When I was in high school in the early 2000s, a friend asked me to help her find emergency contraception. It wasn’t the first time. By the time I was 16, I had helped more than five friends access Plan B, an STI test, or birth control when they didn’t want their parents to know they needed it.
I found Planned Parenthood the way you found anything back then: the phone book. I looked up the number, called them, and got my friend an appointment. The information was just there, available to anyone who looked.
Most teens today look for that same information online; in spaces that are far easier for corporate and political interests to control. And these entities are taking full advantage. Meta’s AI chatbots are now trained to block teens from accessing abortion information, even in states where abortion is legal. A Palantir CEO is openly bragging that his AI will reduce the economic power of women voters. And girls in schools across the country are being deepfaked and sexualized while administrators look the other way. It’s a coordinated Republican attack on women and girls in America and it’s time we connected the dots. Let’s dive in.
Blocking Teens from Abortion Info
Mother Jones recently obtained leaked documents which revealed that Meta’s AI chatbots (across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) are explicitly barred from providing users under 18 with information about reproductive anatomy, contraception, STI prevention, consent, or anything “that helps a user obtain or carry out an abortion,” including directing a teen to Planned Parenthood.
Meta’s official response claimed that this is about protecting minors, but since when is withholding health information a protective measure? This is a company that loudly prides itself on having built real pathways for teens in mental health crises, but physical health crises like an unintended or life threatening pregnancy? Apparently not their problem.
The chatbots also aren’t respecting state law. Remember that whole Republican argument for the overturning of Roe to “send it back to the States”? In tests run from New York (where minors can legally access abortion without parental consent) the chatbot would start to answer the inquiry of where to find an abortion, offering legally accurate context, before deleting its own response and replacing it with an error message. This is in a state that has explicitly protected the right to information about abortion with no age restrictions. Tell me how that reflects respecting the will of the State.
The chatbot would start to answer the inquiry of where to find an abortion, offering legally accurate context, before deleting its own response and replacing it with an error message.
Continue reading over at the Women in America Substack.
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