  Among the myriad barriers to abortion access, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)
pose an additional difficulty by targeting women with unexpected or "crisis"
pregnancies in order to dissuade them from the procedure. Web search engines
may prove to be another barrier, being in a powerful position to direct their
users to health information, and above all, health services. In this study we
ask, to what degree does Google Search provide quality responses to users
searching for an abortion provider, specifically in terms of directing them to
abortion clinics (ACs) or CPCs. To answer this question, we considered the
scenario of a woman searching for abortion services online, and conducted 10
abortion-related queries from 467 locations across the United States once a
week for 14 weeks. Overall, among Google's location results that feature
businesses alongside a map, 79.4% were ACs, and 6.9% were CPCs. When an AC was
returned, it was the closest known AC location 86.9% of the time. However, when
a CPC appeared in a result set, it was the closest one to the search location
75.9% of the time. Examining correlates of AC results, we found that fewer AC
results were returned for searches from poorer and rural areas, and those with
TRAP laws governing AC facility and clinician requirements. We also observed
that Google's performance on our queries significantly improved following a
major algorithm update. These results have important implications concerning
health access quality and equity, both for individual users and public health
policy.
