Further investigation into the banning of "abortion" as a search term from the Hopkins-run reproductive-health database, POPLINE, has revealed that the government agency that funds the site never asked for the block.
On Friday, Hopkins's Bloomberg School of Public Health removed "abortion" as a stop-word after officials discovered the database's moderators had blocked it as a keyword back in February.
When the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which funds POPLINE, found two articles advocating abortion in the database, it contacted system moderators at the Bloomberg School.
The Center for Communication Programs at Bloomberg proceeded to remove the two articles in addition to five other articles associating abortion with human rights.
The Center then placed "abortion" on a list of stop-words - words like "a," "an" and "the" - that search engines are designed to ignore.
A USAID spokesperson said that the agency did not ask for the article's removal or for the removal of "abortion" as a keyword, and that "the USAID just inquired about some of the article's criteria for inclusion."
The spokesperson said the USAID did not ask for the articles' removal or for the removal of "abortion" as a keyword.
The USAID is prohibited by law from funding organizations or projects that advocate abortion as a means for family planning.
"In my judgment, the decision to block the search term was an overreaction on the part of the POPLINE staff," said Michael Klag, dean of the Bloomberg School in a press release Tuesday. "Other measures are available to us for ensuring that items in the POPLINE database meet USAID guidelines."
Klag learned of the block on Friday, nearly two months after its initiation, and immediately called for it to be lifted, saying the move "was not consistent with the values of the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Our school is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not to its restriction."
Klag was unavailable for direct comment before press time.
POPLINE moderators acted without consulting administrators at the Bloomberg School.
"The blocking of the term was a step taken without informing the management of the Public Health school," said Tim Parsons, a spokesman for the Bloomberg School.
The matter came to Klag's attention after librarians at the Medical Center of the University of California, San Francisco began circulating this information among their co-workers. In an April 6 report, the New York Times said that following inquiries into what initially seemed like a technical difficulty, the UCSF librarians were informed in a Tuesday email from Debra Dickson, senior programmer analyst at POPLINE, that "abortion" had become one of the database's stop words.
Debra Dickson was not available for a comment at press time.
According to Dickson's e-mail, the block was temporary and was meant to bring POPLINE into better accordance with USAID regulations.
Reactions to the block have been mostly critical. Posts to a discussion board at Wired.com claimed the block was a violation of first amendment rights and that the U.S. government was becoming as stifling as China's.
"Freedom of the press, unless of course, you receive federal funds!" one anonymous poster wrote.
Another alleged grad school applicant wrote on the site that he would withdraw his application to Hopkins following this news.
For 30 years, the Bloomberg School has administered POPLINE, the world's largest database on reproduction and family development, though the project essentially belongs to USAID.
"We have an agreement with USAID to manage the POPLINE database, and there are agreements about what goes in and what should not be there," Parsons said.
Abortion advocacy is not permitted under federal laws passed in 1973.
"USAID policy is, anything that is abortion statistics or care is completely appropriate," the USAID Spokesperson said. "Because of the laws imposed on us, we're not allowed to support abortion advocacy."
The seven articles removed from the database came from the winter 2008 edition of A: the Abortion Magazine, which focused on abortion as a human right.
"The Center for Communication Programs and the Bloomberg School of Public Health deeply regret the action that was taken to restrict the use of the search term. Unfettered access to information is essential for informed debate and rational choices in any field, especially in family planning," Klag said. "We will work with our staff to reinforce their appreciation of the importance of academic integrity and of the central role of universities in our society in the dissemination of information."
