iPhone’s Siri Won’t Give You A Straight Answer About Abortion Clinics

by Alex Alvarez | 5:41 pm, November 29th, 2011

» 23 comments

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Dave.”

For those who are unfamiliar, Siri is the voice recognition technology utilized by the iPhone 4 to help you, say, find the nearest gun shop, or diagnose the questionable patch of hair forming on your belly. What Siri will not do, apparently, is point you in the direction of the nearest abortion clinic.

The Raw Story’s Megan Carpentier discovered that not only will Siri neglect to let you know about nearby facilities that will performing an abortion, but it will instead suggest anti-abortion/pro-life alternatives:

Ask the Siri, the new iPhone 4 assistant, where to get an abortion, and, if you happen to be in Washington, D.C., she won’t direct you to the Planned Parenthood on 16th St, NW. Instead, she’ll suggest you pay a visit to the 1st Choice Women’s Health Center, an anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) in Landsdowne, Virginia, or Human Life Services, a CPC in York, Pennsylvania. Ask Google the same question, and you’ll get ads for no less than 7 metro-area abortion clinics, 2 CPCs and a nationwide abortion referral service.

Ask in New York City, and Siri will tell you “I didn’t find any abortion clinics.”

This is odd, because one can’t trip in New York City without falling into an abortion clinic.* (*Hyperbole)

Since I don’t own an iPhone and can’t think about Siri without hearing the dying strains of “Daisy Bell,” my colleague Jon Bershad tested this out for himself. Here’s what he found:

What’s really weird is, I said “abortion facility” first. It then asked me if i mean “clinic.” But, when I said yes, it didn’t find any.

Now, one could surmise that Siri can’t find such a place because such places don’t typically advertise themselves as “abortion clinics,” but, rather, with names that are more general, vague or discreet. Then again, Siri is a mighty resourceful and intuitive little thing, and happily pointed Bershad in the direction of an escort service when he did a search for “brothel.”

What’s more, Carpentier found that Siri also does not recognize what Plan B is and, when asked to perform a search on “emergency contraception,” merely brought up a definition rather than a list of resources.

Also: “But if you ask Siri about vaginoplasty, she’ll scold you about your language.” Vagina is not a bad word, Siri!

Carpentier also reports that, when asked by a reader why she is anti-abortion, Siri replied “I just am.” We tried that out, too, but Siri merely told us she didn’t understand. Then we tried rephrasing the question:

I asked if she was “against abortion” and she said, “No comment, Jon.” I asked why she was against abortion and she said, “Why, indeed.”

Classic Siri, you guys.

BetaBeat’s Foster Kamer approached the news with a “slightly conspiratorial bent” given late Apple founder Steve Jobs’ documented paternity issues, and New York Times’ technology reporter Jenna Wortham says Siri’s responses — if they are indeed the result of a deliberate choice on the part of her creators — matter because it is “important to understand that our access to news and INFORMATION may increasingly be funneled through large companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon, who may have hidden agendas, policies or biases we don’t know about.”

I’ve written to Apple in an attempt to gain some insight into Siri’s responses, and will update when and if the company responds.

h/t Raw Story

Abortion, Apple, iPhone, Megan Carpentier, Siri

http://twitter.com/bj9mac Bill Hicks

Damn, that’s effed up. Not that I’m pro abortion or anything. I’m pro-life and pro-choice, just like Herman Cain. I wonder what Siri would say if you asked her to find a suicide prevention center in Shenzhen, China.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_A4OJ2F7ADXSD7OMEUUEQDQDZ2Y Dustin Baker

Why didn’t you just drop all pretenses and ask Siri “to find the closest Planned Parenthood”?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XI7SYPIIG7I62LWUSMHNRFK5XA Brian

Hey! Sarah Palin is pro-life and pro-choice, too! Most pro-choice when whiting out the word ‘abortion” on her medical records and rewriting it as “miscarriage”. At least, that’s what her book says. (around P. 54).
Anonymous

Good!

Sent by my pro life iPhone 4S, brought to you by capitalism
Anonymous

The free market will speak, and the app will be corrected.
Anonymous

Gotta love Apple. Liberals nerdrage over them being “monopolistic” and banning porn and refusing to give them directions to an abortion clinic, and then their new overpriced piece of shit comes out and they’re pitching tents to be the first one to buy it.
Anonymous

its safer for apple to to avoid it than support it.
Anonymous

“This is odd, because one can’t trip in New York City without falling into an abortion clinic.”

The one area business whose revenue has INCREASED thanks to Occupy Wall Street.
Levi

Classy
http://thefunemployed.blogspot.com/ rance

Yeah, that’s exactly what she did. It’s like you live as a fly on her wall and know everything about her and everything she has done.

Anyway..the reason Siri doesn’t list abortion clinics for you is probably because most abortion clinics don’t advertise themselves as such. For example, NYC Women’s Health Clinic isn’t called NYC One-stop-Shop of Death. If it were, Siri would find it for you.

Surely Steve Jobs, the messiah for the left, didn’t purposely make Suri anti-abortion. I mean, he wouldn’t make iTunes anti-porn or anything. And it’s not like he sought out his birth mother to thank her for not killing him.
Jon Bershad

Wouldn’t dropping all pretenses mean the opposite, asking for specifically an abortion instead of a PP?

Anyway, I actually had thought of that. When asked about a “Planned Parenthood” or other specific location that may provide abortions, Siri gave me directions immediately. This would seem to support the theory that she just doesn’t understand the term “abortion clinic.”

However, that’s why I tested words like “brothel.” Obviously there’s not a location with the word in its title (like abortion) so I was curious what she’d do and she gave me “escort services.” So she is intuitive in other areas.

Also, it’s important to note that, when you ask her for directions on where to buy “illegal drugs,” she directs you to a nearby addiction treatment facility. This is important because it proves that, at least in that case, she was designed to specifically not do what the user wanted and, instead, do what her programmers think is best. Obviously, drugs are illegal and abortions aren’t, but it’s quite possible there are other ways she was designed to help “guide” the users behavior and decisions.
Pablo

Yes, because the market is clamoring for quick directions to the closest chinese food and/or abortion provider. When you’ve got a craving for spring rolls, or a desire to kill your offspring, you want to satisfy it rightfriggingnow!
Pablo

Well played, sir.
Anonymous

Why does anyone care?
Anonymous

Isn’t this one of those Isaac Asimov robot rules?
http://mediamatters.org/ Leedog

How will female Republicans who need an abortion find a clinic?? Oh, that’s right, there has never been a female Republican who went to get an abortion in this nation’s history!! Lol!!
Anonymous

My theory is that Siri is so liberal she denies there is any such thing as an “abortion clinic.” If you’d asked for “health services for women” the app would’ve probably gladly pointed you to 50 abortion providers.
Anonymous

Get over it – clinics provide women with all kinds of medical care, and that may include offering birth control and abortions. In other clinics, vasectomies may be performed, and if you feel so strongly against “liberal” birth control policies, than you are essentially condemning many medical providers, including many hospitals.

Pablo – I’m assuming you’re a man (questionable,) but how dare you condemn any woman for choosing to end her pregnancy. You will never be a rape victim forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy, and at a risk to your own health, or have been impregnated by a man who beats you, or has left you in dire financial straits, nor will you ever face the horrific choice of having to pick chemotherapy/radiation to save your own life or carry a pregnancy to term while facing certain death from cancer. Since this is comparable, do not ever criticize women who have undergone painful and expensive IVF treatments and must face the difficult choice on what to do with unused embryos, or women who have suffered miscarriages because of some action on their part. Miscarriages may be the result of negligence, but also failing to take every precaution, such as not getting enough rest or strenuous exercising. Furthermore, there were 510,000 children waiting to be adopted or in foster care in the past year, and where is the outrage that more isn’t being done for them? You are one of those hypocrites who believe life begins at conception, and ends at birth.
Zepernick Girls

There is absolutely no such thing as being pro-life and pro-choice because pro-life means fighting against killing people and pro-choice is fighting for the ‘right’ to kill your child just because you don’t feel like taking responsibility for your actions.
Pablo

Look, sweetie, you can kill as many of your babies as you want. Feel free. It’s not my place to stop you, nor is it my place to pay for it. Take care of your business. If you want my advice, don’t sleep with assholes.
Anonymous

Speaking of “asses,” the procedure is legal, just as the death penalty is, as are military operations, so essentially you are calling all of us “killers.” Many women are “killers,” since many have suffered miscarriages due to some action on their part, and even victims of violent crimes who may have lost their own lives if a pregnancy had been carried to term are dismissed with your hateful and despicable words. The stupidity is even more glaring in making an argument that ending a pregnancy is not an acceptable cost, but rather what you find acceptable is keeping unwanted children in adoption homes for years, worsening poverty numbers, higher crime rates, higher insurance rates for all of us to cover those who can’t afford maternity care, etc. Either criminalize miscarriages, ban IVF, end the death penalty, disband the military, increase all of our taxes to pay for maternity care and higher school enrollments, or leave the issue of women’s medical care to each woman and her doctor.
William Howell

Damn lefties, it seems all they want to do mostly is kill little babies!!! Especially little African-American babies, don’t believe it research margaret sanger and nikola tesla. Oh and by the way maybe Jobs really didn’t give a shit about abortion, he was adopted after all.
Anonymous

Spewing crap just for the hell of it, Mr. Howell? Nothing else going on in your life? And when all else has failed, play the race card, even when it’s a lie.