Is abortion a dirty word?

Posted At : April 3, 2008 3:08 PM | Posted By : Laura Abate
Related Categories: Databases
The POPLINE database recently added ‘abortion’ to its list of stop words which are words that the database’s search query ignores. Terms like ‘a’, ‘of’, and ‘the’ are commonly on stop word lists, and these common terms are filtered because they do not generally add to the meaning of a query and because they occur so commonly that results for these terms are overwhelming.

So, what does it mean that abortion is a stop word in POPLINE? If you execute a basic search for this term, you’ll see a screen that says “No records found by latest query.” Before abortion was added to the stop words list, users could locate thousands of articles mentioning abortion in different contexts. Several workarounds have been suggested, but these will be useful primarily to advanced searchers who already know that the term abortion can’t be used in POPLINE.

POPLINE provides international coverage of population, family planning, and related health issues. The database is freely available on the Internet and is produced by the INFO Project at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Center for Communication Programs and is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). POPLINE primarily covers the time period of 1970 through the present, but also provides selected citations back to 1827.

We’re soliciting comments from the GWUMC community on this news:

  • What does this mean to you?
  • Does this affect the usability or usefulness of POPLINE?
  • Should Himmelfarb Library continue to link to POPLINE?

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How sad. I've spent a little time this morning looking at different blogs which have addressed this development. Placing "abortion" on the stopword list doesn't take away from the usability of POPLINE... so long as abortion has nothing to do with the user's research. POPLINE describes itself as "the world's largest database on reproductive health, containing citations with abstracts to scientific articles, reports, books, and unpublished reports in the field of population, family planning, and related health issues." I think that placing the word "abortion" calls into question the validity of this statement and really makes me wonder if there are not other terms which may be similarly excluded. It seems that searches on "abortion" have been equated with supporting abortion which I think is an unsupportable leap in logic. More troubling is the fact that this development was not made public knowledge via POPLINE, but through the users searching POPLINE. If Himmelfarb could make its users aware of the limitations of searching this term on POPLINE, I think that would help greatly -- whether or not to link to POPLINE is a decision which needs to be aligned with the mission of the library.
# Posted By anonymous | 4/4/08 10:55 AM
Michael J. Klag, the dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has released a statement regarding this issue which is available at: http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releas...
# Posted By Laura Abate | 4/4/08 3:27 PM
I was appalled when I heard about the decision to add the search term "abortion" to the list of "stop words" in the Popline database's search function. That is like taking the word "abortion" out of the dictionary because you don't like its meaning. Normally, stop words consist of words like "and" and "the" - words that don't add value to a search and may slow it down or produce too many results. To add "abortion" to this list in a database on reproductive health is beyond absurd. It brings into question the value of the database as a serious source for scholarly research. If "abortion" is on the list, why not other procedures, conditions or drugs? And if such liberties are being taken with the list of stop words, what about the data in the database?

If Michael Klag, the Dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is not successful in having the word returned to the list of searchable terms, I would strongly support the removal of the Popline database from Himmelfarb's subscription list because it suggests that the content of the database is politically and ideologically driven rather than being an open source of information based on available scientific research.
# Posted By Julie Archer | 4/6/08 5:14 PM
I find this to be very upsetting and politically and emotionally driven. Abortion is the most common surgical procedure in the United States. Regardless of your views of abortion, it is a surgical procedure that all of us as future physicians will be exposed to in some way or another. Either we will perform them, we will meet a patient who wants an elected abortion, we will have a patient that had an abortion, or we will meet women who had abortions to protect their health/life.

It is absolutely insane that the word "abortion" comes up with no hits on PopLine. As a student of GW Medical School I absolutely support removing Popline from the links available in Himmelfarb. It is a surgical procedure that we should learn and understand. Just like cesareans, appendectomies, and various forms of plastic surgeries. Until PopLine changes their policy on this, remove it. We cannot, as an educational institute, condone this type of censorship.
# Posted By Megan Evans | 4/10/08 12:15 PM
GWU should no longer subscribe to, or endorse Popline.
# Posted By Regan Gage | 4/10/08 12:53 PM
This is inexcusable! To remove a search catagory because you don't like it is moralistic and anti-intellectual. Regardless of one's opinion on abortion, it remains a legal and overwhelmingly safe procedure. Indeed, by some estimates, one-third of American women will have had an abortion by age 45 (Jones RK et al., Repeat abortion in the United States, Occasional Report, New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2006, No. 29). Don't future physicians deserve to know about something so common?

As an educational tool, Popline has failed a simple test of objectivity. It has no place in an academic library.
# Posted By Susan Podolsky | 4/10/08 1:08 PM
Michael J. Klag, the dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, released a second statement describing more thoroughly why abortion was placed on the list of stop words, and also identifying the articles which caused the initial inquiry from USAID regarding appropriate materials for POPLINE. His statement is available at: http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/popline/popl...

Abortion has been removed from Popline's stop words list and users can again search the database using this term. While I greatly appreciate the resolution of this issue, the lack of transparency continues to trouble me: e.g. no explanation or list of stop words in Popline's user guide and no reference to or explanation of the issue on Popline webages. In a time of great access to information thanks to innovations in technology, a simple technical change greatly restricted access to information - this has made me think more about selection of and trust in different sources of information and how often I am (or am not) getting the whole picture.
# Posted By Laura Abate | 4/10/08 1:45 PM
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