Johns Hopkins officials restored full access yesterday to a reproductive health Web site funded by the government, after learning that searches containing the word "abortion" were being intentionally restricted and that thousands of studies were being hidden from easy view.
The change came after librarians and women's health advocates flooded the blogosphere - and e-mail boxes at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health - with complaints of censorship.
They became concerned after one research librarian was told the action was not a mistake - with the implication that it could be related to Bush administration rules restricting dissemination of information about abortions in foreign countries.
Dr. Michael J. Klag, Bloomberg's dean, said he learned about the action yesterday morning and ordered administrators of POPLINE to restore "abortion" as a search term "immediately." He also said he would launch an inquiry into why the decision was made to limit searches.
"I could not disagree more strongly with this decision," Klag said in a statement. "The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction."
How POPLINE officials came to that decision - and whether it was requested by officials with the United States Agency for International Development, which funds it - remains unclear. USAID officials were at a retreat yesterday and could not be reached for comment.
Under federal policy, USAID denies funding to nongovernmental organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.
Officials devised the policy under President Ronald Reagan and revived it after President Bush came to office in 2001. Some critics refer to it as the "Global Gag Rule."
Tim Parsons, spokesman for the school, said USAID officials found two items in the POPLINE database that were related to abortion advocacy - which does not meet the criteria for publication in the database. Agency officials asked that they be removed, and they were.
After that inquiry, POPLINE administrators made the decision to restrict abortion as a search term, Klag said.
On Monday, Gloria Won, a librarian at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, sent an e-mail to POPLINE administrator Debra L. Dickson informing her of a puzzling problem she was having with the database.
