“Crisis Pregnancy Centers” will come with a Yelp warning

After Roe v. Wadereversal of earlier this year, Yelp implemented a a new policy that labels the misleading, often medically inaccurate services of so-called crisis pregnancy centers. Users now receive the following warning when they click on such a business: “Note to users: This is a crisis pregnancy center. Crisis pregnancy centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals on site. The new warning extends that to the company 2018 reclassification of anti-abortion clinics as “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” or “Faith-Based Crisis Pregnancy Center” and aims to curb ideologically biased medical misinformation as women’s reproductive rights continue to be curtailed across the country.

[Related: What science tells us about abortion bans.]

“It is well reported that crisis pregnancy centers do not offer abortion services and many have been shown to do Misleading information in an effort to steer people seeking abortion care to other options,” Yelp’s VP of Consumer Operations, Noori Malik, wrote in press release this morning. “With this new notice to consumers, we aim to further protect consumers from the potential to be misled or confused.”

Crisis centers are often billed as equivalent alternatives to abortion care providers. In reality, they are often run in secret religious, pro-life groups and organizations. Although they may provide some services such as STI testing, pregnancy tests, and ultrasounds, they are specifically designed to prevent an actively pregnant woman from having an abortion. Methods often include spreading misinformation, offering manipulative counseling, and delaying services until the patient passes the state’s deadline for legal abortion.

In addition to noting the particularly insidious brand of pro-life marketing of established crisis pregnancy centers, Malik said the company will continue to investigate business listing websites, social media presence and information submitted directly to Yelp to classify the most -exactly these businesses. Yelp reports that it has proactively rated nearly 33,500 pages this year alone, resulting in nearly 470 reclassifications.

[Related: Meta could protect users’ abortion-related messages whenever it wants, advocates say.]

Yelp’s latest efforts to curb the often accidental referral of people to these crisis centers are certainly laudable, but the larger Big Tech ecosystem still lacks a cohesive and effective strategy to further combat virulently pro-life programs. Google, for example, has a history of offering frequently life clinic ads every time someone seeks abortion-related care. Meanwhile, Facebook recently cooperated with law enforcement in Nebraska by providing them with private direct messages between a mother and teenage daughter who planned and performed a home abortion deemed illegal by the state.

Despite a well-established history of offering extremely limited and inaccurate medical care (often by staff with little or no medical training), Associated Press a report earlier this year revealed that nearly $89 million in state budgets was allocated to crisis centers and “family planning” centers in 2022.