Political Correctness?? IOKIYAR

That's web-speak for "It's OK if you're a republican." Case in point: Can't tell you how many times I have to hear how horrible political correctness (in other words being polite) is. It's just terrible. It takes away our freedom of speech. We should be able to use all manner of reprehensible terms when dealing with those we don't like, right? So goes the right-wing thinking. They're so miffed that they have to say "homosexual" or "gay" instead of what they'd really like to say in polite company "faggot", for example.

But recently a government database on REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, known as PopLine, has made the word "abortion" a stop word in searches. A stop word is basically a word that is ignored by search engines. Words like "a", "an", "the", etc. are ignored because there are too many of them in language and they slow the searches. So this wonderful resource now treats the word "abortion" as a stop word. Why? According to Debbie Dickson,

As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now. In addition to the terms you’re already using, you could try using ‘Fertility Control, Postconception’. This is the broader term to our ‘Abortion’ terms and most records have both in the keyword fields. Also, adding ‘unwanted w2 pregnancy’ in place of aborti*. We have a keyword Pregnancy, Unwanted and there are 2517 records with aborti* & unwanted w2 pregnancy

Keep in mind this is a database used by professionals and non-professionals. POPLINE is maintained by the INFO Project at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs and is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Seems like a database used by lay and professional users should not make one jump through hoops like "using Fertility Control" instead of using the term most bandied about in our society: abortion.

What a joke. But, see, Nanny-State-ism (another bugaboo of the right) and "political correctness" are always OK so long as the Nanny is in your back pocket and the "political correctness" is defined by YOUR politics and YOUR idea of correctness. It's not PC itself the righties hate, it's the fact that PC is not always defined by their small-minded ideas of what's correct. But, when they can capture the reins of power, they have no problem stating: "...we decided this was best for now."
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UPDATE:

was informed this morning that the word “abortion” was blocked as a search term in the POPLINE family planning database administered by the Bloomberg School’s Center for Communication Programs. POPLINE provides evidence-based information on reproductive health and family planning and is the world’s largest database on these issues.

USAID, which funds POPLINE, found two items in the database related to abortion that did not fit POPLINE criteria. The agency then made an inquiry to POPLINE administrators. Following this inquiry, the POPLINE administrators at the Center for Communication Programs made the decision to restrict abortion as a search term.

I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore “abortion” as a search term immediately. I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.

Sincerely,

Michael J. Klag, MD, MPH
Dean, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

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