Searches for 'abortion' on CDC website prompt suggestion to look up 'adoption'

Users who search for abortion information on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website are now directed to try searching for the word "adoption."  

The change comes less than a week after more than a dozen federal agency websites — including the CDC's — went offline. Some of the CDC’s webpages have since been restored, but scientists and public health researchers are concerned that the information that has come back has been altered in some way.  

If users click on the “Also try: adoption” hyperlink, they are brought to a search result page with a mixed list of CDC articles. Many of the links are to health guidelines for families considering international adoption.  

It is unclear when the change to the CDC’s website occurred, but some public health workers speculate it happened when the sites were pulled down late Friday. The CDC has yet to respond to questions from The Hill about the new connection to abortion and adoption on its site.  

Reproductive health workers who spoke with The Hill said the change was a “clear attempt” to change how conversations around pregnancy are approached.  

“It's a very strange thing to do because the decision tree around pregnancy is to either continue the pregnancy or not. If the pregnancy is continued, then the decision becomes parenting or not,” said Meghan Eagen-Torkko, director of the school of nursing at Eastern Michigan University who has provided reproductive health care for years.  

“There’s no point in that when abortion and adoption are on the same branch.”  

President Trump had a hands-off stance on abortion throughout most of the 2024 presidential campaign, often stating that he believed that future decisions on the legality of abortion should be left up to individual states. But his messaging has since changed since he took office on Jan. 20.

Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists on the eve of the March for Life in Washington, D.C., late last month.

"They should not have been prosecuted," Trump said as he signed pardons, calling them "peaceful pro-life protesters," Time reported.

Many of the activists he pardoned were convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrance Act, such as Lauren Handy, 31, who was sentenced to five years in prison for leading a blockade outside of a Washington state clinic where a nurse sprained her ankle.

He also touted his role in the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade and pledged to stop the “radical Democrat push” for “unlimited abortion” in a video message played at the march.