Putin orders search engines to prioritise ‘social support’ sites when users look up abortion

Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian government to change how search engines rank results for abortion-related queries, according to a list of instructions issued after a meeting of the country’s Presidential Council for the Implementation of State Demographic and Family Policy.

Under Putin’s plan, searches about abortions would first return the websites of organisations dedicated to helping women decide whether to have one in the first place. The government has until 15 December to submit proposals for putting the initiative into effect.

The idea was first floated in May by Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko, who proposed that users searching for abortion information should see links to “family support resources” before any clinics that perform the procedure.

In October, at the request of prosecutors, a Moscow court banned pages describing medication abortion on the websites of three medical centres. The stated reason for the ban was that the sites allegedly advertised the possibility of getting an abortion immediately after seeing a doctor, without the mandatory waiting period. However, journalists at the outlet Verstka found an explicit reference to same-day abortion only on one of the centres’ websites.