Warren called Yelp’s justification for its new notification “just the same old tired trope about pregnancy centers being misleading.”
That claim, he added, “has been disproven over and over again by anyone who is interested in inspecting what pregnancy centers actually do, what they actually tell their clients, and the reputable sources that they use to back up every single one of those claims.”
Andrea Trudden, the vice president of communications and marketing at Heartbeat International, a network supporting thousands of pregnancy centers, said that pregnant women — not Yelp — should decide where to seek help.
“Women who utilize their services overwhelmingly give pregnancy centers satisfactory ratings for the care they receive,” Trudden told CNA. “Women are smart and capable beings — they do not need Yelp to tell them where to go when pregnant.”
Trudden called Yelp’s decision to label these centers part of an “ongoing saga.” Her group identifies itself as the first network of pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the U.S. and the most expansive network in the world, with over 3,000 affiliate locations.
“Ironically, in their quest to label pregnancy centers so that women only see abortion providers when seeking pregnancy help, they actually remove any semblance of ‘choice,’” Trudden told CNA. “Logic tells me that the organization operating the pregnancy center has a better idea of the services they offer rather than a Yelp employee with an agenda.”
In Yelp’s announcement Tuesday, Malik added that, since 2018, Yelp moderators have “manually evaluated tens of thousands of business listings and recategorized businesses that do not offer actual abortion services as either Crisis Pregnancy Centers or Faith-based Crisis Pregnancy Centers.” She promised that the company would continue its investigation, “with plans to evaluate a total of 55,000+ business pages across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.”
Trudden called on Yelp to disclose where they received this list of pregnancy help organizations they are now labeling for the sake of full transparency. She added that, in the past, Yelp has publicly advocated for abortion as a company.
Earlier this year, it joined a long list of companies pledging to provide financial assistance to employees traveling for abortions.
Yelp’s decision also comes at a time when pregnancy centers are facing “an unprecedented rash of attacks,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement.
“Shame on Big Tech companies like Yelp for colluding with the abortion lobby in their war on compassionate pregnancy help,” she said. “Discriminatory labels are not meant to inform, but to scare women away from receiving the support and resources they need.”
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Dannenfelser stressed the benefits that pregnancy centers offer.
“America’s pregnancy centers exist to serve women and families, taking financial pressures and other types of coercion out of the equation,” she said. “If Big Tech’s labels were truthful, they’d highlight all the real services pregnancy centers provide that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry don’t, such as diapers, formula, clothing, strollers, parenting and childbirth classes, education and career help, and much more — typically free of charge.”
Yelp did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
Former Washington, D. C., correspondent Katie Yoder covered pro-life issues, the U.S. Catholic bishops, public policy, and Congress for Catholic News Agency. She previously worked for Townhall.com, National Review, and the Media Research Center.
