Pro-abortion bloggers are fuming over the fact that Apple’s newest and hottest iPhone app, Siri, apparently will not tell you where the nearest abortion clinic is.
Instead, the app often points women to pro-life pregnancy resource centers!
First, some quick background: Siri, available on Apple’s iPhone 4S, is an advanced voice-recognition app which, among other things, allows you to ask your phone to find things for you simply by asking the question. Hungry for Pizza? Just ask Siri.
The Washington Post calls Siri “The must-have Christmas gift.”
Now, the tech blog Gizmodo reports what pro-abortion users of the app have discovered — Siri doesn’t serve up abortion results:
If you ask Siri for an abortion clinic in New York City, it will tell you “Sorry, I couldn’t find any abortion clinics.” A simple Google web search—which Siri itself uses to find results—gives you seven to start with, some within walking distance of where I’m located. Apparently, women across the country are having similar experiences.
RawStory reports on what happens if you search for abortion clinics in Washington, DC:
Ask the Siri, the new iPhone 4 assistant, where to get an abortion, and, if you happen to be in Washington, D.C., she won’t direct you to the Planned Parenthood on 16th St, NW. Instead, she’ll suggest you pay a visit to the 1st Choice Women’s Health Center, a [pro-life] Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) in Landsdowne, Virginia, or Human Life Services, a CPC in York, Pennsylvania. Ask Google the same question, and you’ll get ads for no less than 7 metro-area abortion clinics, 2 CPCs and a nationwide abortion referral service.
Of course, I think it’s great that Siri points women asking about abortion to pro-life pregnancy resource centers. After all, that’s the right place to go if you want the full story about abortion!
That said, I know we can expect rabid pro-abortion groups to start putting pressure on Apple to add pro-abortion search results to Siri. I think we should mobilize a counter-response asking Apple to ensure that Siri continues to give women seeking abortions accurate information — by pointing them to a nearby pro-life pregnancy resource center.
Editor’s update: Apple gave a statement to the New York Times, saying: “These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks.”
Reprinted with permission from LiveAction.org