try to sneak them in because they hope no one will notice in time to make a difference.
This case is an example of how government can abuse power. It may seem like a small issue; but worlds of information are uncovered by a single word, or hidden by the absence of a word; and therefore what we discover and learn can be affected by one word. As a government agency, USAID made a decision to restrict information access by not allowing researchers to use a very commonly accepted search term. In an online environment, there was no practical reason for making such a restriction since it did not offer any financial savings or improvement to the system.
This case is also an example of how the public must respond in order to get government to change. Medical librarians and others responded en masse individually and through their professional organizations to this issue. It is sometimes said that there are three branches of government to serve as checks and balances on each other's powers; and we therefore view governmental power as divided between those three branches.
That's fine when we consider that all three branches get their power from the people. But since the delegation of power from the people primarily occurs when they vote, more often than not, it is more helpful to think of government as four powers that should be balanced: executive, legislative, judiciary, and the people.
We the people need to be supporting or in some cases pushing back against our government when it is making mistakes, in order to keep it in line with what we believe are constitutional principles. We are still the power on which our republic rests even when we are not in the ballot box. We should take care how we exercise that power at all times.
