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According to an article on MSNBC, John Hopkins University had programmed its computers to ignore abortion as a valid search term when utilizing a publicly financed database.

A prominent public health school has restored the word "abortion" as an acceptable search term on a reproductive health Web site funded by a federal agency that restricts references to abortions.The move by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health follows criticism from some health advocates and librarians that the restriction amounted to censorship.The restriction on the POPLINE Web site — "population information online" — had been put in place after inquiries by the United States Agency for International Development, which funds the site, according to a statement from Dr. Michael J. Klag, the dean of the Bloomberg school.USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a methods of family planning in other nations. The policy was started under President Ronald Reagan and was revived when President Bush took office in 2001.
"I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore 'abortion' as a search term immediately," Klag said in a statement. "The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction."

You can read the entire article by clicking here.

Dr. Klag's decision received the support of the American Library Association. According to the ALA's press release, Loriene Roy, President of the American Library Association, stated:

We applaud Dr. Klag's swift action to restore full access to the POPLINE database. We are dismayed, however, at the circumstances that caused the administrators running the POPLINE database to begin blocking any and all searches on the word "abortion." Any federal policy or rule that requires or encourages information providers to block access to scientific information because of partisan or religious bias is censorship. Such policies promote ideology over science and only serve to deny researchers, students and individuals on all sides of the issue access to accurate scientific information.

The American Library Association has vigorously opposed the use of internet filtering and filed suit to overturn the restrictions of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) on the grounds that the Act violated the First Amendment rights of patrons of public libraries. The ALA claimed that the search filters required to comply with CIPA restrict from access a wide array of materials, including medical information. In 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld CIPA, with the provision that libraries must comply with requests from adult patrons to disable the filters. The ALA continues to provide assistance to libraries that must implement CIPA to comply with federal funding requirements.

To determine if internet filtering did restrict access to health information, the Kaiser Foundation conducted a large-scale, scientific study designed to help determine whether Internet filters would block young people’s access to non-pornographic health information. The results of the study, released in 2002, supported the ALA's claim concerning filters:

But as filters are set at higher levels, they block access to a substantial amount of health information, with only a minimal increase in blocked pornographic content.

The full report, in pdf format, is available for download here.

The Kaiser report also included a list of health sites blocked by the search filters such as suicide hotlines, the CDC pages on sexually transmitted diseases and diabetes, an FDA article on testicular cancer and a site dedicated to preventing teen pregnancy. Do teenagers really look up information about health? Yes, they do, according to an earlier Kaiser study that indicated 70% of 15-17 year-olds have used the Internet to look up health information, including 40% who have researched sexual health issues such as birth control or sexually transmitted diseases.

So when you are done with your Sunday morning coffee, please write to Dr. Michael Klag, Dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Loriene Roy, President of the ALA, and thank them for protecting your reproductive freedom. Am I exaggerating? Not at all. You cannot use federal funds to pay for abortion and, if not for advocates like these, you could not use federal funds to even read about an abortion.