'Abortion' ignored in health database

BALTIMORE, April 5 (UPI) -- A U.S. government-funded database has been reprogrammed after it was disclosed that searches containing the word "abortion" were being restricted.

The reproductive health database -- POPulation information onLINE, at John Hopkins University in Baltimore -- consists of more than 360,000 articles and records on reproductive health. It is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Timothy M. Parsons, a spokesman for Hopkins, told the New York Times the restriction was implemented in February in response to questions from federal officials.

The restriction was lifted Friday following complaints by librarians and women's health advocates, largely directed at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, The Baltimore Sun said.

The school's dean, Dr. Michael J. Klag, told the Sun he learned of the restriction Friday and ordered administrators of the POPLINE site to restore "abortion" as a search topic. Klag said he would initiate an inquiry into why the decision to limit searches had been made.

Gail L. Sorrough, medical library services director at the San Francisco medical center, told the Times the restriction "essentially blocks access … to information about abortion."