CREDO and UltraViolet are fighting Google’s deceptive “crisis pregnancy center” ads

In the age of Trump, the fights for women’s rights, reproductive freedom, equal pay and equal treatment have become extremely difficult.

Trump and his sexist administration have emboldened anti-women Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures across the country. These cruel and craven lawmakers have advanced policies that would block women’s access to affordable birth control, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, prenatal care, breast exams, and safe, legal abortion.

And it’s not just members of the Trump administration and right-wing lawmakers who are attacking women’s health and rights. Some corporations are making it even harder for women to access the care they need.

Right now, Google is allowing crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) to entrap women on its platform. CPCs are fake health clinics that do not provide health care and spread lies about abortion to scare women into carrying unwanted and life-endangering pregnancies to term. They use deceptive Google ads to steer women away from trusted health care providers like Planned Parenthood, which offers medically accurate health advice and safe, legal abortion. Right now, misleading CPC ads appear above Google Search results and in Maps results when women use the platform to look for information about abortion in more than 20 regions across the United States.

CPCs infringe on women’s ability to freely and safely access medical care. That’s why CREDO has teamed up with our friends at UltraViolet to expose Google’s continued promotion of fake health clinics and demand that it stop now.

Last month, CREDO and UltraViolet crashed Google’s I/O developer festival by delivering more than 100,000 petition signatures demanding that Google stop promoting fake health clinics. We also held a light projection with the words “Google, stop lying to women. No to fake, anti-abortion clinics” at various locations around the conference.

We were also honored to host UltraViolet co-founder Shauna Thomas last month at CREDO headquarters to discuss her organization’s work to hold Google accountable as well as UltraViolet’s work combating sexism and misogyny. You can watch her visit here.