Google Bias on Display With ‘Pregnancy’ Search

Leif Le Mahieu writes for the Daily Wire about the surprising result of a Google search using the word “pregnancy.”

Google’s search results consistently favor pro-abortion sources over pro-life ones, according to a new study that tested the search engine giant against its competitors.

A new report by researchers at the Media Research Center’s Free Speech America says that a pro-abortion bias exists across Google’s search engine, its AI chatbot Bard, Google Ads, and company policies. Researchers at the MRC compared Google results to those of Bing and DuckDuckGo, saying that results from Google tilted in favor of a pro-abortion perspective.

During one test, researchers searched for the word “pregnancy” on all three search engines the day before the 50th Annual March for Life. According to the researchers, Bing and DuckDuckGo had more neutral results, while on Google, the top link produced was to a page on Planned Parenthood, the country’s leading advocates for abortion. This search result was also confirmed on Friday by The Daily Wire — on both Bing and DuckDuckGo, the top search result for “pregnancy” was a link to the same Mayo Clinic page.

A spokesperson for Google told The Daily Wire that claims of bias were without merit. “There’s no validity to these allegations of bias. We don’t manipulate search results, modify our products or enforce our policies in any way to promote or disadvantage any particular ideology or viewpoint. For the search queries that were studied, Google shows a range of sources and perspectives, contrary to the misleading suggestions of the report,” a spokesperson said.

Researchers also said that pro-life information on how many women regret having abortions was relegated to the bottom of the page when looking for answers from Google on that topic.

“When MRC researchers searched Google for the terms ‘study women did not regret having baby’ on October 20, Google buried the pro-life results at the bottom of the page as the twenty-fifth and twenty-seventh results,” the study, written by Gabriela Pariseau, said.