In an effort to combat incorrect information about the medical procedure, YouTube announced on Thursday that it will begin deleting videos that make hazardous or untrue claims about abortion. The decision was made at a time when women are looking for trustworthy pregnancy-related information online as the right to an abortion has been restricted in many parts of the United States.
“We believe it’s important to connect people to content from authoritative sources regarding health topics, and we continuously review our policies and products as real world events unfold,” a YouTube spokesperson said in response to an AFP inquiry.
“Starting today and ramping up over the next few weeks, we will remove content that provides instructions for unsafe abortion methods or promotes false claims about abortion safety under our medical misinformation policies.”
Instructions for risky at-home abortions and misleading claims that there is a high danger that the procedure would result in cancer or infertility are a few examples of the information YouTube stated it will remove off its platform globally.
According to YouTube, it will also begin incorporating data from the National Library of Medicine into videos or searches relating to abortion to provide trustworthy context.
The video streaming website is run by Alphabet-owned Google, which earlier this month announced it will wipe users’ location information when they visit domestic abuse shelters, abortion clinics, and other locations where privacy is desired.
“If our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit,” Jen Fitzpatrick, a senior vice president at Google, wrote in a blog post at the time.
The software company’s moves come after the US Supreme Court overturned its 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion, allowing a number of states to outlaw or severely restrict the operation and sparking nationwide demonstrations.
Politicians and activists have urged Google and other internet corporations to restrict the amount of data they gather to prevent it from being used in abortion-related investigations and prosecutions.
