Comments Elsewhere

Thanks, Fred, for the support and the discussion.

You’re right that the current search results for “abortion” aren’t all that objectionable at the moment. When I wrote down the targets for the bombing, the deceptive abortionfacts-dot-com was the #1 result, above the evenhanded religioustolerance.org discussion. I’m actually not sure why the reversal came about—it isn’t because of the GoogleBombing; I suggested GynPages as the target for “abortion.”

In any case, even though there has been this welcome change, I’d still like to encourage people to GoogleBomb abortion with GynPages. Roughly, the reason why is this: religioustolerance.org isn’t an offensive result the way that abortiontv-dot-com or abortionfacts-dot-com is, but I do think that (1) since the relative positioning between #1 and #2 is fragile, we should see what we can do to boost alternatives to the deceptive anti-abortion sites; and (2) GynPages provides something very important that religioustolerance doesn’t: it’s a direct link to objective information on where to find abortion services. That’s one reason that people may be searching on “abortion” in the first place, and if it is it’s important that they be able to find it. As it stands, though, it’s crowded out by a bunch of political advocacy at the top of the search results—both even-handed and anti-tilted, and a few times pro-choice-tilted. That’s something that I wouldn’t mind seeing changed at all, and I hope that others agree with me.