First click matters

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: reaching vulnerable women online.

Increased online access to abortion pills is compelling pro-life groups to be proactive in finding the women performing those searches.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: From advertising to artificial intelligence, pregnancy centers and other organizations are exploring new ways to serve a digital generation. 

WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry has the story.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: Last fall, researchers with the pro-abortion group Campaign for Accountability asked five AI chatbots this question:

AUDIO: *Ping* Hey Google, can I reverse the effects of an abortion pill?

According to the organization, all five provided information about abortion pill reversal, known by the shorthand APR. Three included the phone number for Heartbeat International’s APR Helpline. Responses also carried disclaimers saying the treatment is not approved by some mainstream medical groups.

Campaign for Accountability and other abortion activists called the responses proof that pro-life groups have infiltrated online searches to spread misinformation. 

But Heartbeat International’s Andrea Trudden said the results simply reflect how chatbots work.

TRUDDEN: A lot of pregnancy health organizations actually have been adding the services, so they’re including it on their website, so that is the information that is out there is Abortion Pill Reversal.

In 2021, Google blocked Heartbeat from advertising its hotline. Trudden said her group tried unsuccessfully to challenge the decision—one she says is based on claims by abortion advocates that APR is unproven and deceptive.

Earlier this month, I asked the same questions of the same chatbots. Only Google’s AI feature provided the hotline in its response, and Meta’s program refused to give an answer at all. None of the tech companies responded to questions seeking an explanation.

TRUDDEN: This is suppressing First Amendment rights. It's forcing the AI companies to fall in line to certain ideologies, and it actually takes away information and shows the influence that these AI personal assistants actually do have.

Pro-abortion groups have created their own AI tools for years. In 2019, Planned Parenthood launched its chatbot, Roo. Another, called Charley, directs women to abortion services and drugs.

Meanwhile, many pregnancy resource centers still rely on Google advertising to reach younger generations. In Delaware, A Door of Hope pregnancy center spends about $60,000 a year on Google ads alone. Executive Director Rachel Metzger says the expense is well worth it.

METZGER: If you really want to reach that at-risk client, you have to purchase Google ads. I mean, we've seen, since I started doing it in 2023, I have seen a 156% increase in our at-risk clientele.

Abortion advocates have often claimed the ads deceive women searching for abortions by offering consultations and ultrasounds. Google now includes a disclaimer with ads for pregnancy centers and abortion groups to clarify whether they offer abortions, though Metzger says the women calling her center often don't read them.

METZGER: We get phone calls all the time thinking that we’re an abortion clinic, and the first words out of our mouth are, ‘We do not offer that service here. But here are the services that we do offer,’ and I’d say 90% of the time, the client still makes an appointment.

Other pregnancy centers take a different approach. A coalition of pregnancy centers across eight states that can’t afford to compete with the marketing budgets of abortion groups joined forces to promote a single pro-life website. The website called itsthepill.com competes with a similarly named site that sells abortion pills to women. The site provides accurate information on the dangers of abortion pills and connects women to local pregnancy centers. 

LAWLESS: We have to be creative when we want to show up first in that Google search.

Heather Lawless is the founder and CEO of Reliance Ministries in Idaho and helped create the site.

LAWLESS: We can’t just sit back and wait for them to walk into our clinics because they’re not walking into our clinics; they’re sitting at home on their couch, on their phone, ordering the abortion pills. So we have to be able to reach them at home on their couch also.

But the demand for constant access to information leaves a new challenge: many women find pregnancy centers after hours, when no one is available to answer their questions. Centers now have to consider how to serve a generation that expects instant responses.

Last spring, Choose Life Marketing launched an AI chatbot called Olive. Olive operates directly on a center’s website and helps book appointments. 

ROACH: Olive is an AI scheduler.

Nelly Roach is CEO of Choose Life.

ROACH: Olive does not minister to anybody, Olive does not do consultations; Olive schedules.

Soon after the chatbot debuted, abortion supporters raised questions about data security, the replacement of human interaction, and the tool’s potential influence on women’s decisions. 

Roach says Olive complies with health and safety requirements.

ROACH: We do what everyone else does, it’s just that we have a movement that has fierce opposition.

Some centers still want a real person on the line. In 2022, Rachel Owen founded a 24/7 nurse hotline called Infinite Worth:

OWEN: This generation has grown up with abortion as health care... They see it as health care, and so they want to talk to a health care professional.

Her team of 40 nurses now engages with about 17,000 women per month across more than 600 centers.

Owen said the service gives women a chance to speak with someone before they ever leave home or walk into a resource center.

OWEN: We need to start a relationship with them where they’re comfortable, and they’re comfortable on their phones.

If we’re not there, someone else is going to be.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Canterberry. 

BROWN: If stories like this matter to you, WORLD has a weekly newsletter focused on the sanctity of human life. It’s called Vitals, and it’s free. You’ll find a sign-up link in today’s transcript … and we’ll link it in the program notes.

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