Apr 6, 2008 / 15:42 pm
Administrators at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health blocked the word “abortion” as a search term in a public health database after the office of a U.S. agency complained about two abortion-related articles in the database, Wired.com reports.
A spokesperson for the government office that lodged the complaint said the block resulted from a misunderstanding.
Tim Parsons, a spokesman for the Maryland school, said, "The items in question had to do with abortion advocacy -- the two items dealing with abortion were removed following this inquiry, and the administrators made a decision to restrict abortion as a search term."
The PopLine search site is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.