Wired magazine has a story on the federal government-sponsored reproductive health site, Popline. Run by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, it is a basic search engine that accesses research on global health issues. But, that federal funding has led to some curious censorship issues:

A librarian at the University of California at San Francisco noticed the new censorship on Monday, while carrying out a routine research request on behalf of academics and researchers at the university. The search term had functioned properly as of January.

Puzzled, she contacted the manager of the database, Johns Hopkins’ Debbie Dickson, who replied in an April 1st e-mail that the university had recently begun blocking the search term because the database received federal funding.

“We recently made all abortion terms stop words,” Dickson wrote in a note to Gloria Won, the UCSF medical center librarian making the inquiry. “As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.”

It looks like the global gag rule that prevents NGOs who receive federal aid from discussing abortion with their clients is being interpreted as applying to search engines as well. I am aghast at the apparent complicity of university officials in this. I’d like to think the academic community would have some backbone on this issue.