It was unfortunate but not really unexpected when the Trump Administration took down government sites with information on issues such as climate change and LGBTQ issues. We know that these are issues which various aspects of Trump’s political base would object to. It is harder to understand why they would want to restrict information regarding Breast Cancer. The Sunlight Foundation reports on such censorship in an articled entitled, Unexplained censorship of women’s health website renews questions about Trump administration commitment to public health:
Today, the Web Integrity Project released our third report about Web censorship at the Office on Women’s Health (OWH). As we have released these reports, journalists and members of the public have asked us about the significance of these removals. Beyond indicating potential changes in policy, these removals sow real doubt about important health considerations for populations of vulnerable women throughout the country.
The report we released today, covered by ThinkProgress and others, documents the removal of the OWH Breast Cancer website, which included fact sheets about breast cancer and information on how to access free or low-cost breast cancer screening programs, from within WomensHealth.gov, the OWH website. Breast cancer, as the website noted before it was removed, affects 1 in 8 women during their lives.
Today’s report follows up on a pair of reports we released two weeks ago, covered by Politico, NBC News and other outlets, documenting the broad overhaul of the OWH website and delving into the removal of webpages relating to lesbian and bisexual women’s health. For context, WomensHealth.gov was visited approximately 700,000 times in the last 30 days
The specificity of these removals adds more evidence to a growing concern: that public information for vulnerable populations is being targeted for removal or simply hidden. As we have highlighted before, the absence of transparent process around removing this information, which was done without notice, has sown further confusion…
The removal and alteration of content from federal government websites, relating to a wide range of topics including climate change, economics, women’s health, and LGBTQ rights, reflects the social and economic agenda of this administration…
An archived screen shot of the old page is above.
