Yelp will flag crisis pregnancy centers listings to avoid misleading abortion seekers

Image: Yelp

A new consumer notice will be added to crisis pregnancy centers to differentiate them from abortion clinics.

The new notices will be at the top of faith-based and non- faith-based crisis pregnancy center listings in the app. These centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals on site.

Thousands of business listings have been recategorized since the beginning of the year. There are crisis pregnancy centers that market themselves as clinics on the internet. The primary goal of the crisis centers is to discourage people from ending a pregnancies.

"Crisis pregnancy centers don't offer abortion services, and it's been shown that many give misleading information in an attempt to steer people seeking abortion care to other options." We want to make sure that consumers are protected from being misled or confused.

Image: Yelp

The Supreme Court effectively banned the federal right to abortion after it reversed its previous position. Tech companies are trying to combat abortion-related misinformation online. In July, it was announced that instructions for unsafe abortion methods would be removed from the site. Shortly after, TikTok followed suit.

Companies can still protect user data despite the moderation policies. Facebook turned over private messages that were used to incriminate a mother and daughter for performing an illegal abortion. That case confirmed warnings from abortion and privacy experts who have sounded the alarm for years that ongoing digital snooping on social media could lead to the criminalization of abortion care.

The crisis pregnancy center audits are still going on. Over 33,500 U.S. business pages have been evaluated and categorized as crisis pregnancy centers or faith-based crisis pregnancy centers as of August 8, 2022.