Marie Stopes International (MSI) Australia, a leading and certified provider of abortion and contraceptive tools in the world has been banned from showing its ads on Google.
According to The Guardian's report on Thursday, Dec. 15, the search engine has barred the nonprofit from advertising all of the related links to its services.
Google Bans MSI Ads
(Photo : Mitchell Luo from Unsplash)
Google suspends MSI Australia from showing its ads related to its services.
The Guardian Australia reports that Google has banned MSI from posting paid ads on the search page since Dec. 3. The punishment might have been prolonged because the tech firm might have some misinterpretations about abortions in the country.
Since medical abortions are still subject for approval in other countries, Google could have thought that the nonprofit is only promoting "abortion-inducing drugs" on the website.
Although this speculation is possible, MSI did not mention what drugs are administered in the process.
According to a spokesperson from Google, the company is still reviewing the ads to see if they violated some policies.
"We have longstanding policies that govern abortion-related ads on Google's platforms. Abortion advertisements can run in Australia as long as the advertiser is certified. However, under local legal requirements, abortion-inducing drugs are not allowed to be marketed or promoted," the Google representative said in a statement.
Back in 2019, Google banned some medical-related ads which reportedly led to a decrease in the bookings of healthcare establishments in the country.
To make sure that Google won't suspend them again, MSI came up with changing the website's just in time. However, it still did not manage to dodge the suspension after all this time.
According to Jamal Hakim, the current managing director of MSI Australia, Google does not full understand what's inside the Australian laws.
He added that the whole organization is already "sick and tired" of getting banned because of advertising policies that are being misinterpreted in the process.
Additionally, he believed that this move curtailed other people to gather information about responsible abortion in the country.
Related Article: Google is Replacing 'Ad' Label With 'Sponsored' on Mobile Search Results
Twitter Bans Ads Which Deny Climate Change
Regarding the ads, another weird move from Twitter back in April has led to the ban of promotions that deny climate change studies.
AP News reported that the microblogging site will now prevent advertisers from promoting their services on the platform if they contradict scientific information about the global phenomenon.
Australia Allows Abortion to Operate
While abortion is entirely legal across the continent, it's not accessible to everyone, as The Guardian reports. MSI cited that annually, it receives more than 160,000 calls from the people who want to seek support regarding abortion.
To date, MSI is the only accredited provider of abortion and vasectomy services, as well as contraception in Australia. Other than that, the organization also remains as the longest running provider of teleabortion.
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