DIY Librarian

A medical librarian recently discovered that POPLINE, a reproductive health database administered by Johns Hopkins, had made “abortion” a stop word. I blogged about this at work, and NPR and the Baltimore Sun have good articles, but thought I’d offer some of my personal comments here.

I’m sure most readers of this blog know that stop words are typically things like “a” and “the” - not nouns like “abortion”. Indeed, “abortion” is a POPLINE keyword.

Apparently, the whole mess started when USAID, POPLINE’s funder, objected to a few articles it deemed “abortion advocacy”. By law, USAID is prohibited from promoting abortion and “places high priority on preventing abortions.” However, information about abortion is important to preventing it.

Johns Hopkins has since restored the search term. Kudos to them for a speedy reaction, but I don’t understand why the offending articles weren’t dealt with on an individual level to begin with.

Update (April 10): A commenter at librarian.net has an interesting possible explanation.

Update (April 11): Ipas, the nonprofit organization that published the magazine USAID objected to, has issued a press release.

The Ipas publication affirms women’s access to safe abortion as a human right. It does not promote abortion, maintaining that a woman’s decision to have an abortion is hers to make in accordance with her right to life, health, bodily integrity, nondiscrimination, privacy, liberty, and religious freedom.